[ianharper]

Guys

I interested in what you think your town might be worth in work. I live in southend which has many carpet cleaners. But i could not live off it alone.

Its all to easy to look at others in this business and think they working 24 7 cleaning carpets. what I think is more true is many have other incomes.

For example some charge high prices and can be picky others low prices as they dont want to sit around all day.

Proff of this is when people talk about expanding into other areas of cleaning. if they where busy all day cleaning carpets they would not need this. and as many dont talk about staff issues that must mean they work on their own. I know some do have staff but the point I trying to make is new cleaners take things at face value. I for one have problems each month meeting my bills.

Has anyone seen published numbers on what our UK market is worth? If my experance is repeated in other towns how much is it all worth?

Its interesting compairing the USA and UK I am sure many carpet cleaners in the UK would be worth much more if the effort they put in here had been done in the USA

How does the avarage franchise in the UK compair to the USA?

You could if you had the number work out market size by how much product is sold.

If you was starting out today and investing large amounts of money you would want to know how much demand there was.

Respect

Ian Harper

[markpowell]

I am a full time carpet cleaner, and have no other source of income.
Me and my son work 9 - 4 everyday cleaning carpets and 2 hours postcard dropping.
We work within a 10 / 12 mile radius of our home.
Fortunatally for us a  few carpet cleaners seem to have dissapeared in the last 18 months, including 1 chemdry franchise so we are busier than ever, i have dropped ypm ad which saves £5000 and invested more into the internet.
I am smack in the middle of 3 large towns, Halifax, Bradford and Huddersfield so quite lucky with the size of area available to tap into.
Mark

[Mike_Roper]

I too work full time , 5 days a week, carpet cleaning and associated services on my own. Work in and around Whitby which is a relatively small town . Est 21 yrs which helps , price wise middle of the road , some would say cheap but lets not get into what to charge as there are too many variables to consider- charge what you see fit , I consider myself offering good value for money and a good service thats why they keep coming back.
I have been offered other types of work but feel I dont need it and I wouldnt want to compromise my customers.
But I would adjust if had to.
Mike

[Mike Halliday]

I have always said that all my work is in a small 4-5ml radius the majority in the small town of Beverley. for the last 12years this has kep me in work 6 days a week full time, the last 4years as a 2 man team.

Beverley & local villages has according to the royal mail 17890 homes.

Beverley had a servicemaster & 2 chemdrys. in the last year 2 other carpet cleaners have started in the Beverley Area ( both live in Beverley) and are heavily targeting Beverley with leaflets, this has had an impact on my core  business but i have adapted and now they are having no effect of how much work I'm doing.

the changes I've made because of this extra competition has really made a positive difference.

I think most towns can support 3 or 4 companies as most will cover a big area you can still with effort keep your work in a small area

[Darren O]

Iam in my 6th year couldnt survive of carpet cleaning alone maybe i could but i run a succesfull window cleaning business for 21 years find from May onwards carpet cleaning is good average 10-12 jobs a week this week has been the best of the year so far  i stay in Paisley the biggest town in Scotland there is a few carpet cleaners but most of them arent very good.

[Matt Lindus]

Your potential customers are filtered off because they have a choice. Replace, DIY, buy small unit, change to hard floor or live with it dirty.
You need a business that is either, extremely complex, swamped in rules and legislation or both. The customer has no choice but to call a business in this situation.



Matt

[Mike Halliday]

Matt but after all the filtering and drop outs you are left with a core element that will choose to use your services.

these people are what we are aiming to find and make our customers, then it just becomes basic maths & the law of averages + action will guarantee success

the last bit in bold is a quote from a book Ian H gave me called 'action! nothing happens until something moves' this was the only part  of the book that was worth reading, but it was worth reading the book to read that sentence (and truly understand it).

[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

Business established 22 years ago and its been mine for the last 12.

During those 12 years I've withdrawn some services I offered including curtain cleaning and pressure washing. I've seen turnover increase by at least 10% year on year every year (apart from when off work through illness on 2 years and then t/o remained static) as I have continued to retrench and specialise on only carpets and upholstery.

I've put my prices up considerably during that time, suites going up by about 120% and carpets by 85%.

I've taken on a worker in the last couple of years to cope with the increased work.

I only pay for advertising in YP and Yell plus a commission on jobs obtained through the internet.

Stockport has a population of c 300,000. Altrincham, about 8 miles away has a population of c 150,000 and of course Manchester city centre is only 6 miles away. Covering predominantely only south Manchester (and to some extent City Centre) keeps me fully occupied for on average 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with commercial work meaning I have to work about 20 Saturdays a year.

There are less cc's advertising in YP but there must still be well over 60 companies covering just South Manchester and that probably doesn't include part-timers.

There is obvioulsy a lot of wealth in the commercial sector of Manchester and two of the top 10 wealthiest postcodes in the country are in this area namely WA15 AND SK8.

Rog

[Neil Williams]

How Much Is You Town Worth In Work.....not enough thanks to attacks from all points of the compass.
Taking out all the smaller ones we get the all singing fast trackers from Reading (north), Chemdry from Newbury (west), Enterprise (south) and several from London (east) for some daft reason.