Founded in August 2015, Fresh Car Valeting was started as a project at Heriot-Watt University. Sam Brennan, the founder, saw a huge gap in the premium car valeting and cleaning service market. As a result, he wanted to revolutionise the industry that hasn’t had any innovation in the past few years. According to Brennan, the company is on a mission to change the way people manage their car, and customer satisfaction is central to that.
In the latest development, Edinburg-based company launched a new app as it embarks on a £1 million investment round. With the app, the UK company aims to transform the way people manage their car care.
Sam Brennan says, “The market of 31M users across the UK is worth more than £1.2B so making it as simple as possible to deal with us is vital. Launching a new app does exactly that. Fresh is expanding rapidly because we provide fantastic customer service across all our franchises and people are sick and tired of sub-standard care.”
Furthermore, the company is planning to add more features to the app over the next twelve months. It includes added car services like tire and oil changes, scratch removal and more.
Brennan, says, “It’s great to get the app launched and out there, and we’re in the process of adding online payment and a subscription service, just two of several features we’ll be adding in the months ahead.”
28 operators and 21K customers
As of now, the company has 28 operators and 21,000 customers across the UK, adding new locations in Liverpool, Warrington, Bolton, Wigan, Stockport, Swansea, and Kent during 2021.
Having strengthened coverage in the Central Belt of Scotland and the North of England over the last eighteen months, Fresh plans to increasingly target the Midlands and South of England in 2022.
The company is also in talks about building partnerships with a series of car and car care-related industry partners, which Sam Brennan believes will be transformational to the company’s future growth.
Backed by tech entrepreneurs and figures
Fresh Car Valet is backed and advised by a number of leading tech entrepreneurs and figures from Scotland’s business scene including Ambergreen founder Tino Nombro, NatWest Group’s Director of Public Policy Michael Crow, Alex Watts, founder of Lettingweb.com and Kingsford Estates, and Paywizard Group founder Jonathan Guthrie.
Crow, Watts, and Guthrie are all non-executive directors on Fresh’s board while Nombro, who sold digital marketing firm Ambergreen to Canada’s DAC Group in 2016, was appointed as Fresh’s chairman last year.
Brennan says: “We are in an exciting place at the moment, doubling revenue on the platform at the beginning of the year, bringing three new people into the team, and launching some significant tech updates. Bookings are now completely automated across all our UK locations, and we’re achieving high customer satisfaction levels. We feel like we’ve proved the business model and now it’s time to go for some external investment and take things to the next level.”
Tino Nombro, Chairman, Fresh Mobile Car Valeting, said: “Sam and the team have made incredible progress over the last year, with a product that stands up to anything else currently available in the UK market. Accordingly, we are seeing a lot of investor interest in the Fresh proposition.”
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