Product & Services:
Hope Cleaning Service plans to provide quality carpet, domestic and commercial cleaning services to the house owners, tenants, letting agents, offices, schools, restaurants, shops. Services will include hard carpet stain removing, dusting furniture upkeep, window cleaning, dusting, upholstery and mattresses cleaning, curtains cleaning and also cleaning standard rooms like kitchen, bathrooms, living rooms, bedrooms. Our trained employees are professional carpet cleaners, using the latest equipment providing unbelievable results. One of the advantages of carpet cleaning system is allergy treatment which breaks down and eliminate all air allergens, such as mite excrement (house dust), pollen, animal hair and mould spores.
For the sake of convenience of our customers, our services will be available seven days a week and will be determined to our customer requirements. Hope Cleaning Services is fully insured and we take the responsibility to provide quality service and suppose ourselves in customer’s place.
Legal Structure:
Hope Cleaning Services will be a sole proprietorship, owned by Nadezhda Katsarova.
Company Locations and Facilities:
Hope Cleaning Services’ office is located in the house of the owner of the company in London. Initially the office will be located there, but after that, when the business will become larger, we will rent an office in a building so we could have more room as storage for equipment and cleaning supplies. The space will be needed for meeting with employees and clients to show professionalism to current and potential clients.
Industry Analysis
Industry description
We have researched the national market and found the following results:
- 96.4% of people would like to have their carpets dry within less than 1 hour of cleaning.
- 98.2% of people want a cleaning solution that removes stains during cleaning, eliminating prespraying.
- 94.5% of people want a toll-free number to answer technical questions about cleaning and spotting.
- 85.5% of people spend 0 - £500 on carpet cleaning in a month.
- 14.5% of people spend £500 - £1000 in a month,
- 0% spend over £1000 in a month.
- 78.2% of people currently use a wet carpet cleaning system.
- 9.1% of people currently use a dry carpet cleaning system.
- 10.9% of people currently use both wet and dry types of carpet cleaning systems.
- According to the Cleaning Industry National Training Organisation (CINTO) the UK cleaning industry is worth somewhere in the region of £10bn and employs approximately 820,000 people.
- Cleaning market growing from £4bn in 1996 to around £6bn in 2004.
- The industry is traditionally dominated by small organisations with 72% of all UK cleaning staff working within companies with no more than nine employees, with a third of all companies being sole trader operated
- According to CINTO, the industry is generally immune to economic downturns due to the high demand and necessity of the service.
In summary, the general industry analysis shows that domestic and commercial cleaning services are on the increase and will continue to increase.According to our market research, there is a need for our services and products in London area because we could provide our customer quality, reliable and totally trustworthy cleaning service.
A cleaning business is a popular choice of starting a new business for sole traders. In theory all you need is cleaning products, a sponge and polish cleaner. Nevertheless, the reality is more complicated. Cleaning businesses cover everything from one cleaner with a few domestic houses to maintain each week, to an enormous commercial business with lots of staff. There are domestic cleaners, universities and school cleaners, office cleaners, hospital cleaners, but there are also carpet cleaners, window floor cleaners. The cleaning industry has grown 6% to 11% annually since 1994 and we expected growth of 30% over the next three years.
One of the biggest problems of that kind of industry is stuff turnover. Employees are the vital thread between the company and the customer with providing a professional and quality service; however Hope Cleaning Services will provide our employees good and adequate salary, additional employee benefits, so we will be able to keep our experienced staff to provide the highest quality of customer service.
SWOT Analysis
Market Analysis
According to National Statistics in 12 months to August 2002, more than £233m was spent on household cleaning products in the UK. Potential target customers are located in London area. This kind of business looks really specious and easy achievable for the new entrants but actually the reality is different. What differ us from our competitors is that we rely on hardworking, listening to our customers and satisfying their needs. There is a need for a quality, trustworthy and honest service.
Hope Cleaning Services will be targeting:
Subcontractors companies for commercial cleaning
Domestic houses for regularly cleaning
Market Segmentation
According to National Statistics the number of men in employment in UK increased by 132,000 on the quarter, to reach 15.62 million, while the number of women in employment increased by 46,000 on the quarter to reach 13.54 million. This means that a lot more women will follow their carriers and they will work full time jobs and they will want to spend more time with their children instead of to do cleaning. Hope Cleaning Services will meet those needs by providing specialized domestic cleaning, regular weekly house cleaning and carpet and upholstery cleaning.
Competition:
Our main competitors are companies who established before us and they own a big share of the market. One of the most powerful competitors is:
Although there are lots of competitors in the cleaning service business, there is good explanation for this competition, demand is high. The potential customers want high standards and extremely good rates and this is the key to success in this business. Cleaning service customers want quality, and not everyone in the cleaning service space offers quality. How often when you ask one of your friends for a recommendation do they tell you they have been using a bunch of different companies and they have yet to find one that they are truly happy with.
This kind of business has shown thumping growth in the recent years. It has benefited from corporate downsizing and increased reliance of businesses to provide cleaning services. The best option for many businesses given the high incomes rate of employees is the sub-contracting private firms that could perform this service.
