No one thinks about the floors they are walking on. When were they last cleaned? Are they sanitized? If you are at a doctor’s office and your child is on the floor, how clean is that floor? Was that coffee that you spilled in your office yesterday cleaned up?
With so much carpet-covered flooring, someone needs to be responsible for ensuring they are clean. Carpet cleaning businesses are popular and can be profitable.
What does it take to have a carpet cleaning business? What can you hope to achieve with your carpet cleaning business income? Keep reading to find out how you can start your carpet cleaning business and if it’s a worthwhile career for you.
The carpet cleaning industry has grown and will continue to experience growth through at least 2022. IBISWorld estimates that industry-wide, the revenue will reach $5.9 billion. Statista also shows that revenue from carpet cleaning businesses has grown from $4.4 billion to $5.9 billion. It’s not a bad time to enter the industry if you feel you can make a good business from it.
The Carpet Cleaning Industry Continues to Grow
If you enter the carpet cleaning business, your revenue will depend on a few factors. If you are opening a carpet cleaning business, you need to decide whether you will focus on residential, commercial, or a combination of both. Which type of business you choose will directly impact your expected income.
If you decide to go into residential carpet cleaning, you may have a difficult time finding business at first. Disposable income determines how much homeowners will spend on services like carpet cleaning.
For some, it makes more financial sense to rent a carpet cleaner at a local store rather than hire a cleaner. However, if the consumer has a larger home and disposable income, a carpet cleaner may be more practical and easier to justify for their budget. You should focus your carpet cleaning marketing on this demographic specifically.
Most carpet cleaning businesses will also do upholstery. This is where the residential consumer pool opens. While wood and laminate flooring have reduced the number of carpets in homes, people will still have upholstered furniture.
If you offer upholstery and other cleaning services alongside carpet cleaning, you’ll be able to find customers with ease. However, this does mean that you’ll need to purchase more equipment and get experience in a variety of styles to offer those services.
Many homes today have multiple living spaces. There are living rooms, family rooms, teen hangout spaces, and media rooms. All of these offer the potential to have upholstered furniture and carpeting.
While many consumers would not hire a carpet cleaner every week, they may be more apt to hire a carpet cleaner at least twice a year for deep cleaning. We all do spring and fall deep cleaning, and carpeted or upholstered surfaces hold a lot of dirt and odor. If you market well during these periods, you may attract more customers.
For commercial cleaning, there is a wide-open market. Most office spaces have carpeting on multiple floors, upholstered chairs, and other furniture. Most commercial spaces consist of more than one office. There may be a lobby and then several individual office spaces. The more spaces there are the more potential there exists for carpeted or upholstered surfaces.
One thing in recent years that has increased the cleaning need for offices is the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses want to be sure their spaces are clean and disinfected so their customers can feel safe about using their services. While many industries saw financial losses during the pandemic, carpet cleaning was not one of them.
The pandemic also saw more people wanting to disinfect their homes. Making sure their surfaces were clean from viruses became a top priority for many people. People wanted to be sure their floors and furniture were clean and virus free for family gatherings. This added to the need for carpet cleaners. If you decide to join the market, you’ll likely find customers.
So what income can you expect to earn from carpet cleaning? According to Projection Hub, a carpet cleaning company can expect a yearly income of about $108,000.
That figure considers a few things. It is an estimate for a small business with one person doing five carpets or carpeted surfaces per day for six days a week. It also assumes you’ll charge an average of $75 hourly. You would need to work for four weeks a month every month of the year to make that amount in revenue.
While this is all possible, it may not be realistic for you to work six days a week every week. Also, it takes a large customer base to meet those expectations, especially in the residential sector. If you want a large carpet cleaning franchise, you’ll need to plan to hire other employees, open new locations, and have a strategic business plan.
Most carpet cleaning businesses will charge either per room or per square foot. If you charge per room, consider charging a double fee for large rooms. You would have to determine what your average size room would be. For this reason, charging per square foot, especially for residential customers, may be best.
It may be easier to charge by the room or the surface with commercial customers. You can set a price for each carpeted floor and each piece of furniture. That makes it easy to determine fees. The customer can also calculate how much they want you to clean based on the fees.
No matter which method of pricing you choose, the important thing is to be sure you have factored in your costs. By taking the time to be sure you have calculated the cost of doing business, you can be sure your pricing is at the level you need to meet your financial obligations, exceed your goals, and grow your company.
At some point in your business venture, you may want to hire additional technicians. This will be especially true as your client base grows. The more technicians your company employs, the more clients you can take.
