Okay, so maybe you don’t care so much what happens across the pond, but since they share our suffering in a recession, we wanted to see what we could learn from their experience. These are a few of the take-aways we value in this article:
General Trends
- increased emphasis on products/processes that value the environment and promote sustainability
- increases in labor costs following increases in wage rates
- enhanced standards of health and cleanliness demanded by health and food industries
- diminished new construction, reducing new market development
Legislation
- further limitations on use of chemicals in cleaning process
- increased use of powered cleaning equipment
Though the specific trends and laws are based on the experience of Great Britain, there is no denying that these same market trends are affecting the US cleaning industry.
Right here at home, we see the same signs for new neighborhoods that we’ve seen for four years now—because no one can afford to invest in that new construction, limiting new prospective clients for us.
As a service business—like plumbers, electricians, painters, etc—the largest part of our price for services is the labor…the wage we pay to those who perform services for you. And like any service business owner, we have a minimum wage we must pay by law but we also must balance that with a respectable and livable wage, which is higher. We know the scientific knowledge and the physical skill necessary to perform a consistent hygienic cleaning in your home.
But perhaps the biggest difference is that the more we know about the science behind our cleaning products and processes, the more we know about the hazards of many of them that we’ve depended on for many years. In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency is succumbing to pressure to increase its regulation of many known hazardous chemicals but also to engage the necessary research to clear up questions about the hazards and benefits of others. This has led to
- the development of chemical free cleaning equipment and
- the increasingly wide-spread adoption of mechanical equipment to effect visual and hygienic cleaning in your home
That’s why we are the first in our area to offer Chemical Free Cleaning—a program where our equipment uses plain water PLUS a significant energy source to clean up dirt better AND kill more germs and bacteria:
- Ladybug Dry Vapor Steamer with TANCS = disinfecting heat at 220 degrees Farenheit
- Activion Ionator = water ionization + electricity to zap those bacteria dead
- PerfectCLEAN Antimicrobial cloths = finest microscopic fibers for picking up and removing the smaller particles than any other cloth on the market
