Hello Kansas City area. Welcome back to the Bespoke Automotive Refinement Podcast. Today, again, we have with us the owner and founder of the company, Thomas Thill himself.
Thomas, thank you so much for joining us today on this podcast about Kansas City Car Detailing Services.
I’m really happy to be here.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you even got started?
So I got started in this business detailing and cleaning cars, gosh, it would have been 14 years ago. I got into some trouble as a teenager with the cops. And to make a really long story short, my parents owned an oil field service company and they had a ton of these nasty oil field trucks and they were beating up really badly.
And my dad said, all right, I’m going to make you hand polish, detail and hand polish these trucks. And it was supposed to be a punishment. And I’d never detailed a car before in my life.
And I had never really had anything that I really enjoyed doing outside of getting into trouble driving cars fast and just being a degenerate.
Because you loved cars your whole life.
I’ve been a car guy my whole life, but having my dad telling me to detail a bunch of nasty trucks was not… I did not think that I would love it so much. And I was immediately obsessed with this idea of making something that was so bad, so good.
And so I started doing these hand polish jobs on my dad’s truck. And gosh, I don’t even think I got one truck done. And I was like, buy me a polisher.
These are going to look horrible. So he goes down to Walmart, buys me a cheap orbital
buffer. And this was before smartphones.
So I would go into my dad’s office, I’d pull up a YouTube video on how to properly polish, what polishes to use. And I would go back and try it on these trucks. And you know, I got to practice wet sanding and paint correction and what was supposed to be a punishment turned into a business that I ended up running out of my parents garage when I was in high school.
Wow. So this started for you when you were really young. And then now as an adult, you have worked in the Wichita area, paint correcting, detailing.
And then now you are in the Kansas City area, detailing and paint correcting.
Yep. So I offer Kansas City Car Detailing services. I used to live in Wichita. I lived in Wichita for about seven years. I owned the premier detailing shop in Wichita.
And I moved to Kansas City and I chose to go a different route. So rather than having a full shop, I noticed that a lot of my clients wanted me to come to them. So I started offering mobile Kansas City Car Detailing services instead.
And it’s, it’s really taken off. I mean, people prefer it. People prefer you coming to them rather than them having to bring a car to you.
So people that want to have their car done, they don’t need to drive their car to a place, leave it all day or figure out another form of transportation. You come directly to them.
Absolutely. And, what’s actually interesting is I, when I first moved up here, I curated a facility, um, in East Kansas City and I immediately picked up, uh, exotic car clients. So I immediately picked up with a group clientele that had like four to literally 27 Ferraris.
And they wanted me to do their cars, but they, number one, had a problem driving them all the way to me. You know, these were multimillion dollar cars and they didn’t really like putting them in, in, you know, downtown Kansas City traffic. So I had that issue.
And then, you know, I’d get the car perfect in my shop and they’d have a 35 minute drive home and the car would be dirty. It would, you know, it already looked like it needed to be washed after driving it that far. So it kind of happened by accident.
So it’s both convenient for you and it’s convenient for them.
100%.
The car looks amazing when they’re done and it’s already in their possession. They don’t need to drive it anywhere. What are some things, because you do it at somebody’s house, what are some things that they need to be aware of in the process that either need to provide or just to make sure that the car’s in the right spot?
You know, I’ll tell you, I’ve, I’ve gotten creative before I’ve showed up at, you know, I showed up at an apartment complex in the hood in North Kansas City. And if you know, Kansas City, when I said North Kansas City, that’s all you really needed to hear. Um, and this apartment, this guy did not, you know, know that I really needed to have a driveway with water hookups and electrical hookups.
And I was able to get creative and I figured out a way to do his car in this apartment parking lot. But you know, really the two things that I need are a water source within 30 feet of the car. So like a water hose and then some sort of electrical outlet, um, within 25 to a hundred feet of the car.
I would really prefer it if you had a driveway. Um, I’ve done cars in the past where the person really didn’t have a driveway, but they had those two things that I needed. And it was such a pain because I was squeezing between other cars to try to like the interior.
That makes sense. So in the services that you offered, the Kansas City Car Detailing needs of our area, what are the different price ranges that you offer?
It’s pretty crazy. Um, I’ve done jobs as little as $220, you know, for our maintenance detailing package. And then I’ve done jobs all the way up to $10,000.
It completely depends on what you’re trying to achieve, what goals you’re trying to achieve with your vehicle. You know, if you have a daily driver that needs a good detail, just needs a good cleaning, um, you know, you’re going to be in that five to $300 mark, excuse me. Um, and if you’re looking at having a full paint correction, you’re looking at anywhere between $1,800 to that $10,000 mark, depending on what we’re working on.
Um, and how far you’re wanting to take it. I mean, a paint correction is something that ‘s very nuanced. You can polish a car really well.
That’s a single stage correction, or you can sand the car down four different stages and then color correct it back out, you know, and that’s going to be between that five to $10,000 range.
So when you’re working on somebody’s car in the Kansas city area, let’s say there’s a husband and a wife and they want different things on their car. Are you able to do both cars in a day? If somebody wanted maintenance, someone wanted something more robust, are you able to do both cars?
Like do both cars on the same day? Oh, absolutely. I do that all the time.
Yeah. Typically what happens is I’ll work on one car and I’ll finish it and I’ll start on it at nine and I’ll finish it by noon. And they’re so happy with the results that they’re like, let’s go ahead and do the other car while you’re here.
I mean, that is so common for me and I’m very flexible when it comes to my time. So, you know, it’s not like at five 30, if I still got an hour and a half left, I’m not like, all right, bye. You know, I’ll, I’ll stay to finish the car because my, my number one goal is making sure that the customer’s pleased when I leave.
And, and, um, so I’m, you know, I’m willing to put in the hours. I mean, just the other day, um, I had a guy, it was on a Sunday and he was really struggling with his schedule to make something work. Because it was the only running car he had at the time.
And, you know, I, I started on the car at eight 45 last night and at 1:00 AM he sent me home and I showed back up at his house at six 45 this morning and finished the car before he went to work this morning. So, um, it’s not something that I really like to do, but if the customer’s willing to pay for the service, I’m more than happy to take care of the customer in any way, shape or form.
So for those looking for Kansas City Car Detailing services, do you offer any discounts or anything to like, if they bundle a bunch of things together or if they want to have more of a maintenance wash, do you offer any discounts?
Absolutely. I definitely offer discounts for fleet work. So if you’ve got five, 10, 20, 30 vehicles, you’re wanting done, um, I’ll come up with a discount for you.
I don’t offer discounts. Like if someone wants two $500 details done or the, the gold glamor pack is what I call it. You know, if they’re wanting one of those done, I don’t do anything crazy.
Like I’ll buy one, get one free, but you know, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll cut them a discount for sure.
If somebody wants a regular wash, like, Hey, I just want a basic wash done on my vehicle every week, every other week, once a month. What kind of discounts do you offer?
So I offer a discount if you’re wanting to have your vehicle done on a weekly or biweekly basis. So my maintenance detail, uh, starts at two 20 per job. If you get set up on our, uh, recurring monthly plan, um, that goes, that price goes down to one 70.
That’s for a car. So there is an upcharge for, uh, you know, a second row or third row vehicle. And then, you know, you get into sizes, obviously I got to charge up, but that standard price on a standard size car is going to be, um, one 70 for that reoccurring wash.
So if you are looking for Kansas City Car Detailing services, reach out to us today by going to www.bespokerefinement.com or call (620) 282 – 0402.