Business lessons stuck with car wash owner
By HEIDI PRESCOTT
South Bend Tribune Aug. 31, 1997
MISHAWAKA-What drives Haji Tehrani as a car wash owner can be traced back to the textile business his father owned In Iran.
As a teenager, Tehrani picked up the fundamentals of running a successful company that is helping him now manage his own business, the Drive & Shine car wash. He remembers making small sacrifices.
The family moved several times so his father could reinvest in and expand the business. Tehrani’s father was not just a boss, but he also formed partnerships with his employees, and he shared his successes and failures. Every year, his father closed the factory for a week and took his staff and their families on vacation to the Caspian Sea, north of Iran.
Tehrani brought to the United States the lessons he learned from his father.
“My dad was an extremely hard working, dedicated and driven man.” he said. “The traits that were ingrained in me while growing up with him were not to lose sight of your goal, to be fair and consistent and decisive and to share your wins.”
Tehrani almost didn’t win in the case of Drive & Shine car wash.
After two years or much-heated debate, the business opened in June on North Main Street. Nothing — not the differing opinions or prominent developers on the location or a court battle, arguing technicalities – caused the 41-year-old Granger resident to lose sight or his dream.
Tehrani always has stayed focused on his goals. Thats not only with his plans for Drive & Shine but also in everything he has set out to accomplish. His path to the United States began when he turned 17 years old and passed an English exam.
He was the only son in his family, so he expected his father to want him to take over the textile business some day, but Tehrani’s father offered to send his son to America in the mid-1970’s when the Shah of Iran was in power.
Tehrani attended a two-month English school in Colorado before being accepted to the University of Hartford in West Hartford, Conn. At first, Tehrani felt homesick for his parents and younger sisters who stayed behind.
“I wrote several letters a day,” he said. “And If I didn’t get a letter from them right away, I’d wonder if they still loved me.”
Tehrani received an extensive education. He earned an MBA In marketing and finance from the Unlversity of Hartford and a master’s degree frrom the Rensalaer Polytechnic Institute in mechanical engineering in Troy N. Y.
During his graduate studies, Tehrani had what he calls his “first taste of business” when he was asked to redesign a machine that made personalized license plates. He formed his own company and sold about 300 machines in the states that permitted the special plates at the time.
He landed his first job at General Electric, where he traveled around the world in the company’s executive training program, and later worked in product development. He had what looked like a promising future with GE in Milwaukee, but he saw greater opportunities for advancement in this area.
In 1991, Tehrani moved to Benton Harbor to work al Whirlpool Corp. In addition to developing new products, he collected marketing data that helped the KitchenAid division understand Its competitors and their products.
Car washes hadn’t crossed his mind until he moved to Benton Harbor and needed to wash his car. Having lived in bigger cities all his life, and being a car enthusiast, he was used to full-service car washes being a norm, not an exception.
And he couldn’t find one here. On a whim, he flew down to a national car wash convention in Florida in 1994 to see whether building a car wash was something he truly wanted to pursue. He returned enthusiastic and ready to begin planning a car was, then known as AutoShine.
“I knew this was what I wanted to do,” Tehrani said, “I think we’ve added a first-class business to fill a gap in this market.”
Not everyone saw it that way.
One of the toughest parts of putting the nearly $2 million project together was not the financing as Tehrani had expected; it was the location. Months of research led him to North Main Street, an area that had been targeted for hotels, restaurants and office buildings.
Tehrani spent the next two years trying to convince people who opposed the proposed site of the car wash that it was worthy of North Main Street.
“I was offered alternative sites by the city, in their willingness to help me, but it wouldn’t have made sense to be on a side road,” he said. “There still must be people who think this is the wrong location, but I also think we’ve come a long way.”
The matter ended up in court. A judge sided with Tehrani, and the car wash was allowed to be constructed. Tehrani said it had been disappointing to know he had not changed everyone’s perception of his car wash.
He hopes that now as people see the brick architecture and notice how all the washing and detailing is done inside, that they understand what he has been saying all along – that it adds an important service to this part of the city and blends into the neighborhood.
“Seeing the end result makes it easy to say that absolutely I would do it all over again,” Tehrani said, “I always thought positive. Even at the low points, you should never forget about how positive something can be in the end.”
