Smart Automotive Blog

The Pacific Swim?

David Turney - Saturday, December 12, 2009

We love hearing about people and companies who feel the same way about environmental responsibility as we do.

Recently we learned of The Plastiki, a project designed to raise awareness of the negative impact of post-consumer plastics on the Earth's eco-systems. The central theme of the project is a boat made entirely from recycled PET drink bottles, that will sail from California to Sydney, Australia via the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a seething mass of post-consumer discarded plastic circling within one of the Pacific Ocean's largest gyres.

You can read about The Plastiki in our previous post here. Incidentally, word out of the US is that the boat is now floating, testing and preparing to set sail for a March 2010 arrival in Australia.

But if you thought sailing across the Pacific in a plastic boat was impressive, then you'll be bowled over by this.

Australian documentary filmmaker Richard Pain is preparing to swim across the Pacific Ocean from Japan to California, 9000km's give or take. Yes, he's swimming. He's going to be swimming behind a boat that'll be towing a protective capsule that'll be in the shape of a PET bottle and made entirely OF PET bottles. His route will take him through the same garbage patch that Plastiki will have visited some time earlier and he'll release the whole trip as a documentary.

His aim is to raise $1 million to donate to organisations engaged in trying to clean up the garbage patch as well as raise broader community awareness of the issue by doing something crazy and memorable. Well Richard, we think you've nailed it.

Prep time is estimated at 12-18 months and the actual swim set to take around 40 weeks. You can read one of the articles covering the recent launch of the campaign here (source: SMH)

While both Plastiki and the Pacific Swim (as it's dubbed) are bound to raise awareness about the impact of post-consumer plastic waste on the environment, our Repeat products also aim to change behaviours and attitudes towards plastic recycling in the automotive repair industry. Our scope is narrower, but our message is the same.

In the midst of the debate over climate change and reducing CO2 emissions, it's vital not to ignore the unfolding ecological catastrophe being brought on by discarded and non-recycled plastic waste, one that we can see with our very own eyes.

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Compare & Save!

David Turney - Wednesday, October 28, 2009

In our line of business, there's a lot of rational processes in making decisions. There are high costs and squeezing margins, so you need to be crystal-clear about what to invest in that'll add value to the experience and satisfaction of your customers via the service that you give them.

To do that you want choices, features and benefits. You also want to get all of the most valuable aspects in as few choices as possible, otherwise you end up spending more time thinking about what to do than actually doing it.

Although using guard and fender covers enhance your business image, also providing promotional value and additional revenue through merchandising, when used in your workshop they're an offset cost. This means that they cost you up front but over time they will save you (potentially, significantly by reducing damage liabilities).

Once you've made the right decision to use them, you need to compare.

Apart from the style, colour and branding options we offer, our guard and fender covers incorporate all of the required features that are sometimes offered as options by our competitors. That way your choices are down to the exciting stuff like choosing colours and print graphics.

So ask yourself of guard covers, are they made of tough, durable vinyl? Do they have a soft, fleece backing to protect the paintwork? Do they use sand-filled channels to hold them in place instead of magnets that attract metal fragments? Do they have a tool channel on the top of the cover? Do they have a generous overhang to cover as much of the fender on just about any car? Do they have a wheel-arch cutout so the front wheels can still turn and not rub on the cover? Are there cutouts at either end so they can butt up close to the firewall while clearing bonnet hinges, etc? Are they available in a variety of colours? Can they be custom-branded with your business name, logo or visual identity? Are they available in several styles, including single, 3-piece and 4-piece wrap around sets?

Compare our guard covers and sets to Brand X and if you can't answer yes to all of these questions, then contact us about the save part.

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A little bit of background on Repeat

David Turney - Sunday, October 18, 2009

We recently launched our new Repeat seat protector, which is made from recycled PET bottles.

Here's the story behind Repeat. It's a longer post, but a really interesting one and worth the read. To check out the Repeat seat protector, click here.

Polyethylene terephthalate - commonly abbreviated to PET - is a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family most commonly associated with food and drink containers.

Interestingly, though, it was initially developed as a material from which cloth (polyester, dacron and terylene) was produced and most of the world’s PET production still is for synthetic fibres (more than 60 per cent: think polar fleece, carpeting, sails and space blankets as well as for various industrial uses) with bottle production accounting for around 30 per cent of global demand.

PET was patented in 1941 by British chemists John Whinfield and James Dickson of the Calico Printers' Association of Manchester and the PET bottle was patented in 1973.

While most thermoplastics can, in principle, be recycled, PET bottle recycling is more practical than many other plastic applications. The primary reason is that plastic carbonated soft drink bottles and water bottles are almost exclusively PET, which makes them more easily identifiable in a recycle stream.

Recycling PET bottles saves 84 per cent of the energy it takes to make new bottles from raw PET, however according to a spokesman for a Sydney recycling centre, less than 10 per cent of PET bottles produced are actually recycled.

