If one shop has walk-in availability and the other shop is booked out a couple of weeks, doesn’t that beg the question “Why is the first shop not busy and the other shop is?” It’s like 2 restaurants on the same block. One can seat you right away in a half empty dining room. The other is accepting seatings for next week. Isn’t it logical that the locals know that the really good food is at the second restaurant?

Now let’s talk about this speedy installation. When you are adding something to your vehicle, I suspect it’s because you want to use and enjoy it every time you go for a drive. You want it to work right and look good for years to come. I’d certainly not want to rush the fellow (or gal) who is doing the installation. I’d want then to take their time. I’d want them to take care of my vehicle and make sure that the job is done right. At Mobile Edge, our installers are not working on a deadline. They do not work with the pressure of knowing that a client is waiting out front for them to finish. Whenever I hear “but the other shop said they can do it in an hour” the first thing I think is this: “Why do other shops brag about that? It’s the last thing in the world that I would EVER brag about.”

“We can’t do a Mobile Edge install in an hour.”

Consider this: We do not require your vehicle for the day to inconvenience you. Quite the opposite. It is a HUGE inconvenience when the job is not right and you need to return to have something corrected. We do everything in our power to lower the possibility of this. We spend the better part of 30 minutes just preparing a vehicle for installation. This is before a single screw is turned or a piece of tint is cut. We spend a similar amount of time in Quality Control after the job is done. We do this to make sure that you do not need to return for something that could have been prevented. In short, we do everything possible to NOT inconvenience our customers.

In a perfect world, we would love to do walk in appointments all the time. We love saying “YES” as often as possible. But then we would be like that restaurant with the half empty dining room. We would rather be the quality restaurant that everyone is talking about. Heck, I’d even love to be able to install your starter or tint your windows in 1 hour. I could sell a lot more that way. But that would mean compromising the way that we do things. It would mean cutting corners and rushing the work through. That’s not how we’ve gained the reputation that we enjoy. As long as I own Mobile Edge, quality will always trump quantity and speed. That’s what you really want anyway…. Isn’t it?

Replacing this radio would be very time consuming and expensive. But that doesn’t mean the owner must live with “factory sound.”

For 20 years we have been known as the place to go to buy a car stereo. We do a lot more than just car radios, but Mobile Edge and shops like ours are still known as “car radio shops.” Truth is, in-dash car radios are a small part of our business. Depending on your vehicle and your needs, we often recommend that you keep your factory radio and upgrade from there.

“WHAT! I thought factory radios were junk,” you ask? Well, they have come a long way. Factory in dash technology has improved greatly in the past 10 years. Here is the short list of reasons why you might want to keep your factory radio:

• The factory deck does everything that you need it to do (but sounds bad!)
• You want to maintain the stock appearance
• Concern for theft
• Your vehicle has an integrated dash panel that is difficult to modify
• Your vehicle requires an expensive interface to replace the factory deck

In these cases, we like to take a different and much better approach to improving your sound. Let us explain.

Your Needs Are Most Important

When you come to us looking for an audio upgrade, we look more at what your needs are. Do you want iPod integration, bluetooth hands free or satellite radio? How about navigation? If your factory radio meets all of these needs, we will likely recommend that you leave it in and invest in upgrading the rest of the system. In most cases, we can add the functionality that you are missing to the factory deck.  We often tell customers that the only good reason to upgrade their factory deck is if it does not provide the functionality that they need.

Upgrading Speakers Can Make A Dramatic Difference

You can achieve excellent sound quality (and quantity if that is what you want!) by adding amplifiers and upgrading your speakers. While in-dash technology has come a long way, vehicle speaker technology has not. Upgrading the speakers and putting some power to them can make an AMAZING difference in sound quality. Adding a subwoofer is another great way to improve your sound. We offer some of the best amps and speakers on the planet and they are on display for you to hear.

Interfacing

When connecting your factory radio to our aftermarket equipment, we use high-end interface devices.  The devices allow your vehicle’s audio system to “talk” to the aftermarket system. They do their job while keeping the signal clean in addition to a host of over functions. We refer to these types of installations as “OEM integration.”

