Auto Detailing Market Research 2014-2033
In this post, I made my auto detailing market research. I’m a car detailing enthusiast, so I need to understand what will be with the industry I’m passionate about, and I’m sure that this information will be useful for other enthusiasts, and people who want to start their careers in the car detailing world. First what we need to look at is a car wash and auto detailing market share and market size!
When working with statistics it’s always hard to find one trusted statistic source that will display the exact information you need, as everyone uses their own data sources and methodologies used by different organizations.
I will try to be objective and show the most relevant data from different organizations, and as well will include information when some sources provide opposite information.
Car Wash and Auto Detailing Market Share Worldwide
The market share you see above is an approximate demonstration of how market size is spread all over the world, based on the average market sizes of each country for the last 5 years from different sources.
What I noticed is that during the last 5 years, market share stays pretty stable, despite small drops from the biggest market owners like the US and China to other countries.
Car Wash and Auto Detailing Global Market Size
Based on FutureMarketingInsights global mobile Car Wash and Auto Detailing Market Size was 73 billion US dollars in 2018, and reached 98.58 billion US dollars in 2022. This means that the market rise in just 4 years was 7.8%, which are insane numbers knowing how hard this period was for the global economy.
Moreover, they predict it to be 106.27 billion US dollars in 2023, and reach 251 billion US dollars by 2033.
I think it gives us an interesting perspective on how well car detailing culture may develop, and if you should try to start a car detailing business or a car detailing side hustle.
Car Wash and Auto Detailing Market Size in the US
Based on information given to us by Statista we can see that in the US Car Detailing market has a steady growth and went up from 11.1 billion US dollars in 2014 up to 14.7 billion US dollars in 2022. Except, during the pandemic, the market growth declined in 2020 and went down from 14.4 billion in 2019 to 14.2 billion in 2020, but until now car detailing market stabilized and continues to grow.
On the other hand, another auto detailing market research made by Davidson Capital Advisors shows us a slightly bigger deep during the pandemic, which bounced down the market growth from approx. 12.7 billion US dollars in 2019 to approx. 10.9 billion US dollars in 2020.
But it shows us market size stabilization during 2020-2021 which gives us a clear understanding that this market overtakes such a hard economic period, and has all the chances to continue its growth.
Confusion during my research
I also found small insights from the IBISWorld report where they share some information that contradicts what we see in the previous two sources.
They state that the car wash and car detailing market size reached 14.4 billion US dollars in 2022 which is similar to what we see in other reports, but they also state that during 2022 this industry declined -7%, and the market size remained steady between 2017 and 2022.
It can be possible that they were using a different methodology or included some other niches to the car wash and detailing market, but we also should not skip this information.
What influences Car Wash and Car Detailing industry?
I see several factors that influence on car detailing industry, and the majority of them are positive. Maybe it’s because I’m involved in this industry, but I find them pretty reasonable.
Positive Factors that influence Car Detailing industry
- Car wash is a service that people will look for as long as we have cars and as you can see from Statista research worldwide motor vehicle production is growing during the last 22 years. And don’t forget that not all old vehicles are disappearing from the roads in 1 year after they have been produced. More vehicles on the roads equals more car cleaning jobs.
- As we saw during the 2008-2009 crisis and the pandemic this industry can be adaptive to negative economic factors. Some factors lead to massive production and construction of self-service car washes, while others lead us to the appearance of new services like mobile car detailing.
- Over the last 10 years car detailing culture is growing all over the world, which makes people to be more involved in taking care of their cars. It allows car care companies to create a variety of new car care products, that every car owner can use by themselves, like Rinseless Wash or even Iron removers.
Negative Factors that influence Car Detailing industry
In my opinion, the main negative factor that can influence the car detailing industry is gas prices. The logic is simple, people tend to use their cars less when the prices of gasoline are too high. On the other side, unfortunately for all petrolheads, including me, we are slowly moving to electric vehicles. Of course, the transition won’t be so fast, but I’m sure it will be faster than we wish.
Electric vehicles are getting dirty as fast as petrol cars, which means that even high petrol prices will not leave car detailers without jobs in the long run. However, it’s possible that high petrol prices can decrease the number of clients for a growing quantity of detailers and mobile detailers. This will make such niche more competitive, and decrease overall market size, but not for a long time. Even for the last 2 years, the car wash market size is growing, while petrol prices are going up.
Conclusion
Following the results of my auto detailing market research I’m glad to admit that the Car detailing market size is growing during the past decade and that it has a chance to continue this growth in the next 10 years. Which makes starting a detailing business a reasonable idea!
The global car detailing market size went up by 33 billion US dollars within the last 4 years, and based on market analyst predictions it will continue to rise. It is not surprising as worldwide motor vehicle production is growing, and we all know that with more cars on the roads, more work for detailers!
I hope that this post was useful for you, and if you are still concerned about starting a car detailing career, it will help you to make the right decision. For beginners in car care, we have a post about the dos and don’t of DIY car detailing.
