So, I live where it seems there are at least two WC companies bidding for the same house / storefront, whatever. I see several motivated crews everyday, and loads of solo-ops. Probably something akin to 900+ window cleaning companies in a town of 100k. The cost of living is ridiculous, and I’m somehow able to make it work, but it seems many of you live in smaller towns with fewer window cleaners.
if you were to move somewhere decent to make a solid living in this industry, where would you go? I’m thinking places like San Diego and Santa Barbara would be great year round work with oceanside properties that require regular cleans. Plus they are beautiful. I don’t know much about the east coast. Maybe Hawaii? I know someone here lives in Mallorca and seems to be killing it, but my Spanish needs some work. Thoughts?
We like living in Colorado, but hate living in the big city. We like the western slope. We have thought about selling our home and moving out to the Palisade area. We would still own the biz and manage it; while starting building up biz out in that area.
My best sub contractor is moving near Eugene, OR. He’ll be starting up new out there. He says it’s like Boulder but more affordable.
If you think the cost of living is high here; Hawaii would be ridiculous. Although, the weather is great year round.
If I moved it would be a seasonal move to Fairbanks, Alaska, to spend more time with my kids and grandson. They have hot and dry summers there, my bones would like that.
Their -50 winter is annoying so I would snowbird in my hometown of Homer, Alaska, where the temperatures rarely get near zero.
Anywhere with mold and algae, and a large population. Market saturation isn’t a problem if you know what you’re doing - on the business side of things that is.
I moved 4 years ago from a city of about 500k to a regional area with only about 75k, here I get to work all year around while there winters were cold (well for Aussies)and wet, Most winters we would have 3- 4weeks off due to bad weather as here winters are well over 70.
I worked for a company in my last location so never really dealt with competition.
Where I live now I have a great deal of competition however 90% of companies here offering windows do a janitors clean on the glass vs a professional window clean, luckily for me when I do a job that my competitors have done in the past they see the difference and don’t shop around anymore, its just about landing them.
I believe the fact I make it a point to let the potential customer know about my streak, spot and smear free glass or it will be re cleaned free of charge guarantee, then I make it a point to ask the next person they get a cheaper quote from if they have a similar guarantee.
I get many bookings from customers who have got quotes after mine that were cheaper but the “janitors” claim that the windows will be as clean as possible but streaking is something that just happens from time to time.
Now I will explain why I referred to them as janitors, they wet the glass up squeegee it VERY ROUGHLY then spray window with windex and buff off, they pass this off as professional window cleaning, they use the same squeegee on floor tiles then use it on glass. I was subcontracted to do a CCU on a school and when I met the business owners I was talking about this janitor method and they looked at each other dumbfounded and said isn’t that the way your meant to clean windows…