Given one PET bottle equals one PET bottle, theoretically, if every bottle was recycled, there would be no need to create new PET. That being said, the reality is the discrepancy between bottles produced and bottles returned.

The other issue is one of clarity. Over time, with multiple processing, the transparency is affected: in other words, the recycled bottles aren’t as clear. That can be an issue for food and beverage presentation in particular. Also, if a manufacturer wants a coloured bottle, they need a percentage of virgin material to keep the colour true.

Although PET production is an important segment of polymer production, it should not be confused with polyethylene (PE) or polypropylene (PP), which are both produced more throughout the world. PE is widely used, especially in the production of the plastic shopping bag while the fatigue-resistant and recyclable PP has a variety of uses including packaging, textiles, stationary, plastic parts, lab equipment and parts for automobiles.

Aside from Repeat^tm, Smart Automotive also uses non-woven polypropylene (NWPP) for its products. It is actually called non-woven polypropylene because the cross-hatched ‘pattern’ on the material is stamped on to make it look woven.

While the term ‘environmentally friendly’ implies that PET and polypropylene leaves no ecological footprint, that’s not entirely true. Obviously they are manufactured using fossil fuels and so contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. However, they contribute to waste reduction (because they’re recyclable) and the movement away from one-use products, which means the ecological impact is smaller than that of similar alternatives.

Check out our Repeat seat protector and make an enquiry today.

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Smart, branded parts bags make your brand more memorable

David Turney - Friday, October 16, 2009

Are you in the auto parts business?

Every time you interact with a customer, you want them to remember who you are (were). That increases the chance of repeat business, and gets you in their phone directory. You want them to think "hey, those guys helped me out with that last time" as well as thinking "their professionalism really impressed me; I'll call them again". In short, you want to be remembered.

That's not rocket-science either.

When a customer orders parts from you for a job, what do you deliver them in? Maybe an old box that you were supplied some parts or products in (with your suppliers brand name on it, or worse still your suppliers supplier). You might have a bunch of plastic bags that you stuff the parts into, that get screwed up and chucked in the bin soon as they're received.

Then there's your retail counter. What do you do for bags there? Do you, again, have a disposable plastic bag that just about snaps under the strain of the parts in them?

Do you really think these kinds of bags accurately reflect your brand and make you memorable?

Smart Automotive manufactures, to order, an almost limitless line of bags that do a thousand times better job of projecting your image and extending your promotion.

Colours, styles, branding are all flexible, giving you complete control of how your brand is represented. It's a lot more professional than delivering parts in an old box or a single-use plastic bag. They don't just end up chucked in the bin either, which means they can keep on working and promoting your brand.

Now, just picture your driver turning up to your customer with a neat, custom-branded, reusable bag. Or handing your high-value retail customer their parts in custom-branded, foldaway bag that can be reused and stored neatly away. Looks good doesn't it, and keeps promoting your business long after the delivery. Get in touch with us and find out how we can help make that vision a reality.

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Don't sit on your innovation hands

David Turney - Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Was riding with a friend just this weekend in his new BMW M3 coupe.

Very sweet car indeed. Nimble, mid-size chassis. All alloy 4 liter V8 with 420 horsepower and a six-speed manual (the way it was intended). Zero to 100 in 4.5 seconds, give or take. Apart from the bonnet bulge and the dinner-plate brake discs, it’s not too ostentatious.

What makes the M even more sweet is that a standard 3 series coupe (on which the M3 is based) is had with either a 4 or 6 and is as quiet and safe as your grandparents need it to be.

As we’re winding up in this exceptional piece of automotive engineering, I couldn’t help but reveal to my friend that this sweet piece of German 4-wheeled fun owed a thank you note to a distant, unlikely relative, the Pontiac GTO.

See, back in the early sixties, the then chief of Pontiac (John Z. DeLorean) hypothesised the concept of putting their big car engines into their mid-size model range, thus creating the muscle car category. The first muscle car was the 1964 Pontiac GTO and the wider Pontiac brand became a lightning rod for driving excitement.

The M3 is the exact same concept (though granted, far more technologically evolved); take the mid-size body, remove the grocery-getting engine and put in the bigger, more powerful one from the range. Instant power to weight equals instant length of smile.

Pontiac died not long ago, and while there were plenty of business factors that forced this, the brand had been on life support for years before. It’d lost its value and its distinctive positioning, one that had been accelerated (pun intended) years before by dropping a mountain motor in a mid-size. This was an innovation that shifted the direction of an entire industry and Pontiac, for a long time owned it. Unfortunately, they failed to keep it up and they let the competition catch up and ultimately overtake them.

Here at Smart Automotive, we're always looking at innovations and we're set to release a new product that takes the concept of recycled protection in a whole new direction.

In the meantime though, our current products are innovative in design and available now, so check them out in our catalogue and see how our solutions can help your own competitive distinction as an automotive professional.

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Hot products, but not that hot!

David Turney - Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Been quiet in the blogoshpere last month for Smart Automotive; we're busy working on some great new products & promotions that we'll announce soon.