Professional installation is critical with OEM Integration. Special tools like real-time analyzers (RTAs), tone generators and oscilloscopes are required to do these installs safely and effectively. At Mobile Edge we have these tools. More importantly, we know how to use them.

Using the right interface is very important. We will cover these devices in a future post, but it is crucial to understand that they are not all created equally. Some are better than others and some do much more than their counterparts. We have interface devices that offer everything from digital equalization and time alignment to signal summing and variable crossover settings. Not every install requires this extreme technology (but it is super cool!) and we have high-end solutions to cover those needs as well.

Conclusion

When you come to Mobile Edge, we are not automatically just going to sell you a replacement deck. We will look over your vehicle and discuss your needs. In many cases, we can achieve the best results by leaving the factory radio in it’s place and upgrading the rest of the system. It’s something that we specialize in! If you are in the market for an upgrade or just want to hear some really great speakers and amps, we’d love for you to stop in.

One area where this is crystal clear is in the brands that we carry. We have never taken the easy path and picked the “brand of the day.” One thing is certain: Vendors WANT to be in our store. Not because we are a huge volume shop. We aren’t. Vendors are constantly approaching us because they know that being in our store is a statement to other shops in our industry. Because of this, we can carry anything that we would like. We choose what we believe to be the best. We thought we would share what we look for in a great brand.

Product Reliability

Above all, the product needs to be reliable. The absolute worst thing for any retailer is to have a product failure. The customer is not happy. It creates extra work for the dealer in the form of shipping, packing, paperwork and tracking. We offer free removal and replacement of any in-warranty products that we sell and install. That means that when a product fails, we are working for free. Any product failure will cost us an average of 2-3 hours of time. Nobody wants to work for free, do they?

Before we select any brand, we spend a lot of time talking to other shops. We ask a lot of questions about reliability and failure rates. We get sample products in and put them through their paces. We basically beat the hell out of them! Once we are satisfied, the audition can continue!

Consistent Quality Throughout The Line

From day one (Sept 6, 1994) we made a commitment to sell quality products at all price levels. We did not want to sell a “junky” product just to be able to compete at a specific price point. What we looked for was companies whose products added FEATURES as the price increased. Many companies offer poor quality entry-level products and they increase the QUALITY as the price increases. To us, this is not fair.

To illustrate this point, we carried a brand of remote starters for over 10 years. We built our reputation for remote car starters selling this brand. They had a rock solid platform that was consistent from entry-level to high-end. We could look at my customer and confidently tell them that the $249 model was of the same quality as the $799 model… The $799 model happened to have a LOT more features. Quality was identical.

This company was bought out by a larger company. Soon after, they replaced the 2 entry-level models with noticeably lesser quality units. We began to have reliability issues. As painful as it was to part ways with a company that we had worked with for a long time, we did. We shopped other vendors and it was quickly clear that Compustar was the very best choice. The way they go to market insures that EVERY model is of the same quality. Units of higher cost offer more features, transmitter power, etc.

The same is true of the audio lines we offer. Our entry-level amps, subs and speakers are of great build quality and reliability for the uses that they are intended. As the cost increases so does the sound quality, power handling, feature sets, etc. This is extremely important to how we go to market.

Vendor Support

While this is not directly important to a consumer, vendor support is a part of the big picture. When a factory is involved in making a dealer more successful, everybody wins. Training, demo materials, representation, etc. are all critical parts of this.

Mobile Edge is a very proud Hertz and Audison dealer. They fly dealers to their training facility in Arizona and do extensive, multi-day trainings each year. They have some of the best, smartest guys in the industry available to us at almost any time.

Perhaps as important is the dealer network. Hertz and Audison have built a culture among their dealers. Their dealers all know each other and there is a tremendous amount of mutual respect. When we needed some technical advice recently on a late-model BMW, we picked up the phone and called a fellow dealer in St. Louis. Within 5 minutes, our question was answered correctly. We return these favors on a regular basis.

This level of support from the vendor and the dealer network is priceless. The consumer is the big winner here because they get to reap the benefits of the collective knowledge of some of the best shops and minds in the country.