There are no companies that truly control this industry. There are large companies throughout, but small businesses take more than 80% of industry sales.
Growth in the industry couples with increased competition. One thing is certain -
competition is ferocious within the industry but, Hope Cleaning Services
will ensure complete professionalism, good work and quality to satisfy our clients.
Marketing Strategy:
Hope Cleaning Services will charge out clients according to the room varying sizes.
We could offer cleaning services to small, mid-size or large rooms. Our company will seek the best way to build an excellent reputation and strong relationship between us and our clients so they could recommend us with no doubt.
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Sub-contractors – Hope Cleaning Services will coalesce with others more bigger cleaning companies with previous more rich than ours marketing experience. Sub-contractors will receive a demonstration cleaning of 1 hour carpet and deep domestic cleaning. Basically the sub-contracting company will share their job with us and at the end of every month we will divide the profits.
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Client meetings and demonstrations– The best way to convince new customers that your service is the best is by demonstrations and meetings. Our specialized employees could demonstrate our cleaning techniques so the potential client will be 100% sure that we are the best and the results of our work are significant. Most of the clients want to ask questions so on the meetings they we could show confidence so our clients will be ensure that their property is in good hands. We also could relieve their worries by showing them that no matter we are new to the business we have thoroughly researched all dimensions of the cleaning business.
- Clients’ discounts – Our clients will receive a 10% discounts on their first cleaning, 1 small room carpet cleaning if they have more than 4 bedroom house, one small mattress cleaning if they have more than 3 bedroom house, one two-seated sofa if they have more than 5 bedroom house.
- Full insurance – Hope Cleaning Services is full insurance company and the policy covers breakage/damage or poor service.
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Advertising – By having our company name and contacts on our company vehicles; promotional materials like leaflets, business cards, yellow page advertisements and website. In 2010, 30.1 million adults in the UK (60 per cent) accessed the Internet every day or almost every day. This is nearly double the estimate in 2006 of 16.5 million. The number of adults who bought or ordered goods or services online within the last 12 months reached 31 million in 2010. So our first priority is to create professional good looking and often updating website and optimization in the social networks like Google, Yahoo so our potential clients could find us with just one click.
Management and Organization
Management Responsibilities:
Miss Nadezhda Katsarova will be responsible for all duties in the company like monitor the performance, purchase equipment and supplies, maintain the website and bill customers. Miss Katsarova will hire three full time employees throughout the year.
Operational Plan
Methods of Service Delivery
Hope Cleaning Services offer one off, regular, fortnight cleaning at time suits to the client. On one off cleaning when teams will be working, after completing the job, the team will be monitored on quality of service by the owner. During the beginning stages, the supervisor (owner) will be at every site to help employees and to do quality inspection of their work.
A detailed invoice including all the work and prices will be given to the client.
Employees
Uniforms – All employees are required to wear uniforms with the company name and logo. Hope Cleaning Services will pay the cost of two uniforms per person. Employees will be responsible for cleaning uniforms.
Pay Policies – According to The National Minimum Wage (NMW) the minimum rate is £5.93 per hour. Our employees will start out at £6.00 per hour and will be paid for overtime work. Hope Cleaning Services will offer a weekly payments. Employees showing extremely good working habits will be offered a raise each 6 months.
Sales Forecast
The first month will be used to advertise our business by leaflets, brochures, and website. We will be able to give more information by phone, but we prefer to be able to get into our potential clients’ homes and speak with them. It provides us an opportunity to impress them so they could feel confident. The other way of advertisement is by sub-contractors. We could contact with some construction companies so after their work, we will be able to provide after building cleaning. The buildings include hospitals, schools, colleges, restaurants, shops, houses and offices.
The second month will begin with more activity. As a results of our advertising month we expect to have more jobs done by our trained team. If the jobs increase a lot, we could hire more employees and form a new team of cleaners. Having two teams of 2 cleaners and 1 carpet cleaner who will work with both of the teams, will be enough until month eight when two more people will be hire.
The most demanding months for cleaning business are November, December, July and August. Around Christmas time most of the customers prefer to stay at home with their families. On the other hand after that period there are a lot of jobs because everybody wants their house to be clean after the holidays. On July and August the work is poor because a lot of clients go for holiday for week or more.
Equipment, Technology
Hope Cleaning Services will use the majority of the resources for purchasing cleaning equipment, supplies and vehicle. Our company will purchase all cleaning equipment and supplies from Prochem, company with 35 years experience in professional carpet and domestic cleaning chemicals and equipments. Suppliers carries over 5,000 products at each of their 80 warehouses in US, Asia and Europe.
The owner will supply with technologies like computer, printer/copier, fax, telephone and web updating. The domain name for £35.00 per month. The web hosting plan will include 10GB of memory (5-25,000 web pages), 500 business email addresses, free domain name, 24-hour free phone support, and additional web site enhancements. The owner will be responsible for all online actions including marketing and customer satisfaction.
Financial Plan
Fixed and Variable Costs
BREAK EVEN ANALYSIS
Break Even Point
CASH FLOW
References
Creating Success: How to Write a Business Plan
By Brian Finch
by John Wolinski and Gwen Coates