RETAILERS GETTING INTO THE CARPET CLEANING BUSINESS

Retailers getting into the carpet cleaning business is a great idea. It’s like a car dealer having a service department. It keeps you in contact with your customer, allows you to service them annually, gets you into the house to see how the carpet you sold is performing and, if you operate very conscientiously, you’ll have increased opportunity to sell more floor covering products.

You must have effective cleaning technicians that you should also train to sell your products as well. Certainly they should know about area rugs you carry that will protect carpet and hard floor. Boot or shoe trays to place wet and soiling foot wear in are a good add on. Furniture pads, those little plastic or rubbery things that go under the legs, are another small product that adds profit. And when the carpet looks really ratty, the technician could suggest to the consumer that they might want to consider new carpeting. Then you or one of your sales advisors can contact the consumer and discuss the possibility of new carpet, even deducting the price of the most recent carpet cleaning as a further incentive to buy.

Your cleaning division can actually be a profit center with several opportunities to increase your profits with little additional investment. Those are the good points. Negative aspects of being in the carpet cleaning business can drive your profits down if you aren’t aware of what type of liability you open yourself up to. If you know the down sides you can prevent them and enjoy increased business. If you plunge head long into the cleaning business without any enlightenment, you’ll give yourself new reasons to curse.

The first thing you have to understand is that if you own the cleaning operation or if you recommend the cleaner, whatever damage may be caused to the carpet from this service you become liable for. For example, say you send your crew, with their clean, professional uniforms and shiny new equipment, out to clean a very old and expensive wool carpet and oriental rugs. If they don’t know what they’re doing they could chemical burn the wool, discoloring it and brittling it permanently, set stains or soiling in both the carpet and the rugs, shrink them or cause cellulosic browning or yellowing in the carpet. Simply put they could ruin both carpet and rugs and obligate you to replacing the products.

This is not something you can buy insurance for either since the technician must be in control of what he’s working on. If he knocks over a vase, breaks a window, snaps a leg on a chair or destroys a painting on the wall, that you can get insurance coverage for. But if he ruins the carpet, either you try to fix it, if possible, or you replace it out of your pocket. And I’m talking to you from experience because I owned a carpet and furniture cleaning business for 14 years faced with all these issues.

How do you avoid being confronted with these problems? There are several ways, the first of which would be to get your cleaning technicians trained and certified through one of several organizations in the cleaning industry such as IICRC and then join a local affiliation to keep your people up to date on how to clean carpet.

Next is to not put all your eggs in one basket by just having truck mounted hot water extraction equipment. You’ll need to avail yourself of other systems as well. Host will be a product you’ll have to have for commercial maintenance, CFR water extraction equipment, which leaves both carpet and furniture virtually dry will be invaluable for sensitive carpets and situations, especially if you clean furniture. This system is used in airplanes where effective cleaning is imperative and drying times critical.

Your people will need to know how carpet is constructed, the idiosyncrasies and characteristics of fiber relative to performance, types of soiling and color. They’ll need to know, when they look at the carpet, how effective their cleaning process will be. The cleaning technician will also have to understand that if the carpet does not come clean or if a stain doesn’t respond or if the carpet still looks ugly, it’s not automatically to be assumed the carpet is defective. It might be the wrong carpet fiber, construction, or color used in a place it was never going to deliver the expected service. That’s a mis-specification not a defect and you can’t blame the carpet for the failure.

I share this with you because we currently have a case in which this scenario played out. The dealer, a large affiliated dealer, recommended the carpet cleaner who was actually passed off as doing business for them. The cleaner messed up carpet on three floors of the house. The carpet and rugs were old, expensive and very unique. The cleaner swears he followed proper procedures but the carpets and rugs are telling a different story. Remember, I have always told you, the carpet never lies, it will always tell you what’s wrong if you understand it and know how to interpret what it’s saying.

In this case, because the dealer recommended this cleaner, he will assume some liability in the loss even if it’s paying for properly re-cleaning the carpet and rugs. It may be impossible for him to recover any loss from the cleaner. The consumer however, must be satisfied and if not, the loss to the dealer could be incalculable.

I encourage you to get into the service business but if you do I strongly suggest extensive training of your people and hiring a seasoned cleaner to guide your operation. If you won’t make that commitment then stay out of the business.