Clean getaway: Owner of Xiamen bikini car wash skips town

Young women in bikinis wash Rolls Royces at Mocha

A car wash in Xiamen in southeast China, which became well known for employing young women in bikinis, closed down this week only nine months after it opened, leaving behind several unpaid workers, reports the local newspaper Haixia Daobao.

Mocha car beauty club, which offered washes, polishing and waxing services for high-end cars when it opened in October last year, has shut up Wednesday, when a reporter from the daily went there to verify an internet report that its founder Li Xiaolin had deserted the business, taking 20 million yuan (US$3.15 million) with him.

About 30 Mocha employees were locked out of the shop. Some of them broke in and looted the premises, saying Li owed them pay. One of them, who claimed to be a section chief, said the shop owed each worker between 2,000-5,000 yuan (US$315-$790). He said the shop was operating in the red after it opened last year. However, business had now improved and the shop had recently made a profit recently. He thought the store had turned a corner.

Even as he was speaking, some of Mocha's members pulled up in their luxury sedans for detailing services, only to find it closed. One car owner said he had bought membership for 20,000 yuan (US$3,165) and had used its services only a few times.

When Mocha opened last year, it said it would only handle cars worth more than 400,000 yuan (US$63,300).

A senior executive at Mocha told the newspaper by phone that the shop had not paid its workers in full for the last two months.

The daily quoted an anonymous source as saying that Mocha, which handled about 30 cars a day, was unable to survive, since a car wash had to process at least 9,000 cars per month during the lean season and 11,000 cars per month during the peak season to sustain itself.

However, an internet report said the shop earned enough money to cover its overheads of about 1 million yuan (US$158,000) a month. Li is said to have fled with 20 million yuan (US$3.15 million) from the shop's funds several days ago, fleecing more than 500 members who had already paid their annual fees.

As for the shop's workers, the newspaper quoted police sources as saying Li owed them a total of more than 400,000 yuan (US$63,300).