From an idea to a profitable car inspection station in four months

Sam Laakso · 8 September 2026

A friend with years in the industry wanted his own inspection station. Four months later Tehokatsastus opened in Espoo, and by the end of its first full month it was profitable, at 70% capacity and first in Google Ads impression share in the region.

In late January 2026, a friend of mine called me with an idea. He wanted to open his own vehicle inspection business.

He knew the industry well, having spent years working inside another inspection company and later as an independent contractor. What he did not have was experience in opening a brick-and-mortar business, and the project required significantly more capital than the new company could reasonably fund internally.

I promised to help, and four months later Tehokatsastustehokatsastus.fi opened.

By the end of its first full calendar month, the business was:

• profitable
• operating at 70% capacity
• #1 in Google Ads impression share for the industry in the region
• among the most productive inspection stations in Finland by inspections per employee
• rated 4.8/5 on Googlemaps.app.goo.gl based on dozens of reviews

This is how we got there.

Making the business financeable

Vehicle inspection is not a business you can bootstrap gradually. The activity is licensed, the premises need to meet regulatory requirements, the equipment has to be approved, calibrated and certified, and most of the investment has to happen before there is any revenue.

The company had some funds of its own, but the investment needed to open a fully equipped station was substantial. The gap had to be solved before the project could move forward.

We could have looked for an equity investor, but there was no reason to dilute ownership if the business could support external financing. So the first job was to make the project financeable.

We built the financial model behind the business plan, covering the investment, monthly cash flow, expected volumes, unit economics and repayment capacity. The point was not to make an impressive pitch deck. We needed to show that the business could work, that the financing was serviceable and that the plan still held together if the first months were slower than expected.

With the business case in place, the project secured bank financing supported by a Finnvera guarantee. That gave the company enough room to build the station without bringing in an outside equity investor.

Building the station in four months

While we were working on the financing, we were already planning how to open quickly without making expensive mistakes.

We had to deal with the premises, permits, equipment, suppliers, installation, pricing, policies, systems, security, processes, website and marketing at the same time. Everything had to be planned, prioritised and timed carefully to keep the project on schedule.

We focused early on the decisions that would be difficult or expensive to reverse after opening: the overall workflow, reliability, customer flow and the practical sequence of the launch. Rather than optimising individual purchases in isolation, we treated the station as one operating system.

The planning paid off quickly. During its first full month, Tehokatsastus was already among the stronger inspection stations in Finland in inspections completed per employee.

A clear offer in a misleading industry

We also wanted the customer proposition to be simple and honest.

Tehokatsastus charges €59 for a vehicle inspectiontehokatsastus.fi including the mandatory emissions test. That may not always be the lowest headline price in the market, but it is the price customers actually need to pay for the complete inspection.

Some offers in the market use lower headline prices that apply only at certain times or exclude components such as emissions testing. We wanted the advertised price to match the normal total for the complete service, so the customer would know what they were buying before arriving.

That transparency became an important part of the marketing. The offer was easy to understand, easy to compare and consistent from the advertisement through to the booking confirmation. Customers have also highlighted the fairness and clarity of the service in their reviewsmaps.app.goo.gl.

Building customer acquisition before opening

At the same time, we built the whole website with AI. The build took around two weeks, although the actual time spent working on it was closer to two days.

The objective was straightforward: someone searches for an inspection, finds us, understands the price and availability, and books. We focused on making the path from the ad through to the booking confirmation as direct as possible.

The site included a combination of core pages and specific landing pages targeting local searches related to vehicle inspections. We set up analytics and data management for the whole flow from Ads to booking.

Using SEO best practices and a few more advanced techniques, the site reached the first page of Google for relevant inspection searches within a month of launch. It was ranking alongside established multi-location inspection chains that had been operating for a decade or more.

That early visibility helped the station build demand quickly without relying on a single marketing channel.

A focused paid-search launch

The paid acquisition numbers were especially strong.

Paid search became an important source of customers from the beginning. Even with a deliberately controlled budget, Tehokatsastus achieved strong visibility in relevant local searches and efficient customer acquisition.

For all of you marketing people: the ROAS in the first month was 25:1. And, yes, you read that right.

There was no unusually sophisticated marketing system behind it. The basic pieces simply matched: a customer searched for a local inspection, saw a relevant ad, landed on the right page, understood the complete price and could book easily. We also set up conversion tracking and analytics so that the customer journey could be improved based on actual behaviour.

The service then had to justify the marketing. Tehokatsastus reached a 4.8/5 Google ratingmaps.app.goo.gl with dozens of reviews while maintaining very high productivity per employee.

We were not trying to make the station faster by rushing inspections or customers. Most of the efficiency came from setting up the operation properly in the first place.

The result

Four months after the original idea, the business was open and profitable.

The project had secured the financing needed to build a fully equipped station without bringing in an outside equity investor. The station reached strong capacity utilisation, performed well in inspections per employee and built meaningful local demand through digital channels.

Within the first months, the operation was stable enough for the owner to step away for a proper summer holiday. For a young business in a regulated industry, that was a useful sign that the launch had created something more durable than a short opening spike.

The website still receives far fewer visitors than the industry average. The difference is that it converts a much higher proportion of those visitors into bookings. We are not winning through traffic volume yet; we are winning through relevance, clarity and conversion.

What worked here was not one clever trick. We solved the problems in the right order: first making the business financeable, then getting it open quickly, then bringing in customers and finally making sure the operation could handle them efficiently without damaging the service.

Tehokatsastus is still a young company, and there is clearly room to grow. We have ideas for the next stage, but that is a story for another time.

For now, the launch itself is enough: turning industry experience and a viable plan into a financed, regulated business, opening it in four months and reaching profitability in the first full month.

What this has to do with BASED

My background is in building and developing businesses rather than advising them from the sidelines and this case was no exception. In this project, I worked across market analysis, the business case and financing process, launch planning, project management, digital customer acquisition, pricing and operational development.

Before BASED, I built a precious metals sourcing business from almost nothing into the largest B2B precious metals recycling operation in the Nordics and I became the COO of the company that grew from €1.6 million to more than €50 million in annual revenue in four years.

Tehokatsastus was a much smaller project, but the work was familiar: understand the economics, identify what is preventing progress, make the necessary decisions and stay involved long enough to see whether they actually work.

That same way of working is what I bring to BASED and the rest of our customers.

If there is something in your business that should be working better than it is, reach out or see if you qualify for our Business Development Day.

Sam Laakso CEO & Co-founder, BASED