Got a call from a big box shoe retail store today, theyre looking for their carpets to be cleaned - they said they are "willing to pay" $200, and the square footage is 4,100 sqft...in disbelief of the low price, I went and measured myself; My laser tells me 4,750 sqft...In other words, they are "willing" to pay me 4.2 cents per foot?

HOW in the world do they expect someone will clean it "at cost"? on top of it all, they specify hot water extraction!!

Obviously they will eventually find someone to clean it, but my question is, is this reality when it comes to cleaning for big-box retailers? Are CCr's actually cleaning at 4 cents a foot, around all those shoe racks?!

Someone please fill me in on how ccr's do it at that cost and still be profitable....

Thanks

Joe

ps they own 3 other stores, but the others are 3.5 hrs away so they said they will find someone else to do the others...

Short answer, YES.

I was cleaning for a nickel a foot for more than 10 years, back when we did a lot of sub-contract work. Why do you think I came up with this system Joe? These types of accounts are normally sub-contract work. And that sounds about normal for what they pay. However you can often negotiate with them too, so don't be afraid to ask for a little more.

Keep in mind, this is SUB-CONTRACT work. And these companies can normally feed you a fair amount of work. You don't have to go after the work, they feed it to you. I'm not trying to justify their way of doing business. But this IS the way retail has gone in the last 15 years or so. That is the way it is. If you want to play on their field, it's how you have to play the game.

So how does a guy play on that field and make money? He cleans at 3,000 sq ft per hour! He doesn't pre-vacuum. He just flat out hustles. And at 3K he can make $150 per hour. In fact it was this very scenario that caused me to stumble across this way of cleaning. Although it may not be the most ideal scenario to clean at a nickel a foot for these national sub-contract companies, I never had much trouble turning a nice profit with the Cimex and encap.





Rick Gelinas

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I got the same call. In my case the guy said it was 3000 square feet and the job paid $150. I told him if he tripled it I'd be happy to consider it. HE promptly hung up on ME. I knew they were looking for a 5 cent/foot cleaner so I wasn't about to bother driving out there and measuring it, etc. Waste of time IMO.

Was this the box store or the box store's MMM contact? The MMM is probably getting $700-800 and giving you $200. They have to cover the costs of billing and making phone calls.

That said, if you can encap at 2000ft/hr the magical $100/hr is there. Make sure the agreement is for NO pre-vac or post-vac.

They are welcome to call me.

If they insist on HWE - forget it. Encap it all day though! Here is the thing - I used to do lots of that work for chain stores. The pay ain't great but you also end up picking up lots of extra when they have a small flood or some other emergency service needed.