The Most Important Brand

When you shop at Mobile Edge, we know that you are not in our store because we sell the “popular name brands.” We sell lesser known, higher end products. We always have. If we do our job, educate you properly, and build trust in what we do, you will have confidence in our recommendations. More importantly, you will be happy with the results. We put a tremendous amount of effort into selecting great brands. At the end of the day, we know that the brand that you are buying is Mobile Edge. And that is something that we take very seriously.

In this video, I explain what a transponder key is, how to tell if you have one and how it impacts your remote car starter installation.

I hope this will prove useful to anyone that is contemplating a remote car starter purchase.  Please let me know what you think!

Most people who get their windows tinted plan on keeping their vehicle for several more years.  When having window film applied to your vehicle, doesn’t it make sense to pick the very best facility to do the job?

At Mobile Edge, we do things to a specific standard and we are very good at what we do.  We stand behind our work and have thousands of happy customers.  In addition to a great window tint application, you are getting the peace of mind that comes with dealing with an expert.  Isn’t that worth the trip to Lehighton?

To meet this standard, we do things a little differently.  Lets take a look at what we do with every window film installation to ensure that you will be completely thrilled.

First of all, we maintain a clean, roomy, and well-lit installation facility.  We take great measures to keep dust and dirt to an absolute minimum.  Our epoxy floors are cleaned daily and swept up between every job.  We painted our walls white to increase the brightness in the room. While this might sound like it is not a big deal, dust and dirt are the number 1 enemy of a quality window film installation.  Proper lighting is also critical.  This is why we do not recommend having your windows tinted by “mobile” tinters.  There are no environmental controls in those situations.

When your car is pulled into our bay it goes through an extensive vehicle check-in process.  We inspect all areas of your vehicle from cosmetics to electrical.  All of this data is collected in an iPad application that we had customized for our use.  We can snap pictures of any deficiencies and email the form to our customer in the even any pre-existing problem are found.  This is then saved in our central database where we can get access to it at any time.

After that is completed, the vehicle’s battery is connected to our custom battery maintenance system.  We do this to protect your battery during the installation process.  Why do we do this? After all, it’s just tint…  The answer is simple.  We take our time with every vehicle.  Other shops actually brag about how fast they can tint your vehicle.  Not us.  We take our time.  We ask that you leave the vehicle for the entire day.  Your vehicle might be in our bay for 4-6 hours or more.  During that time, the doors are open and at times the key is on to allow the windows to be rolled up and down.  This can take a toll on your battery and run it down.  Each time the battery is drained, it cuts it’s life expectancy down.  We don’t want that for our customers.  You deserve your vehicle back in the same condition that you left it, don’t you?  In most cases, our custom battery maintainers will actually return your battery to you in better condition than when you left it!

Next, the protection is applied.  With window tint, we are working all around and inside and of your vehicle.  We are leaning over your trunk or hatch and crawling in and out of the passenger area.  Again, our goal is to give you the vehicle back in the same condition that you dropped it.  We put in protective netting on your steering wheel, plastic seat covers and floor mats.  We use blue tape to protect the edges or your doors.  We use the same blue tape to apply plastic covers on your door panels.  We do this to protect from water run-off while cleaning or applying the tint.  Special non slip mats are laid on the exterior of the vehicle in any location where we might lean up against it.

It is only at this point that the tinting process can go forward.  When completed, the tint work is run through quality control.  This is essentially a second set of eyes.  Someone who did not work on your vehicle looks over the new film.  They look for any imperfections and bring them to the attention of the window tinter.  If any are found they are corrected.

Once the QC process is completed, the protective materials are removed and disposed of.  The iPad is used again to check-out the vehicle.  All vehicle functions are checked again just like during the check in.  The vehicle is then backed out and the customer is notified that they may pick up.

All of this takes time, but it is the only way to offer the service properly.  I suspect that a lot of other shops would see this as overkill.  Ask these shops for  tour of their facility.  Then come to Mobile Edge and ask us for a tour of ours.  Can you save a few buck by going somewhere else? Probably.  Is Mobile Edge the very best value for your window film application?  I believe that we are.  You be the judge.