© 2011 Magic Touch Incorporated. Created by Zielinski Design.
By TERRY BOX, Automotive Writer with the Dallas Morning News
Sometimes the car polishes Charles White concocted started smoking in their cans. On other occasions, they began to expand ominously, puffing up like laboratory blobs. But after 11 years of constant mixing — using just about every substance he could find at Walmart andPep Boys — White finally developed a process for covering scratches on cars that he wants to offer to retail customers.
"My vision has always been to make this available to the public," said White, 64, who was granted a patent on his Sprayless Scratch Repair in 2004 and has been selling it to car dealers since 2002. "The ideal retail customer is a guy who is going to take a car in on a lease return and knows he is going to get dinged because the car's got a bunch of scratches," said White, who grew up in East Dallas and runs Sprayless Scratch Repair out of a cluster of buildings in an industrial area of Lewisville.
White intends to open his first retail outlet within 18 months, hoping to expand throughout the U.S. He thinks he will be able to offer the service for $139 for an entire vehicle, or $35 to $40 if just a fender or door is scratched. Although he won't say how much revenue his businesses currently generate, he acknowledges it is "multimillions" of dollars. At dealers' service Sprayless Scratch Repair has 10 technicians to provide the service to 28 large dealerships in the area. The company also sells its scratch repair to about 1,000 techs throughout the world who have their own businesses, and it operates a traditional body shop for more extensive repairs. It certainly wasn't what White envisioned when he returned to Dallas in 1990 from Pennsylvania, divorced and broke. "I had never done paint," he said.
In Pennsylvania, White was a director of operations for three car dealerships. But he wanted to do something different back in Texas. Through a business acquaintance, White learned about scratch men — people who travel a car-dealership circuit, repairing nicks and scratches on lot vehicles for a fee. The job appealed to White, who bought some paint and polishes and began calling on car dealers in the Dallas area. "I had an old Mazda station wagon with a broken starter, and I had to push-start it everywhere I went for seven months because I couldn't afford a new starter," said White, who dropped out of Woodrow Wilson High School in 1965 but later earned a GED and associate degree after serving in Vietnam.
He quickly learned that he could air-brush nicks, but nothing short of expensive repainting would really cover scratches. So White started mixing — for 11 years straight. "I'm not a chemist," he said. "It was a lot of trial and error." He figures he spent thousands of dollars on polishes, paints, waxes and chemicals that he blended with limited success. "I worked on it every day," he said.
In February 2002, White perfected his scratch-repair process, which he now guarantees for four years. Showing the process White's son Brodie and daughter Charlotte work at the business. On a recent afternoon, Charlotte White demonstrated the process. She was working on a black Chevrolet Silverado HD, a farm truck marred by dozens of scratches on its sides. She taped off a six-inch-square area and rubbed in a black paint mixture — one of 19 basic colors used in the process. The paint base looked slightly gritty and thick. After it dried, she coated the area with a solvent-free polish and began buffing it out.
"If you try to compound this area, the nicks and scratches come back in 10 to 14 days," she said as she moved a power buffer back and forth over the area. When she was finished, one small section of the Chevy's left rear fender gleamed, showing no evidence of scratches. The process took less than an hour and would cost about $35, White said — about a tenth of the expense of paint and body work. Dealers' testimonials Not surprisingly, many body-shop techs dismiss Sprayless Scratch Repair. Many car dealers do not.
"It really revolutionized the touch-up process to the point that you don't have to paint it now to remove scratches," said Jim Selaiden, sales director at Bankston Honda in Lewisville. "It usually costs $70 to $75 a car, which is a whole lot cheaper than repainting them." White's techs have repaired thousands of cars for Bankston Honda and few return for additional work, Selaiden said. "They do a wonderful job," said Charlie Hale, new-car sales manager at Huffines Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge inPlano. "We're very satisfied."
None of White's businesses has any debt, he said. But that's likely to change as the businesses expand into the retail sector. "We will have to invest low six figures on advertising," said White, who has three children and two grandchildren. "But I look on this as something they'll be running for the next 75 years. Job security is not my biggest issue."
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