Please tell us how you got into the carpet cleaning "solution" manufacturing business (were you ever a cleaner, were you dissatisfied with other chemicals, possible chemistry degree etc.
Years ago, I was a door to door vacuum salesman, hired and trained vacuum sales people. There were many people I met with dirty carpets that couldn’t afford a quality vacuum. The company I worked for sold the distribution rights to the equipment. I was asked to train under a different type of carpet cleaning system. I was asked to train other sales reps on the system. I couldn’t do it. My belief was in the system that I had worked with for years. So I left their employment and purchased a carpet extractor, “Dart”. Most people do not know what a Dart cleaning system is by today’s standards. I contacted my large customer base who couldn’t afford to purchase the vacuums and offered my services to clean their carpets. The problem I faced on a daily basis was the detergent residues backing up into my cleaning system and rendering my services worthless. I knew there had to be a better way to clean. At the same time, I began to get terribly sick from all of the chemicals and their odors in the cleaning products that were sold to me. That is when I had the idea of developing the soap-free, detergent-free and odor-free concept.
What was the order of all of your products creation? Is there one that can do it all by changing the dilution or by boosting with a solvent or peroxide? (Many owners want to have a
Do It Solution to keep things simple for their techs)
The order of development was the Soap-Free
PROCYON Powder, Soap-Free
PROCYON Carpet & Upholstery cleaning concentrate, Soap-Free PROCYON Spot & Stain Remover RTU, Soap-Free
PROCYON Multi-Purpose cleaning concentrate, Soap-Free
PROCYON Extreme! cleaning concentrate and Soap-Free
PROCYON Tile & Grout cleaning concentrate. In reviewing other products on the market, you have to purchase a cleaning product, rinsing agent, de-foamer, products for wools, olefin, etc., etc. You can continue to build a fortress of many products and costs that are unnecessary making everyone rich and to top it off you need training program in place to know how to use all those cleaning products. Soap-Free
PROCYON Extreme! was chosen by us to be sent in for Wool Safe certification because of its unique characteristics: Concentrate being 11 and the pH of working dilution of 10, alkalinity at 6.5 we passed Wool Safe standards. Soap-Free
PROCYON Extreme! can be used as a booster along with Soap-Free
PROCYON powder, but is also a popularly chosen product to clean all carpets used by itself because of its qualities.
How many employees does
PROCYON have and do you make anything other than the line of chemicals?
We employ 7-10 people throughout the year, which is quite impressive as we are a worldwide brand.
Along with our
PROCYON products, we offer bonnets designed to work with restorative techniques saving carpets in other parts of our industry. They are all natural, all loop, thick, super absorbent, heavy cotton with a mesh base that is a chosen favorite with our customers. We also offer custom spotters with customization labels that let us brand your bottle with your own logos, colors, designs and company information.
Do you ever regret not using a "greener" more earth friendly sounding name with words like Bio, Planet, Kitten, Soy, Patchouli, Eco or Tofu in the name/description?
I’ve never given it a second thought, as we are one of the brightest stars in our constellation of stars. As the front-runners in our industry, we don’t need any gimmicks for brand recognition all we need is the truth and it needs to be told.
Some cleaners say your regular Soap Free
PROCYON (Original) is not strong enough for their trashed apartment needs. Will your "Extreme" product satisfy them? Are there additional solvents or 02 boosters in it or just additional surfactants? Encapsulation claims are made on your site, so polymers are in the recipe as well?
I’ve cleaned carpets for over 10 years using our
PROCYON powder and if mixed correctly and according to the directions, there should be no issue cleaning trashed apartments. This product’s formulation was based on the performance of cleaning trashed apartments specifically.
If you need a booster, use the Soap-Free
PROCYON Extreme! in your pre-spray and it will improve the cleaning effect. If you do not like that, find something as a booster that you will like. I cannot produce poisons and toxic cleaning products. I could not feel good about myself knowing about the long term health effects that people could have. There is room in this industry for a healthier safer ways to clean and protect the service technician, there customer and their families.
It is a choice! As far as my Top-Secret Recipe, Mike, that was a good try! 30 years of performance speaks for itself as well as our Green Seal, CRI and Wool Safe approvals.
Yes we are working with several large contract services that all use encapsulation. I need to ask why you or anyone would want to use a polymer based encapsulation product that is not Green Seal Certified. Ask yourself why? We are about protecting human health and our Extreme! works and performs at the top of this class as an encapsulation product and has many more benefits.
Your ad showing a baby mouthing a bottle of spotter is controversial to say the least, did that photo always have the disclaimer below it?
