by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
He has been cleaning cars since he was 11 years old and wanted to make some extra money.
“I can’t remember whether it was a surfboard or a bicycle. My dad was the service manager at Brumos Porsche, so he let me come to the dealership and clean the cars before they were delivered,” said Stefan Mayerlen, owner of A Fine Shine Professional Car Cleaning Service.
Years later, he started a mobile detailing service and drove everywhere from Downtown to Ponte Vedra to Orange Park. A dozen years ago, a manager at a Downtown parking garage offered him the opportunity to set up shop on the top level and the plan has been working for Mayerlen and his customers ever since.
The business is set up at several parking garages and includes valet pickup and delivery service so his customers can keep their vehicles looking new while not having to devote any of their time on the weekends to the task.
“Most people park their cars all day while they’re working, so it makes sense to drive it in dirty and then drive it home spotless.”
Mayerlen has been washing, vacuuming, waxing and detailing cars Downtown for the past 12 years. In that time, you can clean a lot of cars and collect a lot of stories to tell.
“I washed Leon Searcy’s car the whole time he was playing for the Jaguars,” he said. “One time I got in it to vacuum it out and found the Super Bowl ring he got while he played for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the ashtray.”
The arrival of Club Paris at the Landing also provided Mayerlen with a couple of good stories, he said.
“I cleaned Paris Hilton’s car one time and she had a bottle of brandy in the trunk. I’m not sure what kind of brandy it was but it was in a crystal bottle that looked like it might have been worth more than my car.”
The day he cleaned Club Paris owner Fred Khalilian’s car – a Mercedes McLaren – gave Mayerlen an experience he said he would never forget.
“It was the longest and most maddening 10 minutes of my life. It usually takes me about two minutes to drive a car up to the top level to clean it, but I went so slow taking that $450,000 car to the wash area because I just knew somebody was going to dart out of a parking space and hit it.”
Not all his customers are as famous as NFL players and notorious jet-setters. Most are attorneys, doctors and office workers and some of them have been letting Mayerlen take care of their cars for as long as he has been in business.
“About 85 percent of my customers are regulars and most of them have their appointment on the same day each week or month. I’ve built the business with word-of-mouth alone. Sometimes, I’ll look up while I’m washing a car and see someone in their office window holding up a sign with their phone number on it that says ‘call me’.”
Mayerlen said he thinks he has become as successful as he has over the years because he works hard to develop a trust relationship with his customers and that combined with always doing a professional job makes them keep coming back and sending their friends and co-workers.
He also credits something his father said to him years ago.
“The best advice my dad ever gave me was if you find something nobody wants to do and become the best at it, you’ll make a good, honest living.”