Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: dai on December 27, 2008, 06:40:51 pm
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With more people being made redundant and looking for new work opportunities, the price of buying a decent round could well raise dramatically.
A guy that used to help me about 8 years back went to Australia, and started up a window cleaning business, I had a call from him on Christmas day, he has now retired and sold his round.
The asking price was a years turnover, he actually got 75% of what he was asking for.
OK I know this is the other side of the world, but it makes this idea of asking for 3 months turnover look unrealistic.
When we think of the job security we have in spite of recession, it really makes you think about the real value of our business. I think that the price of a good round is about to rocket, and not before time.
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funny enough i had a e.mail from some1 who is moving back here after a while away
offered me 5 X the amount my round earns
now thats a nice little pay out, if it was about 5 years down the line i might have had to think about it
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sell Matt, for definite.
Rebuild better.
I know you won't do this but that is what you should do in business terms.Even if you thought i was right you wouldn't do this, and nor would most. The reason being irrational fear.
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You`ve been reading to many Richard Branson books discount or listening to quotes from Dragons den.
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Tidy your van lol. ;D ;D
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Tidy your van lol. ;D ;D
iv just tidied mine :o :o :o :o :'( :'( :'(
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Without question Matt would make a better job of his business the second time around. Yes he would need to read a couple of books, jims mowing being the most relevant.
Hard as it is to imagine, because we are all perfect, but most of us (apart from the stupid) would make a better job if we had to do it all again. This rule also applies to new businesses too, so if Matt did strike out in a different direction he could probably expect success there also.
The reason i am better at this nwh and have compounded ten years into two is not merely cleverness but the fact that this is not the first time for me.
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If somethings good tell someone,if somethings exellent keep quiet.
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I do understand nwh, and i do know what you mean.Ditto.
(Apart of course from me not being able to keep my gob shut, but as most regard what i say as nonsence, it works fine.
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funny enough i had a e.mail from some1 who is moving back here after a while away
offered me 5 X the amount my round earns
now thats a nice little pay out, if it was about 5 years down the line i might have had to think about it
5 x the amount my round earns ??? Every month?
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ive valued my round at 1 years take , ive had offers on this aswell .
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Discount, the thing is, as we know, im of the " if its not broke, then dont try to fix it "
would my round be better the 2nd time around, i am not sure, as ive said, its very compact and that to me is a good round ( i know i bought the round in, but that doesnt matter to me )
funny enough my brother in his wife called up from london today ( christmas number 3 for us ;)) 1 of my gifts was a " home business book " , i will have a flick though it and it was be given back to him ( he likes stuff like that ;))
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funny enough i had a e.mail from some1 who is moving back here after a while away
offered me 5 X the amount my round earns
now thats a nice little pay out, if it was about 5 years down the line i might have had to think about it
5 x the amount my round earns ??? Every month?
well its every 6 weeks
thus, say my round earns me 3 K a 6 week turnaround, he was offereing 15 K ( these are not actual figures ;))
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The reason i am better at this nwh and have compounded ten years into two is not merely cleverness
In 10 years time you'll realise you havent compounded 10 years into 2 ::)
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If someone offered me the right price for my well established round (10 years plus) I'd be very tempted to sell up.
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The reason i am better at this nwh and have compounded ten years into two is not merely cleverness
In 10 years time you'll realise you havent compounded 10 years into 2 ::)
i think this was what nwh mean't when he quoted matt quoting whomever, who probably pinched it anyway.
Anyway, the subtext as i read it was that nwh doesn't bother to say some things. He thinks for instance that i have a scruffy van and doesn't agree with much that i say. However i believe we share a compulsion to earn money and are both quite good at it.
Matt (as in volksvagen) may be just as clever and a better rounded individual in many ways.This might also apply to you Matt(as in scuba diving), but i do detect a certain reluctance to believe certain things.
Which is precisely why they remain unsaid.