It is indeed controversial, and therefore a great marketing tool. “The Baby” who is a chunk and my grandson, this was a wonderful accident. I was doing a product photo shoot and he was teething. We were photographing brand new, empty packaging and he wanted nothing to do with his teething toys, he just wanted the
PROCYON bottle... smart baby! You must admit, it is adorable, eye-catching and definitely a recognizable image for our brand. The disclaimer came at the time we were becoming Green Seal certified for that product.
How does your Tile and Grout Cleaner differ from your other products?
Other Tile & Grout cleaning agents have detergent, surfactants and many other chemicals. With the residue left behind your floors become slippery when wet. Soap-Free
PROCYON Tile & Grout cleaner is detergent-free, soap-free, designed to penetrate the pores of the tile & grout without leaving a soapy, sticky residue which will greatly reduce slip and fall accidents when wet.
Who do you consider to have the 2nd best line up of green cleaning agents?
In our industry there is only one company who truly tests the chemical manufacturing companies and each product they manufacture. They do a site review they check out all your formulations against the products you have in stock. Then they check out the change of custody, from contacting all the raw chemical manufactures that we use, transient companies to our own storage facility to our formulation plant and then to our bottling plant. From the manufacturing and bottling and then the finished product that needs to meet high specifications of quality. It was a challenge to meet all their requirements in the beginning but now it is easy. There are green companies that will certify most any cleaning product. All you need to do is send in your product formulation, it can be almost any product formulation and if they like your formulation, Poof! Your cleaning products get certified by them. Just send them a check! There is no monitoring standard, so you get what you get.
So your question is; who do you consider to have the 2nd best line up of green cleaning agents? Any cleaning product that has been tested and certified by Green Seal for protecting human health and customers have this in writing.
What are your feelings about fabric protectors? & grout sealers?
I think if the carpet is truly cleaned and truly free of that soapy, sticky residue, like the in-larged photos that have produced and published. The two fibers show one with detergent residue and a second fiber cleaned with
PROCYON. The fabric protectant needs to actually bond to the fabric. If there is a soapy sticky residue, it renders the carpet protectant useless.
Grout sealer, when there is a detergent residue that has filled the pours in the grout; the grout sealer also becomes useless. I cannot understand why anyone would want to use anything else. Soap free
PROCYON Tile & grout cleaner concentrate is the answer to your tile and grout.
How green is your personal house hold? (Woven wool carpet, soy paints, cast iron skillets, no cell phones, no microwaves...?)
In terms of flooring, I have hardwood floors, new tile, and in my lower level, carpet. The carpet is 20 years old and still looks like the day it was installed because it has always been cleaned with Soap-Free
PROCYON this is truly a safer healthier way to clean. I try to live a regular life free of chemical odors.
Have you considered offering 8 ounce flip top spotters to leave with customers? Your 16 oz bottles, while very nice are a bit pricey to leave at every job.
This is my feeling, I would love everyone to use our custom spotters. I have considered using flip
tops, but too many times the customer over-wets the fiber causing wicking issues, so I choose to spend 30 cents more on a trigger sprayer to be used as an applicator and do their job the right way. This way the user can mist without saturation, when you give a gift to a customer, the cost may be $3.00 but you are giving away a 16 oz bottle not an 8 oz bottle. Just thinking about what the cost is for two 8 oz bottles of spotter, that’s a lot of money. I would not want to use or ask my customers to use anything except quality in a product I was associated with. I would not want to have my name associated with un tested the unknown products that were in my custom bottles. An honest product that anyone can use and use right should be what the customer receives. So, I looked at this as marketing, landing, keeping your customer. Doing the right thing is a great trade-off. If you take that beautiful, custom spray bottle and give it to your customer, it has your name and number on it so they can contact you when they need additional product & service. $3.00 for a lifetime customer, several hundreds of dollars in returns is very reasonable.
Is there a product missing from your line up that you would like to have but can't figure out how to make it green enough?
I really don’t want all of the business in the world, I am quite satisfied with the piece of the pie that we have and I only want people as part of our program that care about protecting their health as well as the customers and their families’ health.
And last but not least, please tell us
everything the original SFP will clean besides carpeting..
Well, that sure is a loaded question! There are almost endless possibilities for things that Soap-Free PROCYON can clean…due to liabilities, though I will just stand by using it on all of the items the instructions list it safe for use on for now. A great topic for another future article, Thanks Mike!
You can call or email me any time Ivan 509 -484-5105 or
Procyon_rx@msn.com
If customers wants Soap Free PROCYON and feel they can not get it any where who can they call?
John and Lori Olson at
Superior 801-427-8008 they will take great care of you.