Bit of excitement at the Smart Automotive offices today though, which I thought I'd share with you. We think our products are pretty hot and are the best thing for covering & protecting your customers' cars, but even we have to concede that there wasn't much we could do for this poor guy. Take a look at the picture....

Right out the window, in a carpark right at the base of our offices, a Ford Cougar decided to spontaneously combust. It went from a small lick to this in about 2 minutes (as you'd expect) with a thick column of black smoke billowing skyward and all the smells of burning car plastics going with it.

Even more spectacular were the fireworks of exploding electrics and the loud pops of sealed parts, glass popping and pipes exploding with the heat (some loud enough to shake the windows). This shot was taken right before the fire truck arrived on the scene and about 5 minutes into the Cougars demise, when the heat had turned the previously rolled up windows into rivers of glass. One fire fighter, getting in close with the hose, got a faceshield full of white firecracker when something under the dash exploded with a loud bang. Undeterred, they got the fire out real quick and what was once clearly someone's pride and joy (as any surviving Ford Cougar in Australia probably would be) was burned to a well-done crisp.

Later reports in the day revealed that the owner had pulled up right in that spot and become instantly aware of electrics burning. When they saw a lick of flame come up from under the bonnet, they and passenger swiftly egressed (hence the doors still swung open) and could only stand by and watch helplessly as their Cougar went up in flames.

So sure, it was exciting to watch at the time, but when I went down there later and saw that car still smoldering away, sitting on its rims and all filled with water and foam, I had only a small part of the sinking feeling the owner must've had.

Smart Automotive can cover and protect anyones pride & joy in most ways, but this was definitely one situation where even we couldn't.

(Thanks to Paul Ridoutt at Smart Web Marketing for the pic)

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Our e-brochure is now online. Download away!

David Turney - Wednesday, July 15, 2009

This just in!

Now online from Smart Automotive is our glossy, new e-brochure, ready for download by clicking the button over there to the right of you. Go on, you know you want one.

In it you'll find all of our current range of custom-branded automotive protection solutions. From our patented, reusable & recyclable Smartcover, our innovative 3-piece guard cover set and right through to our other NWPP protection products, it's all in there.

Download your own version, print it out, keep it on your desk or pin it to your wall, just keep it handy. Above all, email it to your friends & colleagues in the industry to share the good news about the solutions we offer.

Cover it, Protect it, with Smart Automotive.

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Custom-branded bundling? All part of the service.

David Turney - Friday, June 26, 2009

Here's an interesting, innovative, custom-branded solution and a great example of our capabilities to meet specific client needs.

The client who contacted us is known for its superior customer experience and service around the world. The brief called for a solution that could also cover technician call-outs to the customer while reflecting the brands luxury image.

We presented a pair of our patented Smartcovers, folded and contained in a specially designed messenger bag, both custom-branded with the client logo. The Middle East-based distributor also specified a steering wheel protector, gear & handbrake lever protector and floor mats made from NWPP to be included along with the Smartcovers, for a complete customer protectionsolution.

The result? A sophisticated, smart, custom-branded protection bundle that reflects the superior service attributes of the brand both in and out of the workshop. What customer wouldn't get a solid feeling of reassurance seeing the technician turn up with this smart bag of protection for their car?

The promotional power of this kind of solution shouldn't be underestimated either, with eye-catching branding on the bag that's also made from environmentally friendly NWPP (non-woven polypropylene).

The good news is that this kind of flexibility is available to you too. Simply contact us to discuss your specific needs and how we can achieve differentiation for your business.

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Promoting your brand while protecting your customers' cars

David Turney - Thursday, June 25, 2009

As a service professional you know how important it is to safeguard your customers’ cars when they're in and around your workshop. But have you ever thought about the possibility of promoting your business at the same time?

With Smart Automotive, now you can. While protective car seat covers used to be no more than a way of making sure the seats of each car could be kept free from grease, dirt and oil while it was being worked on, things have changed. Customer value demands have increased so your brand and reputation are how customers define their experience with you.

Just imagine if every car you're working on had brightly coloured seat protectors fitted, printed with your business name and logo, to reflect your professionalism and promote your brand. When parked awaiting pickup or getting ready to go into the workshop, they'd certainly catch the eye of anyone in and around your service business. For the new generation "workshop on show", the feeling that it gives customers when they spot the high-visibility protection you use is irreplaceable.

Our patented Smartcovers do just that. They're made from non-woven polypropylene (NWPP), which is the same material that reusable, recyclable green bags are made from. They're non-porous and very tough, meaning that they not only last longer than single-use products, there's no chance of grease or oil getting through onto and damaging your customers' upholstery.

Although these seat covers are more expensive per cover, they last much longer than the single use plastic ones that end up clogging up the landfills that are already struggling to cope. So in the long run you will actually save money as well as promote your environmental credentials.

Smart Automotive also supplies slick-looking nylon seat protectors that can be custom-branded, and our polyester seat protectors make a great promotional and merchandising aid on courtesy or fleet cars.

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