Entrepreneur breaks mold on car-care services
In today’s society, it is possible to get just about anything delivered right to your door, from pizza to dry-cleaning to groceries. Service providers have begun to follow suit, especially in the age of COVID-19.
Building on this trend, Tic Toc Auto brings tire and brake service and oil changes to their growing clientele, thereby eliminating the time and hassle of dropping off one’s car for service. And while Tic Toc wasn’t founded with a pandemic in mind, owner Jamie Davidson said the timing couldn’t have been better.
“COVID-19 has probably played into our favor,” he said. “We track our mentions on social media, and we had somebody post that they’d gone to one of the tire shops here in town, and they noticed nobody was wearing masks. They left immediately. One of our customers piped in and said, ‘This is why I use Tic Toc. They always come to me, and they always wear masks.’”
“Obviously, nobody wants to sit in the waiting room in the best of circumstances, but certainly not right now. In this age of COVID-19, the opportunity to provide somebody a no-contact service where they’re not having to be around other people has a lot of value.”
Davidson launched Tic Toc Auto in 2019 with Keith Hoelzeman, with whom he’d partnered in a previous venture. Noticing the come-to-the-client trends that were accelerating, they started to think about what was missing in the market.
“I was having lunch in LA, and I saw a truck go by. It was a home kombucha delivery service,” Davidson said. “I thought, if they’re delivering kombucha to people’s houses, there’s probably some wide space here we can occupy.”
Once the partners settled on automotive services, they began to analyze what their customer looked like. Originally, they thought Tic Toc would be more of an executive service and were surprised to find out the appeal was much wider than that.
“We came in thinking, OK, this is going to be a service that, for it to work, it’s going to have to be a premium because everybody else is going to be driven solely off of price,”
Hoelzeman said. “What we’ve seen is that’s not the case. More and more people are driven by the value of their time. We deliver our service to the home, the office, the golf course. As long as we have somewhere safe to service the vehicle, we’ll service the vehicle there.”
The company went through a period of fine-tuning, similar to many start-ups. Tic Toc’s technicians started with a pickup and a trailer but quickly changed to branded, self-contained vans that provided better mobility and a cleaner image. The ownership was also pleasantly surprised by the breadth of the service’s appeal, from single moms to the elderly.
“The customers who’ve signed up span everything from your high-end clients to, in some cases, 27- or 28-year-old cars that are somebody’s only mode of transportation to get to work,” Hoelzeman said.
“We have at least one client who doesn’t drive her car at all but makes her daughter schedule her appointment anyway. The mom was raised in a time period where you changed that oil, and it was the thing you did on a car. Her daughter is like, ‘I know she doesn’t need it, but please don’t try talking her out of it. It needs to be done for everybody’s mental well-being here.’”
As the business has grown, so has the partnership. The original duo is now joined by Aaron Salisbury and Jamie Cobb, who bring a wealth of experience from the automotive industry to the ownership group. And Tic Toc is also looking to branch outside of central Arkansas, providing service for individuals and fleets.
“We definitely want to expand, but as we expand, we’re going to be very mindful of what that service delivery looks like,” Hoelzeman said. “How do we deliver the best service? How do we train people? And how do we do all that in a new market in a way that makes sure it’s working and the right systems are in place? I would rather not expand at all than expand for the sake of expansion and deliver subpar service.”
Keeping up with advancements in auto technology is also key to the company’s future, Davidson said.
“This has required a lot of innovation and engineering, in terms of how we get all of this equipment and service to our customers,” he said. “The big-picture question is going to be electric vehicles. Most manufacturers have set a date when they’re not going to manufacture combustion engines past 2035. Jaguar announced yesterday it’s 2025 for them.”
“Electric vehicles are clearly the future,
“More and more people are driven by the value of their time.We deliver our service to the home, the office, the golf course. As long as we have somewhere safe to service the vehicle, we’ll service the vehicle there.” — Keith Hoelzeman, Co-founder of Tic Toc Auto
and as battery technology advances, that’s a game-changer. We have to be very mindful of that and think about what services can we bring to the table to satisfy people who don’t have combustion engines and don’t need an oil change? That’s a big part of what we’re working on.”