Aaron@P2PQD

Nice work Chris, Chevelle's definately lookin' sweet

I'm not sure what the costs are like in the US but I definately could not be profitable in Australia with those prices. As others have said, You need to test what your market will handle and factor in your product costs before coming to a price. I'm going through all this at the moment as I plan to be detailing by Jan '15. Some of the things I have taken into consideration are - Consumable Life Span and cost (Pads, Mits, Towels, Machine Servicing etc.) - Product cost plus mark-up - Power/Water/Rent if applicable - Your Hourly Rate, Ideally above minimum wage! - Advertising costs - Competitors prices (You don't want to chop the guts out of the market, You'll devalue your services and others in the area and you'll all end up working killer hours to make ends meet) These are just to name a few, When you sit down go through every little thing you will be surprised at how quickly the costs add up. You also need to discuss with your partner what you want from the business as well as what you expect from each other, You'll be surprised how quickly successful business' can be torn apart by a difference of opinion :-) All the best in the venture!

Awesome work on a wicked car! Looks amazing

Haha, the VF Clubsport R8 specifically. I've taken the wife to our local HSV dealer twice now to show her the one I want, It's just sitting there waiting for someone to love it

Thanks for the advice, I don't know why I thought to do it before before the correction. I should have really written the steps down to refer to during the process. All part of the learning curve I guess haha Thanks Adam, pretty awesome to have the Master himself post in your thread! I have to confess it is only a V6, My wife drives the vehicle mainly and she does alot of stop/start driving and not much cruising so the fuel bills would have been astronomical. I already own and track a modified RX-7 too so we decided the V6 would suit our needs and budget better for now. When the kids get a bit older we might review that decision though haha

I feel for you Adam, We have to deal with a 3PL in our business and they make the most illogical decisions. Some of the error's we see are just beyond belief and they seem to happen on a daily basis. How engine's and tires for 793F dump truck go missing is beyond me! Good to see you dropped them quick smart mate

Morning All, This is a pretty exciting post for me as this is my first ever paint correction, I used all Adam's products with the exception of my Cyclo polisher. I managed to source a Cyclo 6CE from a local in Perth which is designed to run on our 240v power supplies in Australia, Would be sweet if it had adjustable speed like the Adam's one though! After doing ALOT of reading on this forum I developed a game plan and got to work, I struggled to get good before and after photos but I think you can still see a sizeable difference! Here's how it went down over 3 days, All products used were Adams and I was pretty impressed the whole way through. - Wash wheel wells, Wheels and tyres with Green Wheel Cleaner & All Purpose Cleaner - Strip wash body with Car Shampoo and a little All Purpose Cleaner (Forgot to add the APC and had to do it again) - Wash engine compartment down with All Purpose Cleaner - Dry body off with Waffle Weave towel - Clay bar entire vehicle - Mask off any non-accessible panel gaps and badges/brightwork - Polish by hand with Revive Polish (I don't know why I did that, But I'm sure now it was a total waste of time) - Polish with Paint Correcting and Paint Finishing Polishes - Apply Brilliant Glaze - Apply Liquid Paint Sealant - Apply Patriot Wax How it started: Some pics of the damage, The pictures actually flatter it quite a bit. The whole car was covered in spiderwebs as you can see from the B pillar and trunk pictures. This car was an ex-Holden demonstrator so it had ridiculously low K's, but tonnes of dealer inflicted "love" for 12 months! Example of the paint clarity before After the Clay-tastrophe Masked up and ready to go Post Paint correction and my camera was wigging out over the shine Glaze and Liquid Paint Sealant applied, Starting to look pretty special Remember those hammered B pillars? Patriot is on. I don't know what my obsession was with taking pics of the trunk lol. I really regret taking these shots with such a bad camera, I'm going to have to find someone with a DSLR Grrrr, Where did you come from?!?!? Shortly after we went for a drive and it rained, Beading from this stuff is insane As you can tell by the time frame, I did encounter some problems. I was battling inclement weather which kept catching me by surprise, and I did have to repeat some steps due to lack of experience. On top of that it was my first machine polish ever, Which turned out to be an awesome but time and gear consuming learning curve. I'm looking forward to doing more now! A big thanks to Joseph and the team at Adam's Aus for running around for me endlessly shipping products to the other side of the country on short notice because I was constantly changing my mind. Thanks to Adam and the team in the USA for such great products and more importantly the instructional videos and this forum that provided me with the knowledge to complete this task to this level. The community here is truly great, I have never met a group of people so willing to help out and share information with each other. This truly is something special Cheers All from your Upside Down Cousins! Aaron

Well done, that blue really pop's

I can't stop viewing this thread, Awesome turn around

That's delicious Chris, Those wheels suit it perfectly too IMO

Thanks Guys, I will give it a try. Looking forward to doing my first correction!

