Ethan Dewhurst already has a growing media production company, so he wasn't planning on another startup.
"I just hated taking care of my car, and wanted other people to figure it out," he said.
After a few years trying to persuade friends in the automotive industry to enact his vision of a concierge car maintenance company, Dewhurst and two co-founders started Vohnt LLC.
The service has landed contracts with Laz Parking, SP Plus Corp. and luxury hotels, giving the startup access to downtown Columbus parking garages with a combined 92,000 spaces. So far, with only word of mouth, Vohnt worked on 150 cars in July and August.
"We are now an attractive amenity parking garages can offer their clients," Dewhurst said.
Here's how it works: Vohnt is allowed to advertise and install key boxes in the garages. Parkers schedule a service online, such as oil change or full detail inside and out wash, and put their car key in the lock box. Vohnt valets drive the vehicle to its 14,000-square-foot garage in Franklinton, then returns it to the garage.
Vohnt hired a racing pit crew to design its processes, shortening the time to do an oil change or detailing, so it can process more than 200 cars in 24 hours.
"We clean out all that gunk under the cupholder, we go into the vents – we never go into the glovebox or middle console," Dewhurst said. "We never up-sell. We want to build trust and create a new standard for the automotive world."
It's not a pure software play, obviously, but Rev1 Ventures is putting Vohnt through its six-month course as a tech-enabled services business. Rev1 works with services businesses it sees as using technology to grow quickly to a larger scale, COO Kristy Campbell said via email, adding she cannot comment on specific clients.
"We showed them how we could take this regional and national quickly," Dewhurst said.
Dewhurst started production company Champion City Media in 2015, when he graduated from Cedarville University. Co-founders are Kyle Barger, a real estate investor and founder of metals recycling company Champion Trading Group, and Andrew Hulse, a senior manager at Columbus data analytics company Futurety.
Vohnt – the name is a made-up word that evokes a sound of motion – will expand through a combination of self-operated and franchise shops. The focus will be on downtowns with heavy concentrations of parked cars, since customers don't want valets driving their cars all over the suburbs.
"Our model is about fishing in stocked ponds," Dewhurst said.
The company hired technicians and drivers ahead of demand so there's never a bottleneck, so it's not expected to break even until sometime next year, Dewhurst said. Initial investment from the founders will allow them to bootstrap without taking on outside capital until it's at a later stage of growth, he said.
"It's a good place to be at as a founder," he said.
