A new D.C.-area startup wants to repair your car. But you can stay put.
That’s the concept behind CarCare To Go, a joint venture between Graham Holdings Co. (NYSE: GHC) and Ourisman Automotive Group aiming to make car servicing convenient and transparent, founder John Alderman said in an interview. The business has been quietly rolling since September and is preparing to come out of stealth mode.
The goal to remove the hassle of customers spending hours traveling to, or waiting at, a dealership or garage.
“It has basically been done the same way for 100 years,” said Alderman, a media industry veteran who joined Graham in 2012. “And even if they’re really great, and many of them are, it’s still a huge waste of time.”
What is CarCare To Go?
Here’s how it works: A customer visits the website, and enters some basic information including location, type of vehicle, the problem or symptom (there’s smoke coming out of the hood!) and a desired appointment time, either same day or in advance. The customer then receives text and email confirmation. When the appointment time is coming up, the user can watch a live map to track the driver’s travels from an Ourisman service center to the car’s location. When the driver arrives, the customer hands over the keys.
The service center then performs an assessment and keeps the client updated along the way. When it’s done, the car’s owner receives a menu with the diagnosis, the suggested solution to the problem, any other recommendations and pricing — and can elect to do some, all or none of the work. The customer is only charged for the work, not the valet or diagnosis, and gets an invoice before the car is returned.
The goal is to save time for everyone, from the CEO of a large corporation to a Walmart employee who’s also driving for Uber, Alderman said. “No matter where you are on the spectrum of society, you’re short on time.”
“Convenience has been our primary reason to get into this,” he added, “but we also found along the way other things people weren’t always so pleased about,” when it comes to car servicing, including:
- Communication: Most people don’t know much about car repair. So CarCare’s technicians send explanatory videos to its customers about what they’re seeing, what’s urgent and what to keep an eye on.
- Transparency: The company wants to arm consumers with clear information so they can make educated decisions “as opposed to ones out of fear or lack of knowledge,” Alderman said. “There is such a lack of trust traditionally around service centers and car dealerships, so we want to change that through transparency.”
- Explicit pricing: Whereas garages typically have 100 different prices that vary per make and model, CarCare has created standard prices for basic maintenance like tire rotation ($50) and oil and filter change ($65 for sedan, $80 for SUV). It’s all listed on the website. The company also provides a 12,000-mile and 12-month warranty.
CarCare serves cars of any age, make and model in Greater Washington. It’s based out of Ourisman’s service center on Butler Road in Bethesda and covers about 20 miles (or sometimes up to 30) from that site or its other service centers in the region, Alderman said. And while the idea itself wasn’t born from the pandemic, it had a huge benefit during Covid of being safe and contactless, he said. “That helped us accelerate it.”
Under the hood: Building a valet car servicing business
CarCare is the sequel to Ourisman To Go, which launched about a year ago as part of a joint venture between Graham and Ourisman called Graham Ourisman Automotive. But the team, with Alderman at the helm, soon realized it would need a dedicated location and separate brand to make it work. Alderman spearheaded that transition, and CarCare is now ready for a bigger and broader marketing push starting in July with bus shelter, digital and TV advertising in the region.
CarCare to Go is a subsidiary of Graham Ourisman Automotive, which fully funded it, Alderman said, declining to disclose the size of that investment. Graham Ourisman also owns three franchise dealerships that service the cars.
Alderman is preparing to grow his now three-person team, actively recruiting software engineers to bring its software — the backbone of the platform — in-house after outsourcing the build to a consultant. Next would come product management and marketing additions. CarCare would then bring on its own dedicated service people, rather than working with Ourisman’s, when the business reaches a certain scale, he said.
CarCare competes with dealerships offering valet through the pandemic — some have pulled back, some have continued — as well as any other service from a dealership or independent garage, Alderman said. But its secret sauce is its software, the booking experience and the process during the service, he said.
Room for growth, locally, and maybe beyond
The space holds big opportunity; the dealership service business in the U.S. was $111.22 billion in 2020, down from $120.73 billion the year prior, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association’s 2020 financial report. That doesn’t include other auto service players such as independent garages or big express service chains.
To that end, the company is focusing on Greater Washington for now, Alderman said. “Certainly, if we were able to build a model and a process and software that we felt could be applied effectively in other markets, that’s something we would consider. But it’s such a big industry and there are such good margins that you could build a really big business here in the D.C. area.”
Alderman first joined Graham Holdings as chief operating officer of its advertising technology and services company, SocialCode. Before that company split into two entities and then rebranded as Code3 with new leadership in mid-2020, it was founded and run by Laura O’Shaughnessy, daughter of Don Graham and wife of Graham Holdings President and CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy, who previously co-founded and led the now defunct LivingSocial. Alderman previously served as publisher of The Slate Group and worked at other media organizations.
