The money is in the detailing

Seamus Smith first got into business at age 5, running a lemonade stand on the corner of his street.

“I used to have them almost every day,” Smith said with a smile 12 years later, as he sat on his front porch near Martin Crescent and Davisville talking about the dawn of his entrepreneurial spirit. “I even had the TTC bus stop a couple of times for me.”

Now 17, he is embarking on the second summer of running Davisville Detailing, a mobile car-detailing service.

“When we used to get our car detailed, since we only had one car, my parents had to drop it off at the detailer and wait there for a couple of hours, so it was always a bit of a pain,” he said. “I thought it was a bit of an opportunity to start a mobile detailing service.”

Last year Smith worked on 120 cars. He hopes to do at least 300 vehicles this season. He’d also like to open a branch in Peterborough, where he’s attended boarding school for the last four years.

His workforce is also growing. He started out by himself last year, but by summer’s end had two part-time employees. This year
he expects to employ three full-time workers and two part-timers.

Davisville Detailing has services ranging from basic rinse and clean to a full detailing package that includes dirt, bugs and dust removal, exterior hand wash and wax, full car vacuuming, polishing, and cleaning and shining tires and rims.

A perk of the job is the opportunity to work on some nice cars, he says.

One client showed up in a Porsche Carrera.

“He’d seen one of my signs around and saw that it said student run so he knew that I was a teenager doing this,” he recalled. “He was so happy with the job he brought his other Porsche over and he let me drive the Cayenne back to his house!”