I hope that clears this up.
W
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If someone offered me £15-16k for my business i would walk away in stitches,i won`t say how long it takes to earn that but it ain`t that long.The time and effort that goes into building a WC business that can earn you really good money from day 1 as we all know is priceless but if i was offered a said amount it would have to be a lot more than that,all this 3-4 times the amount is pie in the sky and pub talk if you ask me and it would only be window cleaning where someone would come up with this 3-4 times rubbish.
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If someone offered me £15-16k for my business i would walk away in stitches,i won`t say how long it takes to earn that but it ain`t that long.The time and effort that goes into building a WC business that can earn you really good money from day 1 as we all know is priceless but if i was offered a said amount it would have to be a lot more than that,all this 3-4 times the amount is pie in the sky and pub talk if you ask me and it would only be window cleaning where someone would come up with this 3-4 times rubbish.
I wouldn't rate my round as being exceptionally good but even so, I would definitely not sell it even for a year's turnover. Now selling, perhaps, the poorest third of it might be a different matter. I don't have the greatest round pricewise but I reckon it's probably one of the least hassle rounds in terms of not needing to pre-arrange visits etc. For me that is worth money because I'm not having to constantly re-schedule my visits around Mrs Smith's sick cat etc.
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If someone offered me £15-16k for my business i would walk away in stitches,i won`t say how long it takes to earn that but it ain`t that long.The time and effort that goes into building a WC business that can earn you really good money from day 1 as we all know is priceless but if i was offered a said amount it would have to be a lot more than that,all this 3-4 times the amount is pie in the sky and pub talk if you ask me and it would only be window cleaning where someone would come up with this 3-4 times rubbish.
i agree,.i wouldnt even sell mine for a years turnover, unless i had something solid to replace my income.....and had no mortgage.....my mortgage aone is 12k a year ::)
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is it a sellers market?
Not sure on this one, with many people being made redundant it could well be, but no way on gods earth would I sell my round for a paltry 3 times it's monthly value!!!
When I employed regularly I paid out wages at 50% of turnover, which worked out just fine by and large, but just going by that, within 6 months, if I sold up for just 3 times the monthly value, the round would be bought and paid for and into profit within just 6 months!!!
For goodness sake, try and buy some other business and be in that position in such a short period of time!!
My round has been established for over 26 years....sell it for just 3 times its monthly value?....Dream on!
Ian
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Re: Is it a sellers market? is it a buyers market !!!!
how can window cleaning rounds be good money
will be worth nothing with unemployment going up we will be losing a lot of custys this year they cannot aford it i have looked at 2 rounds here in leicester they are asking unrealistic prices in this climate x3 x4
we have all had custys say no thanks my husband has been made unemployed !!
with so many commercial going bust here
we are in for a rough 2 years all over !
john
glen parva cleaning services leicester
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maybe it'll be survival of the fittest.
for those who survive, surely it will be good times on the other side of it.
newbies with an inexperiencedly (if that's a word?) priced round and not that many customers are likely to struggle.
also the mainly commercial guys with with larger eggs in fewer baskets may struggle a bit more tthan they're used to?
for those that come through it, won't there be many new customers on the other side?
either way we're all better off than most
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How anyone values his business at just a fraction of the yearly turnover (3x 4x 5x the monthly takings) reallys beggars belife.
How manys years of hard slog has it taken you to build up a business with a turnover of 30k or more a year, yet you are willng to sell it for only 10k.
If you were thinking of buying a business which will give you a income of £600 or more a week, what would you be willing to pay? in fact how much has it cost you to build this business!!!.
Unlike other businesses the operating costs for running a window cleaning business are very low, compared with say a shop (shop rent-stock and wages etc) and these businesses command a higher seling price compared with a window cleaning round.
There are severals factors on the value a window cleaning round can be assed at, for example the number of customers both domestic and commercial and the rates they are paying also how long they have been a customer are some.
