Chemical Guys: Innovation, Family, and Super Clean Cars

Chemical Guys offers over 1,000 car detailing products with hundreds of ways to clean and protect your Corvette. And along the way, they hope to teach you HOW while making you part of their family.

Over a decade ago now, Apple shotgunned there’s an app for that into the cultural lexicon to highlight the seemingly infinite range of applications for iOS devices that could make your life better. Stepping into the Chemical Guys HQ storefront — the Detail Garage — in Gardena, California feels very similar. Here you don’t find a car soap, wax, polish, or tire cleaner…

You peer down rows and rows dedicated to each product category.

There are a dozen polishes and compounds and glazes. Some for light paint, some for dark. There are soaps that strip and soaps that embed ceramic protectants and soaps that foam fantastic while smelling like watermelon chewing gum. Want your tires protected from the sun? Of course, but do you want them flat, matte, shiny, or blindingly glossy? At Chemical Guys and Detail Garage storefronts, you get to chose it all. There are over 1,000 product SKUs.

There’s a Chemical Guys bottle for that.

Development Team

Earlier this week, my co-editor, Derin Richardson, and I took a tour behind-the-scenes at the Chemical Guys factory. Co-Founder Paul Schneider was on hand to tell us about the company’s unique philosophy. Schneider spoke at length about creating a family and the way the head of product development, Jennifer Olvera, leads her team to produce new and unusual detailing products.

Have you ever worked at a company that meets challenges by playing blame-games? I think we all have. At Chemical Guys, those very challenges seem to form a bond that sparks creativity and innovation. Take their new Alcohol Antiseptic series. Here was a situation where the world changed almost overnight, and Chemical Guys wanted to help out. But they quickly found out that all of the standard alcohol supply chains were dry. So someone on the team suggested using distillery-grade alcohol. And someone on the team spoke with nurses and hospital staff, so they decided to make their Alcohol product a quick-acting spray rather than a gel. And they made it 80% alcohol, rather than the minimum 65% to make it work faster and more effectively.

I’m not sure if I’m describing this accurately, but my take away from Chemical Guys product development reminds me of great basketball teams. Bobbing and weaving and passing the ball with precision and fluidity in the face of obstacles.

Problems and challenges seamlessly giving way to hits.

It also appears to be the reason behind their latest product, HydroThread, which Chemical Guys pitches as a ceramic coating for fabric seats, carpets, and convertible tops. The idea is that it protects and repels liquids and stains from various fabrics, but doesn’t penetrate the fabrics, making them feel tough and hard. As someone who just spent a lot of time with more traditional ceramic coatings (full review HERE), I can attest that you would NOT want to actually ceramic coat fabric. But here’s Chemical Guys putting out a product that could be really helpful and unique.

A Family Store

Have you ever walked into a Name a Big Box Store of Your Choice or even your local grocer and been unable to find help? It can feel like no one actually works at the store when you have questions. At the Detail Garage, a place I’ve been frequenting for the last few years, that’s never the experience. You’re instantly greeted as you walk in the door. The friendly staff doesn’t simply want to know WHAT you need, they want to know WHY? What are you doing? What type of vehicle? What’s the condition? What’s your goal? What’s your budget?

And not only does it make a big difference in the experience, but it’s also company policy.

As I said above, Schneider and his team want to create a sense of family. Community. It’s why they host cars n’ coffee events. It’s why they teach classes about mastering your detailing skills. It’s why customer hot rods rotate in and out of the store’s showroom. And why they’ve shot thousands of YouTube videos and are the number one car detailing brand on Instagram.

Walking into the Detail Garage can be intimidating. There are so many products. But the staff is there to make you feel like family, and help you find a product with broad or niche applications. Because think of it this way, if you’re a professional car detailer, you need products available in bulk that work on a variety of finishes. But if you’re an enthusiast, you may only need one type for your tastes and particular vehicles.

In addition to being extremely helpful, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out how effective this family-feeling strategy gently prompts customers to buy more products, become invested in the larger community, and return to Detail Garage locations or the Chemical Guys online store more frequently. In a world where we’re all increasingly (digitally) separated, who knew that a human touch could also mean big profits? (<– that was sarcasm)

Everything In House

After saying goodbye to Schneider and Olvera, we joined Chief Revenue Officer, John Mansfield, for a tour of the backlot & factory portions of Chemical Guys HQ. If you’ve ever watched Chemical Guys YouTube videos for tips and product reviews, you’ll recognize this outdoor/indoor space as the place where the social media team produces digital content.

It’s also the place where you can come to learn how to be a professional detailer. (More on this below.)

Cool cars on lifts. Carts of products. Foam cannons spraying down cars. Dozens of polishing tools. Stacks of microfiber towels. And even a few hoods purchased from the local pick-an-pull where you may also find the Chemical Guys team testing out new products during development.

Further back, in places where no photos are allowed, Mansfield showed us the massive factory space. Towers of empty bottles and pallets of cardboard give way to the chemical mixing and bottling areas. One wall of shelves, which looks to be the size of a basketball court tipped on its side, houses rolls and rolls of product labels. It’s here you can see all 1,000 SKUs all in one place. And it’s impressive.

Next to the factory, you’ll find the customer service call center, which answers hundreds of calls each day and thousands of emails and comments. Mansfield described how, much like the stores, customer service is vital to the company’s philosophy and growth (they’ve doubled their market share in the last few years). As such, they don’t outsource any of their customer services. And, Co-Founder Paul Schneider even spends free time and sleepless nights anonymously answering customer questions on their website.

When Chemical Guys say everything is done in house. They mean it. Right here in Gardena, California.

Detailing University

In addition to free blog and video tutorials, Detail Garage stores also offer in-person training dubbed Chemical Guys Smart Detailing University. One-day courses cover either the overall basics of detailing for $99 or a polishing-focused class for $199. Or, you can step up to the five-day $3,495 Master Class. The focus of the Master Class is to turn you into a pro-detailer or elevate the game of current pros. Given the expense, we were surprised to learn that there’s a lot of competition to get in on these, which is why they limit class size to 15. Students of various skill levels travel long distances to attend.

The Chemical Guys team invited me and my colleague to join for a class or two, and we have some super fun collaboration ideas with them to discuss as well, so stay tuned for more Chemical Guys news, product reviews, and enthusiast-based (that’s us) car detailing tips right here at CorvetteForum.

What do you use to clean and protect your Corvette? Let us know HERE in the forums!

Photographs: Chemical Guys & Michael S. Palmer

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