According to Indeed, the average carpet cleaning technician earns $18.07 an hour, with a range from $12.98 to $25.16. How much money technicians make largely depends on location and experience. If you plan to hire new employees, you can estimate the cost of employing them with these numbers.
The good thing about hiring more technicians is it means your business is growing and expanding. One thing to remember is that you not only have to pay the hourly wage of the technician but also the other expenses associated with employees. This includes taxes, business insurance, extra equipment, cleaning supplies, and vehicles.
The previous earning potential of $108,000 per year was with one carpet cleaner working alone. With an added technician, the earnings could potentially double. Another technician could potentially triple the income. This would mean that the owner and two technicians could potentially create revenue of $324,000 per year.
This seems like a good yearly income, but it comes with other expenses and responsibilities that you do not have to worry about if your only employee is yourself. A carpet cleaning business requires a lot of equipment and supplies. That does not include the administrative requirements.
Along with hiring other carpet cleaning technicians, you will probably need to hire a skilled administrative assistant to help with daily tasks. This person can manage the day-to-day office requirements. They can manage the scheduling of appointments, some bookkeeping, as well as inventory control of supplies. The average pay for an administrative assistant is $18.23 an hour.
Unlike another technician, an administrative assistant will not add income to your business. The benefit will be having someone to take care of the daily tasks. This will allow you, the business owner, to oversee more carpet cleaning jobs, thus increasing the revenue. Paying someone to handle small tasks indirectly brings more profit to the company.
With the growth that the carpet cleaning industry has seen over the past several years and the expected growth in 2023, owning a carpet cleaning business could be a wise business option. As with any entrepreneurship, you must weigh the amount of work you are willing to put into your company against the potential monetary rewards.
Most Carpet Cleaning Businesses Aren’t Limited to Just Carpet Cleaning - Upholstery Cleaning and Air Duct Cleaning are Frequently Offered as Part of Carpet Cleaning Company Services
The best way to be sure your business will be profitable and experience growth is by diversifying. If you choose this route, you won’t only be cleaning carpets. As mentioned earlier, upholstery cleaning goes along with carpet cleaning. Some carpet cleaning companies also add in the restoration and cleaning of all types of flooring.
The restoration aspect that some carpet cleaning companies add includes going in after floods, fires, or other disasters to clean up. This includes pulling water from the carpeting and cleaning them to restore them. It would also include the same steps for upholstered furniture. However, this may require additional equipment and training.
Disasters as Well as Day to Day Messes Keep Carpet Cleaners Busy
By adding in the cleaning of all floor types, the market will open even more for your business. Offering washing, waxing, and buffing services for tile and wood floors will cover any type of flooring a home or business may have. This will make your company more attractive to potential customers.
The best way to supplement growth and support your business is with strong marketing. If you use SEO and find ways to advertise your business without spending a lot of money. To do so, you should be direct and target specific markets and niches you can fill as a cleaning company.
Potential customers will look more favorably to a company that allows them to have a “one-stop shopping” experience. If residential or commercial customers can call on your company for all their floor care needs, you will have potentially doubled your revenue.
Some companies will take the “one-stop shopping” idea even further and offer janitorial services. This can increase your customer base in the commercial market. However, it will require more time and energy to enter the janitorial field.
The more time you need to spend the more people you need to hire to make the business run efficiently. Expanding should only be done after you do a careful analysis and consideration of your business and are sure that you can afford to do so.
One way to increase business without additional expenses is to get reviews from your customers. By using the reviews of actual customers to attract new customers, you can increase your customer base with no added advertising expense. Online reviews today are the word-of-mouth reviews of yesterday.
Some people who are thinking of starting a carpet cleaning business may consider buying into a franchise. This means that you would invest in the company and for that the parent company would offer some assistance in getting your company going. However, you would be working under their name.
Opening a franchise has benefits. You will operate under a known company name. This means you already have the recognition that some companies take years to get. You also have national advertising from the parent company. Another benefit is training.
The parent company does not want its franchises to fail, so training is important. The training a franchise includes with opening a business through them can be invaluable. You can get training on the actual process of carpet cleaning, which for someone new to the business can make a real difference.
Your parent company will often oversee administrative training as well. For someone unfamiliar with running a business, this is beneficial. Having someone knowledgeable in not only running a business but running your specific type of business can take a lot of stress off a new business owner.
There are also negative parts to being part of a franchise. There are strict guidelines on where the business can expand. There are rules as to what chemicals you use for cleaning and how everything needs to be managed. You will also need to pay fees. All of these factors can detract from your revenue.
