A truth in life is that most home owners will gladly hire someone to do the “dirty” or “undesirable” jobs around the house. Cleaning carpets for a home owner means renting equipment, mixing cleaning solutions, vacuuming and shampooing carpets with unfamiliar equipment and dumping the filthy water. Who wants to do that kind of work when you are already working hard to support your family? This is a very good reason that many enterprizing men and women consider the cleaning industry for a source of dependable income and a secure future.
Carpet cleaning business owners have two very different niches to target their servcies which are residential and commercial cleaning. Both of these areas of cleaning have their own “ups” and “downs”. In many cases, the business owner who has a good “business plan” can purchase specific equipment which can be used in either type of cleaning. Without planning, it would be easy to spend your startup budget on equipment which is inappropriate for one type of cleaning or the other.
The residential or consumer cleaning market involves providing carpet cleaning services to private home owners, condo or townhouse owners and apartment units. This type of cleaner faces strong competition but with a good business plan, he or she can target a specific type of cleaning such as “Green Cleaning” or “low moisture” cleaning. This type of business means less frequent visits since most home owners will only have their carpets cleaned once or twice a year, but it does mean you will be paid immediately for work performed. The key to gaining customers in the residential area is not always promoting lowest cost but prividing a type of service which the big name franchise operators cannot provide. Again this is the reason it is good to follow an established business plan to keep on target.
In contrast to this is the commercial cleaning market which can include apartment buildings, business offices, restaurants, banks, hotels, churches, retail stores, and even airport terminals. Commercial cleaners will find more competition for contracts but the reward is more work since it isn’t unusual for businesses to have their carpets cleaned every couple months or so depending upon their office conditions. The commercial cleaner should target a type of cleaning which enables cleaning large areas of carpet in a minimal amount of time. There are cleaning systems developed just for the commercial market and this is another example of how a good business plan will help the new owner from purchasing inappropriate equipment for their cleaning market. While commercial cleaning might offer more jobs, the startup business owner will have to be able to live with payments 30 to 60 days after work performed at the norm.
Both types of cleaning can be financially rewarding. With proper planning a start up carpet cleaning business can realize an excellent return on their initial investment in a relatively short period of time. To do so, does require keeping starup costs to a minimum of course. Another real benefit of the carpet cleaning business is that the operation can be very flexible in the sense that you can easily start part-time and work it into a full-time income. A very attractive benefit of the cleaning business is that it can be run as a true home based business without the need for rented office space or any store front.
One of the first decisions to be made is whether the new business owner will opt to build a large service business running mulitple trucks requiring several employees or keep the business as small and profitable as possible. This is another area in which a good business plan can be most valuable. In most cases it would be advisable to start small as a one man operation and learn to be as profitable as possible. I’ve seen many large contract workers with multiple trucks and several jobs per day lose money while a small owner would consistantly be profitable month after month.
The largest chunk of your start up capital will be spent on equipment. There is some cleaning equipment which is applicable to any type of carpet cleaning such as commercial grade vacuums, but beyond that your choice of equipment should be dependent upon what type of cleaning you will provide. In other words, you could spend $100,000 on a dedicated truck mount cleaning system. Then later you learn its really not practical or functional when doing office jobs on higher floors of a office building. This is especially critical when you later learn a different type of machine will do a better job in the commercial setting and costs less then $3000. The new business owner should not depend upon equipment reps or salespeople for reliable opinions on necessary equipment. The fact that they all work on commission tells you the guy selling the expensive truck mount will say its the best thing since sliced bread. So how do you get dependable advice and direction when starting out?
The most important step in starting up a carpet cleaning business is controlling costs for equipment and advertising. If not careful, the first decisions made in these areas can sink a new business and prevent it from ever being profitable. I’ve known more then one carpet cleaner who will admit to having a garage full of equipment and cleaning supplies they never used. The second area to avoid is the “black hole” of paid advertising. If a new owner follows the advice of sales people, he or she can end up paying monthly fees higher then a home mortgage and never see any return on the investment. So the best start up tip is to find a reliable carpet cleaning business plan provided by someone experienced and still active in the business. Why make costly errors when you can learn from the experience of others?
