"To make it even easier, guys work out of the trunk of their car or a van," says Abraham, a Portland, OR, detail supplier who's been in the business for 30 years. "They put everything in their van and haul it around from location to location."

While that's good for novice cash-strapped entrepreneurs in the short run, he says it's bad for them and everyone else in the detailing industry in the long run.

"As long as a guy can get into the industry that cheaply, you're always going to have a problem growing the industry," he says.

And stagnant growth, according to Abraham and others, led to the dissolution of the Professional Detailing Association last year.

The six-year-old PDA and its demise is significant because, for the first time in the history of the industry, detailers had a specific and reliable place to turn for information, education and counseling on how to operate their business and even expand it.

In essence, the PDA didn't disappear altogether: it was reconstituted this year as the Professional Detailing Advisory Council, a branch of the considerably larger and more powerful International Carwash Association.

To be sure, the ICA can pick up much of the slack that was created when the PDA ceased to exist on its own. Detailing, for example, was allotted space at the ICA's annual trade show in April, as it has for the last two years. But how advisory committee arrangement will ultimately work for detailers is yet to be seen.

Immediate Benefits

From an operational standpoint, there's little doubt that the PDA can benefit from the new arrangement. The main advantage of joining forces with the ICA lies in the carwash organization's hefty numbers.

Mark Thorsby is executive director of the International Carwash Association, which is managed by Smith, Bucklin and Associates, a trade management company based in Chicago, IL. He says that of the 225 associations Smith Bucklin manages, the ICA is one of the 10 largest.

Thus, as an affiliate of such an organization, the typical small-shop detailer enjoys the power and representation of a corporate heavyweight perks like economies of scale, vast resources and political clout.

For that reason, some detailers believe that all the various segments of the "automobile-appearance industry," as it's become known, may eventually band together under one unified organizational banner.

Detailers also have more specific needs that the PDA was starting to meet and ones they hope the ICA will continue to address. These include information about health and safety, techniques and materials, and marketing and management.

The PDA provided a resource for small-shop detailers, some of whom are starved for information. Former PDA board members are still talking to these operators.

"I have people calling me all the time," says Skip Riesert, a detail shop owner in Woodmere, NY, and a former board member of the PDA. "I'm faxing to a fellow in Australia who's looking for advice from me. We're seeing a tremendous increase in the quest for knowledge in the industry."

ICA already has worked to give the detailing industry some recognition. For the last couple of years, detailing educational seminars have been given near-equal billing at ICA trade shows. Detailing topics command a full 25 percent of the seminar time, along with seminar tracks for conveyor carwashes, self-serve carwashes and in-bay automatic washes. ICA has also set aside floor space for detailing demonstrations and grouped detailing exhibitors together on the floor.

A Loss of Identity

But there's something less tangible that the estimated 12,000 detail businesses across the country might not be able to recover.

"Our identity has been lost," Abraham says. "The concept is good, but you can't represent the detail industry by calling yourself the International Carwash Association."

Most detailers who were involved in the PDA speak highly of the new alliance with the ICA. But they also worry about getting lost in the shuffle of a large organization made up predominantly of people in a different, although closely related, business carwashing.

However, the advisory council concept seems to be working for now, at least according to a former PDA president.

Karen Duncan, the chairman of the advisory council and a former PDA president, says she's pleased with the new setup. But she says the identity issue was raised at an advisory council meeting earlier this year.

"That was one of the things we talked about to make sure we have an individual identity under the umbrella," says Duncan, who operates a detail shop in Wilmington, DE. "We're not going to lose our identity."

She says detailers can't get too caught up in worrying about the past arrangement.

"I don't even look back," she says. "I always look forward."

Could It Have Stood Alone?

Outside the questions of whether ICA can live up to the goals set by the PDA's founders, it remains unclear whether an association devoted solely to detailers could have stood on its own two feet. Despite the efforts of a handful of dedicated detail manufacturers and suppliers, it may have been doomed from the start.

Even the PDA's staunchest supporters concede that, given its history, its absorption into an organization like the ICA may have been inevitable.

"We just got sucked like a vacuum cleaner into the ICA," says George Khachadoorian, whose Fullerton, CA, company sells water containment equipment to mobile detailers.

Apathy, fragmentation and a lack of money eventually pushed the upstart organization toward a partner with deeper pockets.

After its founding in 1989, the organization enjoyed a brief growth period. But problems eventually pushed the organization toward the ICA (see sidebar).

ICA's Smith Bucklin agreed to run the association as a separate entity on a trial basis because the PDA was much smaller than its typical $1 million-a-year-in-revenue client, according to Thorsby.

"The relationship began formally in about September or October 1995, and almost from the outset it became apparent it wasn't going to work," Thorsby says. "The cost of management was going to exceed their revenue. It just became a financially inviable venture."

So discussions began about downgrading the PDA to an advisory council of the ICA, and in April 1996 it became official.

"From a management standpoint, I believe it was the only alternative available to PDA at the time," Thorsby says.

The Search for Professionalism

Detailers are notorious for their independence and their general belief that they have little to learn from talking to other shop owners or industry experts. When it was founded, one of the goals of the PDA had been to overcome this bias by promoting interaction and professionalism and eventually boosting both the industry's image and its revenues.

"The majority of detail shops look like the wrath of hell," Abraham says. "The industry is not professional, no question about it. That's not a word you should apply to this industry. Five to 10 percent of the detailers listed in the yellow pages you could call professional, and that's stretching it."

Abraham's sharp criticism suggests a lingering question: If the ICA doesn't pick up where the PDA left off, will or can the PDA be revived?

In fact, that absence of professionalism and the lack of desire to get together may have been the knockout punch for the industry association; the idea of an association just never caught on with most of the rank-and-file.

Riesert says too many shop owners simply were not interested in getting together.

"Detailers, as a group, can be a little apathetic. They tend to think they know everything and don't need an organization," he says. "We were foundering."

The handful of dedicated detailers who served on the PDA board or who participated in committees, seminars and meetings were not enough to hold the association together.

"We tried to recruit some talented people for our industry, but they didn't have enough time," Khachadoorian says. "You can have Indians, but if you don't have enough chiefs you can't get it off the ground."

Jeff Plude is a free-lance writer based in Clifton Park, NY.