When you purchase a new vehicle, even if it’s pre-owned, you want it to feel like yours. So if the interior lingers of smoke, body odor, or just general funk, it can tend to feel like you’re driving around in a borrowed car. But rather than merely mask the odor, the real solution lies in getting rid of it completely—and that’s where NuVinAir comes in.

Plano-based NuVinAir is a startup founded in 2013 with a mission to become the future of clean driving. By combining science with innovation, the company has created a line of science-backed patented products, each intended to eliminate odors you might find in the automotive industry.

While the company’s been around for a few years, it’s seen explosive growth in 2018—to the tune of 5,000 percent—by deploying its patented odor eradicator and expanding internationally to Canada.

In December, the company announced it was expanding its Dallas-headquartered leadership team, bringing on Kathryn Shilling as its General Counsel. NuVinAir says that Shilling’s expertise is essential as it leverages its massive growth and plans to further scale to countries across the world. 

The expansion is based on a national product distribution concept that NuVinAir says is the second fastest growing for a franchising consultancy. NuVinAir is B2B, so all products are sold through NuVinAir’s Certified Distributors—to car dealerships, car washes, detail shops, rental-car companies, truck fleets—each of which owns exclusive rights to its defined territories. This year, 20 certified distributors have been launched, and NuVinAir expects to be sold out by the end of 2019. 

Development for its principal cleaning agent began in 2015, but deployment began in 2018. According to NuVinAir, the company owns the rights to its eco-friendly compound, making it not only the new industry standard, but also the only option for total odor-elimination.

How it works

The NuVinAir Cyclone is what the company calls the standard sanitization option for dealerships across the U.S. Specifically designed to renew, refresh, and restore vehicles to a new state, the Cyclone eradicates odors at the source—and it does so in just 15 minutes.

“Let’s say you wanted to clean your car with something like chlorine dioxide. It’s a gas,” Chief Technology Officer Alex Wroten says. “So it’s going to take a whole day to gas out your car and clean it. But [the Cyclone] can happen in 15 minutes. So pretty significant time saving on that—that’s the fundamental idea of what the patent is around. The idea of deploying it quickly and efficiently, that’s the NuVinAir difference.”

[Photo courtesy of NuVinAir]

The NuVinAir Cyclone fits into a cup holder and expels a dry vapor—a compound similar to what’s been used to clean public buildings and drinking water—throughout a vehicle’s HVAC system, Wroten explains. It offers treatments to both restore and refresh a car, with time varying by service.

Wroten says another factor that sets the NuVinAir technology apart is the support service offered to distributors. In a scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours manner, the company will conduct spot checks, free of charge, on used cars when a dealership uses the product.

Wroten says that the Cyclone comes in handy with a distinct smell like cigarette smoke, but also points to marijuana as a lingering odor. He predicts that as cannabis becomes recreational, the smell is going to become a recurring problem.

That’s why NuVinAir says it has been attracting attention as the closed cabin remediation solution for marijuana smoke in vehicles.

NuVinAir completes first international expansion

On Jan. 22, NuVinAir announced that it signed a deal with Canadian investors to establish a master distributorship in Canada, allowing for the patented technology and products to be launched there.

“Our innovative approach to international expansion has been both strategic and methodical,” said Kyle Bailey, CEO and founder of NuVinAir, in a statement. “We have built multiple layers of patent protection, a robust network of Certified Distributors, and real brand awareness that continues to grow across the globe.”

The first international partnership for NuVinAir, the Canada deal is paving the way for two other continents currently being negotiated.

The announcement comes on the heels of our Northern neighbors legalizing the purchase, use, possession, and growth of recreational marijuana for adults. Bailey said it was the logical first choice for the global push.

“As marijuana has taken off in popularity, it has catapulted our company. Canada is a great example,” Global Executive Vice President Alan Brown says. “Our product is the only patented technology for closed cabin remediation. It took a couple of years to get this patent, and now it’s getting the patents activated globally.”

Brown says that in the future, NuVinAir hopes to partner with major automobile manufacturers to enhance the certified pre-owned process. He predicts to be over 50 percent sold out by February.

“NuVinAir has unlimited market share,” Brown says. “And then you throw this marijuana epidemic on the table, and it just brings it to a whole new level.”

This article was updated on Jan. 22, 2019 at 11 a.m. following the announcement that NuVinAir had expanded internationally to Canada.

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