ABOVE: Poppin Shine and MyGuy Inc. Owner Jon Walters stands outside his car wash, which in the last year has had new signage placed. Walters said Poppin Shine allows him to tweak his formulas and machinery to continuously find the best products for his customers from both companies.

FAIRMONT – Around a year after being purchased by Jon Walters, the former Poppe’s at 1317 North State Street is now Poppin Shine Car Wash and is dedicated to product improvement.

Walters first got involved with the space around eight years ago, when the Poppe’s inquired about equipment.

“The old owner asked for a quote to convert the bay,” Walters said. “Being a dealer for this equipment, I gave him the quote, but I also asked if he’d possibly lease the space out to me, and then I would install the car wash equipment myself and run and manage the automatic car wash.”

The agreement was made, and for the rest of Poppe’s tenure in Fairmont, Walters leased and ran the car wash space. When the Poppe’s went forward with closure, Walters said he wanted to continue what he had started.

“Continue on with the car wash and have the service available in town,” he said. “If they sold to somebody else, I’d probably lose the ability to have my equipment in here. Yeah. It was either lose the place or buy the place.”

Keeping the car wash was also crucial for Walter’s main business. He currently runs MyGuy, Inc., a company that produces and sells car wash supplies, products and equipment. By running the car wash in Fairmont, he can work on his products, such as the formulas and chemical composition of his soaps, while seeing the results in real-time.

“We’re always trying to tweak, and chemistry is a big part of what we do,” Walters said. “We’re always trying to make sure that we have the best chemistry on hand. It helps assure that we’re staying on top of having the latest, greatest, best stuff to do the best job.”

This is the only car wash MyGuy uses for these purposes, as it is the only one it outright owns and is relatively close to their home base in Sherburn.

“We can test them at some customers’ locations, but because we own this, it’s the main one that makes sense,” he said. “It’s closest, and we can monitor it. If we do it on a customer that’s an hour away, it’s harder to monitor the changes that we made.”

In the year since Walters has owned the place, he said he has sought to make as many changes as he can.

“Decommissioning the gas station, getting some things fixed up, sprucing up around the building, changing the image,” he said.

They have also added a new pay station machine, making it easier for new and returning customers.

“What’s different about this new pay station is the customer can enroll and unenroll themselves [in the membership] at the pay station. There’s no paper to fill out. They don’t have to send forms back and forth, because we don’t have a C store available anymore to always have somebody around to facilitate that transaction.”

While they are looking to make more cosmetic changes in the future, including adding rope lights to draw further attention to the store, Walters said the main focus is on the products they test and provide.

“We’re making micro changes,” he said. “It’s not like we’re making a bunch of huge changes; it’s just in the things changed through the course of time, naturally. Something that worked five years ago doesn’t necessarily work the best for today. It’s just about trying to be current. Market forces change what’s available to the chemical manufacturers. New innovations come out, the equipment changes, and sometimes even the technology.”