Quick Answer

Genius Websites is 45 days old. In that window we've delivered 1,639 free, professional websites across 17 states and Puerto Rico — to detailers, car washes, tint shops, body shops, dealership service bays, mechanic shops, ceramic and PPF specialists, and car enthusiasts running a side hustle. The line hasn't stopped climbing. Starting next month we're moving new sign-ups to a low monthly plan — but every site already built stays free, forever. Here's the story behind it, and why we're betting the next chapter of Auto Care Genius on it.

Why Free

We didn't give Genius Websites away because we're generous. We gave it away because asking a brand-new detailer — or a brand-new car wash operator, or anyone just starting out in this industry — to drop $1,000 on a website before they've even cleaned their first paying car is a bad offer. They don't have a thousand bucks. They don't know what they need yet. And every dollar that goes to a website is a dollar that doesn't go into product, gear, or marketing. Asking them to claim a finished, branded site for $0 instead? No-brainer. The hard part of growth isn't pricing — it's friction.

We sat down with Luis Marcelino, founder of Auto Care Genius and the driving force behind the Genius ecosystem, to talk about the launch, the pivot, and where this is all heading. What started two years ago as a chemical company in a single public storage bay in Florida is now the brand a thousand-plus shops have trusted to build their first real website. Luis sat for an unfiltered conversation about the bet behind that free window, the promise to early sign-ups, and what comes next as Auto Care Genius stretches from Kissimmee to Puerto Rico to Canada and beyond.

Q

A chemical company launching a website builder. From the outside, that's a strange jump. What's the throughline?

Luis: It's only strange if you think of us as a chemical company. We've never thought of ourselves that way internally. We think of ourselves as the company that makes a shop owner's day easier. Chemicals were the first place we could do that — a better foam, a coating that wipes off easier, fewer callbacks. But once you spend enough time in shops of every kind — detailers, car washes, tint installers, body shops, dealership service bays, mechanic shops, even enthusiasts doing weekend work — you realize the chemicals aren't actually what's holding most operators back. It's everything around the work — the website, the booking, the marketing, the training. That stuff is broken across the whole industry. So we started building it.

Q

Why give the websites away free at all? That had to be an expensive decision.

Luis: Because price is the wrong question on day one. Day one, the question is: does this thing actually work, and does it work for a real shop owner who isn't a tech person? The cheapest way to answer that question honestly is to take money off the table entirely. If someone has to pay $30 to find out whether your product is good, they'll never sign up, and you'll never learn anything. If they can claim it for free, you get over a thousand real shops using it within weeks, and the product gets sharper every single day because of it. Free wasn't the business model — free was the research budget.

Q

And you're about to start charging. Some of those early users will see that as a bait-and-switch.

Luis: They would be right to, if we were doing that — but we're not. Every single site built during the free window stays free for the life of that site. We made that decision before we launched and we're not walking it back. The people who took the leap when this was an unknown product carried the risk for us, and the right way to thank them is to honor the deal. The new pricing is for new sign-ups, who already know it works because they've watched the first wave grow for over a month now.

Q

Genius Printings and Genius Academy are coming next. Is the long-term play to keep stacking products until you own the whole auto care stack?

Luis: "Own" is a word software people use. I'd say serve. The auto care stack is going to consolidate one way or the other. Right now a shop is paying one company for chemicals, another for the website, another for printing, another for the training course they bought a year ago and never finished. Every one of those vendors treats the shop like a stranger. We already know our customers. We already ship to their shop every month. It would be weird if we didn't build the rest of it.

Q

You're effectively a chemicals brand entering the tech space. What have you learned about software you didn't expect?

Luis: Two things. One — software compounds. A new coating formula helps the shops that buy it this month. A feature shipped to Genius Websites helps every shop that ever signs up, forever. That's a very different leverage curve, and once you feel it, you can't unfeel it. Two — the bar for "good enough" in auto care software is on the floor. The incumbents in this space treat small operators like an afterthought. We don't have to be Apple to win this market. We just have to actually care, and ship every week, and we're going to do both.

Q

What does success look like a year from now?

Luis: A year from now I want a shop owner in Tampa — whether that's a detail shop, a tint bay, a mechanic, or a dealership service manager — to wake up, open one dashboard, see their bookings for the day, the Quan Product Collection items they need to reorder, the marketing campaign that's running, the cards that just shipped from Genius Printings, and a class their new tech needs to finish on Genius Academy — all in one place, all from one company that actually understands what they do for a living. If we build that, the rest takes care of itself.

Q

Last one — set the Genius ecosystem aside for a minute. What's happening with the Auto Care Genius brand itself right now? We hear it's stretched well past Florida.

Luis: Honestly, this has been the wildest part of all of it. Auto Care Genius itself — the brand, the Quan Product Collection, the customer base — is growing in places I didn't see coming a year ago.

Let me start with the product side, because that's the foundation everything else sits on. We've added a handful of new products to the Quan Product Collection this year — measured, intentional additions, not a flood. The thing I'm proudest of is that every one of them started the same way: a real shop told us, "I wish there was a better version of X." We don't ship anything until working detailers, tint installers, body shops, or mechanics have beaten it up in their bays for a few months. That's why the Quan line is growing the way it is. It's not us guessing what the industry needs. It's the industry telling us, and us building it.

Puerto Rico is the most personal piece of the expansion for me. We already have over 30 detailer shops on the island carrying our products, and we're actively in the works to open our own physical location there — a real Auto Care Genius retail and distribution hub on Puerto Rican soil. People ask me, "Why Puerto Rico? You're not even Puerto Rican." I'm not — I'm Dominican by descent, born in the US. But anyone who's been part of these communities knows how tight they are, and the detailing scene in Puerto Rico is one of the most passionate, most under-served scenes in the entire industry. They were paying triple to import product from the mainland, dealing with delays and customs headaches, and the big chemical brands didn't care. They deserved a brand that took them seriously and shipped to them like they were a priority, not an afterthought. So I made the call to go all-in there, to put real attention on Puerto Rico — and Puerto Rico has paid us back tenfold.

Canada is the other one. We're getting inquiries every single day from shops in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal — detailers, ceramic shops, even mobile units who can't easily get the products they want at a fair price and have been watching the US scene from across the border for years. We're working through the logistics — distribution, regulatory, bilingual labeling for Quebec — but it's coming. And the same story is happening across the US. Every state, every market. The orders just keep stacking, and frankly, the team is hustling to keep up.

And what's wild is that it's not just orders. It's emails — daily — from people who want to open their own detailer stores carrying our brand. Not dropshipping. Not a side rack of bottles in someone else's shop. Real, physical Auto Care Genius stores with our name on the front and the Quan Product Collection on the shelves. They want to be part of the Genius family. That word, family, is the one I keep hearing. They're not asking to be a customer. They're asking to be part of what we're building. We're working on exactly what that program looks like — partnerships, licensing, regional flagship stores — and we'll have a lot more to share on that side soon. That's a different kind of growth, and we don't take it lightly.

Claim Your Free Genius Website Before the Cutover

A fully-built, branded website for your shop — detail, tint, wash, body, mechanic, dealership, or side hustle. No credit card, no trial clock. Lock in $0/mo for the lifetime of your site — but only if you sign up before the pricing change.