"While the UK is on lockdown from Coronavirus measures, I thought I would take a look back through the history of our company. I hope all of our clients, staff, friends and families are well and stay safe during these difficult times"
– Nick Roach – Company Director
Chapter 1 – The Beginning
ShipMyCar's roots can be traced back to a valeting company, set up initially to fund a road trip to the USA. Little did we know this would be the start of an exciting journey that would map out our future working careers!
Myself and Kingsley had already known each other for many years, having grown up almost on the same street and going to the same school in Aylesbury, Bucks.
We both went to different universities, I went up north to Lancaster and Kingsley out east to Norwich.
After graduating we decided that rather go straight into employment we would set up a small business cleaning cars in order to fund a year out, and go on a road trip across America.
R&R Auto Valet was our business name (Roach & Read), yet trying to find a domain name to match was proving difficult. After spending days trying every variation of R-and-R, we stumbled across cleanmycar.com – it was available, and said exactly what we wanted.
Heading out across the home counties we visited clients at home or at work, but this was no ordinary van, inside was a giant water tank that was capable of flooding the likes of Tring high street if it failed (yep, that happened) along with pressure washers, mobile generators and an easy-up canopy.
We also spent a lot of time parked up outside Argos in Aylesbury providing a hand car wash service.
Our website we cobbled together ourselves enabled people to book easily online and quickly started to perform well. Even though it now brings a nauseous feeling to look back at the website design, it served us well.
Valeting cars all day kept us relatively fit, but it was hard work. With each of us having to clean 15+ cars every day in the rain, wind, cold or sunshine.
We quickly grew to a few vans on the road and franchise opportunities, at this point Kingsley decided to purchase and import a Ford F-150 Lightning.
The process of shipping, testing, and registering was tricky but even after all the costs involved it quickly became apparent that a potential business venture was to be had.
We quickly set up ImportMyVehicle.com, created a website and used all the tricks at the time to get it to the top of Google. Before we expected, and very much before we had fully prepared, somebody found us online and ordered a 2005 Ford Mustang GT.
This car was the start of it all, and ShipMyCar was born.
We hope you enjoyed this first chapter of our history. Stay tuned for more stories as we continue to share our journey!