Spiffy continues to clean up in the on-demand car-care space.
Today the company announced a $10M funding led by New York’s Tribeca Venture Partners, with local participation from existing investors Bull City Venture Partners and IDEA Fund Partners, as well as rolling out a new service that it’s dubbing “FMaaS” to 11 markets, including six brand-new cities.
“FMaaS” stands for Fleet Management as a Service, which provides a full suite of on-demand services for rental car fleets, automotive auctions, car-sharing services and other multi-vehicle operators.
“FMaaS is our invention,” says Spiffy Founder and CEO Scot Wingo, “taking software concepts (SaaS, PaaS) and applying it to the car-care world to represent that they can partner with Spiffy and we’ll take care of everything.”
Don’t feel bad if, like me, you didn’t know what “PaaS” meant—isn’t it what you use to dye Easter eggs?—but Google says it stands for “Platform as a Service.”
Acronyms aside, Spiffy first made its name with on-demand car washes in which it comes to your home, apartment complex, or office parking lot and cleans your car while you’re off doing whatever it is you do. It next expanded to preventative maintenance—think oil changes, topping off the fluids, sensors to make sure your car isn’t about to run into trouble—and now into fleet management services. Sorry, “FMaaS.”
As you can see by the cool graphic above, Spiffy’s FMaaS services cover the full cycle of needs for fleet owners, from “in-fleeting”—bringing new vehicles into the fleet—to preventative maintenance to “de-fleeting.” Spiffy (OK, its official corporate name is “Get Spiffy, Inc.”) didn’t make up the latter term, but Wingo helpfully defines it for us:
“Imagine you are U-Haul and after 80K miles you automatically sell those $19.99/day vans you see everywhere,” says Wingo. “There is a pretty complex process to get that ready to be sold. That entire bucket of items are ‘de-fleeting.’”
The $10M funding, which also included new investors Zunis Investments (a Philadelphia-based family office) and Florida’s Trog Hawley Capital, will enable Spiffy to significantly increase its geographic footprint. In addition to adding FMaaS to its full suite of office park and residential services in its five current markets—Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles and the Triangle—Spiffy will roll out FMaaS to six new markets. The new half-dozen are New York, Washington D.C., Seattle, Phoenix, Denver and Tampa.
Wingo is one of the Triangle’s most successful serial entrepreneurs, best known for founding Morrisville-based e-commerce company ChannelAdvisor, which is now publicly traded. Tribeca Ventures sounds pleased to get in on his latest venture before it’s too late.
“We’re excited to invest in Spiffy as they continue to grow,” said Chip Meakem, Tribeca’s Co-Founder and Managing Partner. “The comprehensive Fleet Management as a Service offering positions Spiffy to ride the wave of change crashing through the automotive industry. From rental and commercial fleets to partnerships with innovative ride-sharing companies, like Lyft, and the recent Ford connected car partnership, Spiffy is riding several megatrends.”
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