[Dean payne]

I am still doing window cleaning using wfp, but with our rubbish weather i am now getting into carpet cleaning as well, have anyothers done this?

And did you find carpets more profitable? or do you still do them both?

As I am thinking of weeding out the windows and doing just carpet cleaning in the end, but open minded
I might do both wondering if anyone else has been where i am and choosen carpet cleaning over window cleaning.

[Billy Russell]

Speak to steve gunn, i'm sure he stills does both

[Kinver_Clean]

With windying you have a lot of smaller jobs but on a repeat basis every month or so. It can be horrible when wet and cold but it is regular work.
Carpets are cleaned annually if you are lucky so you are always after new customers.
Eventually a client base emerges with repeats but this take several years.
A few have added carpets to their round but as an add on rather than giving up the windows.
That's what we found anyway. We picked up 120 window customers in two months, mainly on two estates using WFP, it was very profitable.
Unfortunately the partnership did not last and the windows went.

[Jim_77]

has anyone like me gone from window cleaning into carpets?

Judging by the amount of windies who come on here asking what machine and chemicals to buy so they can be a carpet cleaner, I'm surprised there's any window cleaners left.

You should be on here mid winter when they are all naffed off with the cold & rain, it's like those wildebeest you see on telly, migrating across the Serengeti in their thousands.

The "crocodiles in the river" that kill most of them are the facts that the kit costs an arm and a leg (if you're serious about it), you actually have to train & learn lots to do the work (costs a lot & takes years) and customers are much harder to come by (marketing costs a lot).

Hence the reason so many 2nd hand portables pop up on ebay.

[Ian Rochester]

We went the other way from carpet cleaning to window cleaning, windows is probably the biggest part of our business now, 6 guys on it working full time.  I'd never think of giving up the window cleaning side, as said, once you have a customer then it's pretty much guaranteed income every month.

[Jamie Pearson]

We did. In 1980.

It was an easy add on to an existing cutomer base both on the domestic and commercial fronts.

In 1989 we sold off the domestic rounds to concentrate on the commercials then in 1995 we sold off the remaining commercial windows and domestic carpet cleaning to concentrate on commercial carpet maintenance and the supply side of the business that was added in 1989. Partly due to not wanting to compete with the local carpet cleaners we were then training/supplying.