Personally I would value a window cleaning business by at least 1 years turnover if not more, plus equipment.
As for the so called reccesion that is going to close all of us down, well its not going to happen, yes you will lose some customers but you do this every year and yes some businesses will close down, but the rest of them will either have to live with dirty windows or get a window cleaner.
In every reccesion and depression there has always been window cleaners, in fact more people come into the trade during these times than at any other time.
Life will go on
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"How anyone values his business at just a fraction of the yearly turnover (3x 4x 5x the monthly takings) reallys beggars belife."
I totally agree, but this seems to be the prevailing idea of a rounds worth.
You could stay at school until you are 18, go to Uni for 3 years, come out with a load of student debt, and still not earn what a good round can bring in.
I know selling a round is only selling good will, but it's like that in a lot of businesses, we have seen new people taking over a pub, some turn it round and make a success of it, and others may turn a good pub into a bad business overnight, it's down to the individual concerned.
At the end of the day we have to put a value on our own business, if someone wants it they are going to have to pay it's true worth, and what is the worth of a £600+ per week job for life?
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For anybody to sell at 3-4 times the monthly take must have a terrible round,unless it was a case of illness moving abroad or similar.
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wouldnt take less than a years take!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Nahh sell it for 3 months take,in some cases it`s only taken 30 odd years to build lol. ;D
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yet traditionally a round would sell for 1 X the clean, 2 X if you were lucky, 3 X if it was really good, this was only a few years back
i know i paid 1 X for the work i bought in, i also worked it, so paid off half of it that way
did people a few years ago not value the round enough, or are we over valuing it ? ? ?? ? ? i dont know ? ?? ? ?
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There`s rounds and there`s rounds.
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est 15 years....all within 1.5 miles of front door bought it for x3 the take STEAL!
thing is its a livelihood from day one and a good one at that.
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I tell you something people slate me for this and that and i read some real rubbish on here from time to time,this thread should be called selling yourself short.
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your dead right the price of rounds in my humble opinion is ridiculously low.
when you consider the guy put 15 years into it honed it compacted it cared for it. sells it for 3.5k. too cheap!
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this is fast becoming a professional business,people should expect to pay a larger price for that reason alone. i mean you start earning decent money straight away when you buy one.
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a high % round was cleaned from when a middle class estate was built in the 60's, cleaned from day 1 by a guy, then more than 20 years on, he retired sold it to another guy for 1 X the clean
he cleaned it till he decided to retire and i bought it off him for 1 X the clean ( i cleaned it once with him, so paid half off the bill )
its a good round, very compact ( from being established for allmost 50 years ) now upto todays current prices
ask around some of the older guys, 1 X or 2 X was allways the going price, even for the best rounds that carlsberg made
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so matt you would surly begrudge sell at x3
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i feel a poll coming on lol....if you were to sell your round blah x1 x3 x12 :o
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so matt you would surly begrudge sell at x3
to be honest, i wouldnt sell at even 1 X year cleans, as my round provides me with a very nice lifestyle
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i think buying some rounds now could be a half decent investment ;) as the cost of buying one in say a couple of years time could be very expensive.
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I used to buy up badly run window cleaning rounds, at least 20 years ago.
Spend some time developing them and then sell them on. But even then I sold them for a good deal more than 3 x
I believe we will see a thinning out of the new start ups and the ones that have started with extremely high prices.
I wonder how many will risk buying the new van setups at the moment, the trad cleaners could well find themselves faced with some new competition from guys who have just bought themselves a roof rack, but where the windows have been done with wfp for some years I would be amazed that those customers would change back to trad for a cheaper price.
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happy new year matt anyway,with two young children dont get out and party much .all the best mate
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happy new year matt anyway,with two young children dont get out and party much .all the best mate
thank you, and of course the same to you, life evolves when you have children, i do often wonder where my time goes, and what did i used to do with my time before children ;) ;)