So often those who do industry analysis and are considered self-proclaimed consultants assist companies in attaining the interest of an Investment Banker or help them get funding from a Venture Capitalist company. Recently I had a consulting firm contact me from the UK and one of the young associates in the firm needed information on the car wash industry for a client. They were doing industry analysis and wanted to make sure they had all their facts and figures straight. Yet the questions they asked were irrelevant to the decision of whether to proceed in the United States with a car wash chain or large network of carwashes. They asked what the percentages were of rollover carwashes, conveyor carwashes and coin-op carwashes.

You see many over seas companies are eyeing the car and truck washing industry in the US after some huge mergers in the industry in the EU. Additionally one of the case study work projects at Harvard for Business Students is to review a fictitious company, which is now a real company, which is to consolidate a few carwashes in regional markets and then expand across the country. In any case, to bring you up on the current trends in the industry read this first:

http://www.carwash.com/news.asp?mode=4&N_ID=57514

Now then, one doing real research must be careful on analyst