After being made redundant during the Covid-19 pandemic, a Dunedin car groomer decided to get his hands dirty and is now the owner of his own business.
Felix Kyle, the 25-year-old owner of car grooming and detailing business The Detailers Garage, says he never thought he would own a business himself.
“It’s pretty nuts to think about.
“When you consider most people my age are not doing this, they’ll be out partying or studying or just working a regular job I suppose.”
Mr Kyle said he was made redundant at his old job at Armstrong Prestige after the first Covid-19 lockdown, which spurred him to set out on his own.
He began by washing friends’ and neighbours’ cars along with a few contracts floated his way from his old dealer.
“We did one of my mum’s mate’s cars first, it was disgusting … and then built the website up, posted that online and sort of went from there.”
He worked from home and out of another dealer’s bay before getting the business up and running months after he was made redundant.
Mr Kyle said he had wanted to run the business “properly” from the outset, after not finding anywhere in Dunedin suitable to groom his own car.
He aimed to service about three cars a day and had contracts with dealers such as Dunedin City Motors, Honda and his old stomping ground, Armstrong Prestige.
He had also worked on Ferraris, Mercedes, some “super rare” Porsches and a McLaren worth a couple of million dollars from Queenstown, he said.
On Monday he began operating the business out of a new purpose-built facility in Kaikorai Valley Rd, which he is leasing from his father.
The new space had room to do full car wrapping and gave him the means to hire his first employee, he said.
Mr Kyle said his peers were “pretty stoked” by the business and a couple of them would even lend a hand from time to time.
He believed he had made a pretty good name for himself in the motor industry and was happy with how far the business had come, he said.
He recalled being offered the chance to work on $6million worth of cars in his first year of business.
“That sort of thing for a barely 21-year-old, I was like, yeah, this is pretty sick.”
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