Hi All, Been a lurker for a while and was actually hoping to do this thread with pictures of my freshly detailed car, I need help before that can happen though . My Dad lives in the states and sent me one of Adams detail kits last christmas via Joe the Australian distibutor for Adam's, and was telling me how great this American stuff was. Yeah, Righto I thought, I'll be sure to try that one day when I have exhausted all my existing supplies of Megs and AG Well, Six months later and I had a rapidly expanding family and a Mazda3 which was struggling with one child. My wife adored the Mazda (it was an SP) but driving around with my knees buried in the dashboard due to the child seat behind was getting old very quickly. I took the plunge and we went car shopping, We looked at several different family sedans but wanting to support the fledgling Australian car industry we decided to buy a Holden VE Calais which was an ex-factory demonstrator. It fit the bill perfectly and had under 10,000k's on the clock! Upon getting the vehicle home and washing it thoroughly myself I realized I wasn't really that happy with the state of the paint, I clayed it and hit with my favourite Megs wax but for the first time in a long time I still wasn't satisfied with the finish. Concluding my Megs had gone off, I went the auto shop where I was sold AG Super Resin polish. Again I clayed and waxed the car but still found the finish was not where I wanted it to be. Standing there perplexed I remembered that bucket Dad bought me and thought "I wonder if there's a wax in there?" Well, I went inside and raided the bucket hoping like all hell there was some sort of miracle cream in here and after I had upended the contents all over the floor I found what I was looking for! Lollies! Couldn't believe my luck, just what you need when your having a bad day I chowed all three of them while rummaging through the contents and then came across this yellow stuff called Adams Buttery Wax. As the car was a Daily and would be subjected to the horrors of children I figured the car had worse things coming if it didn't work. Well, I proceeded to apply the wax the following day and honestly didn't expect alot. I'd used alot of products before I settled with Megs and alot of them had been of a poor standard to be kind. Before I'd finished my neighbor had wandered over and made comment on how good the car looked. It was then that I stopped and compared both sides of the car. I have to say it didn't blow me away initially, but the more I looked the more I could appreciate the quality of the wax and I found myself unable to stop looking at it. It had made decidedly average paint look fairly spectacular. Since using the buttery wax I have ordered the 2 step correction kit along with the all purpose cleaner, super vrt kit and the 2 step correction kit. I have also sourced a cyclo 6ce locally and the bits to convert it to Adam's spec. Joseph from Adam's Australia has been really good to deal with and I have to say I'm pretty much sold on Adam's filling a large proportion of my detailing gear. I've been trawling the Detailing section of the forum for the last few weeks and some of the results you guys get is nothing short of amazing and I'm super impressed by how helpful the community here is. That's pretty much my whole life up until this moment right now TL:DR - Aussie who tells long stories is impressed with Adam's products and thinks the community here is pretty awesome! look forward to liaising with you all in the future So the question I had right at the beginning is how do you take good photos of scratched paint before correction? My camera seems to make them vanish in pictures Cheers Aaron

Hi Adam, Only been a short time customer but am already a big fan of the way you do business and the quality of your product. I work in the supply chain of a large australian iron ore miner where long lead times and vendor error are unfortunately a part of everyday life. If you do find yourself in a situation where you do have to utilize a particularly difficult vendor you can use your contracts to supply to performance manage them. We set specific terms in our contracts that we identify as placing us at significant risk of loss to our business, when these terms aren't met the vendor is contractually obliged to compensate you adequately. This also gives you leverage when negotiating the next contract. If you do decide to initiate this approach it's generally better to keep them on short term contracts as it keeps them on their toes. Sometimes you find this is the push they need to address their own internal problems, I certainly wouldn't accept "we can't make them fast enough" as an excuse. You can also insulate yourself from poor vendor performance by implementing a stocking strategy with large redundancies involved, although this is more of a brute force method that involves you having to shoulder the burden of your vendors problems which is not acceptable in my mind. Although sometimes you are left with little option. Your commitment to quality and your customers is what keeps us all coming back. If you want to discuss some options your more than welcome to contact me. I'd be quite thrilled if I could actually assist you! Cheers