Finding True Treasures at a car wash

JOHNSON It started with a missing ring.

Elena Johnson had scoured her home, her yard and her three store locations for a ring she had lost.

It had been made from an earring she inherited from her grandmother.

She had all but given up.

Then her husband took their car to Pelican Car Wash to be cleaned. A technician found the ring in the track of the car seat.

“They found it in the car,” said Mrs. Johnson, Northern Palm Beach County’s doyenne of design and purveyor of all things pretty at her three True Treasures antiques and consignment shops. “It was like finding the treasure of my life. It was the only thing my grandmother had to leave me.” A cousin has the other earring.

But that cemented a relationship with Pelican Car Wash, which now sports a True Treasures location.

Where else can you go to get your vehicle detailed and buy that 18thcentury sideboard that will look oh so perfect in the dining room?

True Treasures antiques and consignment store has taken an 800-square-foot space at Pelican Car Wash in North Palm Beach. Customers drop off their cars at the south end of the building, stroll through a plant and accessories shop to True Treasures, then into a periodicals area before picking up their vehicles. And where else could Mrs. Johnson find better visibility than at Pelican Car Wash, at the corner of U.S. 1 and PGA Boulevard?

For Mrs. Johnson, it makes perfect sense.

“You can be there shopping while waiting for your car,” she said. “One stop can serve many interests.”

One stop also means a captive audience.

Customers can drop off their cars to be washed at the south side of the building. To pick up the vehicle, they must walk through a plants and accessories shop, Mrs. Johnson’s space and another area filled with periodicals and such before they get to the counter to pay for the car wash.

SCOTT SIMMONS / FLORIDA WEEKLY Pelican offers a level of service Mrs. Johnson appreciates — at 83, she does not care to pump her own gas.

“To me, for a person of a certain age, to get the gas pumped, it’s a convenience,” she said. “You don’t see that so much any more.”

David Kauss, one of the owners of Pelican Car Wash, sees the relationship as logical.

“The beauty is — and I had such a nice conversation with Elena before she actually hopped on board with us — not only do people have to spend 15 to 20 minutes with us waiting for their car, but they have nice cars, and there are lot of people who don’t know anything about True Treasures,” Mr. Kauss said.

It’s a relationship that works both ways.

“Mrs. Johnson and her staff can send people to us that had absolutely no idea that we were a car wash,” he said.

His other tenant, a high-end accessories and plant shop, also is a good fit.

And Mrs. Johnson’s ring is not the first bauble the Pelican staff has recovered.

“It’s amazing the kinds of things you find in a car,” Mr. Kauss said. “There was a gentleman, I found a diamond — just a diamond. It was so large I thought it was a piece of costume jewelry. He laughed, set in the ashtray and thanked me.”

End of story? Not quite.

“He came back with a bottle of Dom Perignon,” Mr. Kauss said. “His wife was scared to tell him she had lost the diamond from her engagement ring.”

One thing Mrs. Johnson hopes to find there is customers. She has owned her flagship location at Crystal Tree Plaza for more than 20 years now, and also has a store at Home Depot Plaza in Palm Beach Gardens. She plans to close her boutique on Northlake Boulevard at the end of August to focus on her other stores. She employs 22 people at her other three locations; car wash employees manage the space at Pelican.

At 800 square feet, the space at Pelican is about 10 percent of the size of Mrs. Johnson’s nearly 8,000-square-foot store at Crystal Tree.

But things are selling.

She says the store recently sold a desk. Mr. Kauss remembered the transaction.

“It was a beautiful desk and I had such a nice conversation with the gentleman. He sat down at it and he looked just like Donald Trump,” he said. “He said he didn’t really need it.”

But he bought the desk anyway.

“We’ve sold a lot of stuff out of there. It’s been working out pretty well and this is not even season,” Mr. Kauss said.

Previous tenants of the space included a travel agency that did well until people started booking trips via the Internet, said Mr. Kauss, who built the car wash in 1978. Illustrated Properties also used the space for a time.

And now, he says it’s the perfect mix of tenants.

Mrs. Johnson “allows our existing tenant to put their arrangements on her tables for sale,” Mr. Kauss said. “It’s a good-neighbor policy that enhances what she is trying to sell.” ¦

in the know

>> Pelican Car Wash is at 11370 U.S. 1, North Palm Beach. Hours are 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday Saturday. Phone: 622-6800. On the web at www.pelicanautowash.com. True Treasures is at www.truetreasuresinc.com.