Many startups shoot for impressive year-over-year growth of 100 percent—for the math-challenged, that’s doubling in size. Spiffy just managed that feat day-over-day.
The RTP-based mobile car-care service announced today that it has roughly doubled in size by acquiring Orlando-based Your Location Lubrication (YLL). The combined company now has some 300-plus technicians—full W2 employees, not contractors—working in 20 markets, zipping around in 200 vans to perform 1,500 daily services for both fleets and individuals.
Serial entrepreneur Scot Wingo’s latest company started as an on-demand car-washer, in which Spiffy techs come to your home or office to wash your car while it’s still parked. From there, Spiffy has performed more and more kinds of car care to more and more customers, including a move into servicing fleets—think rental car companies, car-sharing services and other multi-vehicle operators. Because everyone loves a cool acronym, Spiffy has dubbed the latest initiative “FMaaS,” or Fleet Management as a Service.
The terms of the deal weren’t announced, but it’s safe to say a good chunk of the funds came from Spiffy’s $10M capital raise in June led by New York’s Tribeca Venture Partners, with local participation from existing investors Bull City Venture Partners and IDEA Fund Partners.
YLL was founded in 2009 by Zachary Zeller and is a five-time Inc. 5000 honoree featuring a three-year growth rate of 190 percent. It operates in nine markets and is particularly strong at the airport locations of rental car companies. You know, the places where hundreds of cars are lined up in tidy rows, all of which need to be washed, have their oil changed, and undergo preventative maintenance so they don’t leave a customer stranded on the side of the road.
YLL also has unique tech for high-volume oil changes. Zeller will stay on with Spiffy as Senior Vice President of Fleet Business Development.
Wingo is excited by the deal, even as he conceded that Spiffy could do more to time its major acquisitions with GrepBeat’s standard Tuesday/Thursday publication schedule. (We kid, we kid. Though we really did tell him that.)
“Preventative maintenance is the top priority for our fleet clients, especially oil change and tire rotation,” said Wingo in a statement. “By combining our technology and expertise with YLL’s, we will be able to provide those services even more efficiently, which translates directly into dollars for our clients.”
That’s also translating into dollars for Spiffy, its local executives and employees, and, most likely, eventually for the two aforementioned Triangle-based VCs. In other words, it’s another positive for the region’s startup ecosystem as a whole.
