Getting to know Vac A Way Steve.

[Mikey P]

1. How did Vac A Way come about?

2. Describe the average day at your Chemical company.

2.a Describe the average day at your Cleaning company.

3. Please list the products and or services you provide.

4. Where would you like to see your Vac A Way in five years?

5. How do the Bulletin Boards help your companies?

6. A s a business owner, what is the biggest challenge you face on a daily basis?

7. What frustrates most about your two businesses?

8.Pick five Board Members to be your RD division.

 

[Lee Stockwell]

I've been to Steve's place many times, one of the best guys in our industry for sure.

Chances are that his business is running smoothly while he's on a cruise somewhere.

 

[SteveSmith]

Hey Lee... I'm not on a cruise this week, but I sure will be next week! In fact, I am getting married on a cruise one week from today. lol

How did VacAway come about?
Out of frustration! I just wasn’t completely happy with the then available carpet cleaning products and spotters. I wanted better, higher concentrated products that would eliminate or greatly reduce resoiling issues.

So with lots of experimentation and the assistance of a very young, retired DuPont Chemist we started developing the VacAway line.

Describe the average day at your Chemical Company.
Busy, busy, busy… Filling orders, developing new products, improving others, providing product technical support to our customers, working on marketing, and all the other things that are involved in any viable business.

Describe the average day at your Cleaning Company.
Not Applicable…. We sold it effective Sep 08. The sale has allowing us more time to spend working in our VacAway business which is growing like crazy. We grew by over 40% in 2007 and will have grown by well over 50% again in 2008! 2009… who knows? lol

Please list the products and or services you provide.
Rather than list each product it is much easier to just place a link to our products page on our website. http://vacaway.com/products_display/ Other products are in the works and of course we also have the carpet cleaning business software “ChaChing” that we have made available FREE to many of our customers.

Where would you like to see your VacAway in five years?
I want VacAway to continue to develop even better cleaning products…. We do not aspire to become a very large company. We just want to develop the best products on the planet and keep our company size small enough to avoid the management headaches larger companies have.

How do the Bulletin Boards help your companies?
We have enjoyed a tremendous amount of the best advertising one can hope for…. Word of Mouth!

Without the bulletin boards our growth rate would have been slower for sure. Before I started VacAway, I used to post a LOT on all the boards. I know if I continued to post a lot, it would help sell more products, but I have always disliked seeing others take that sales approach, so now I don’t post nearly as much as I used to. On top of that I don’t have much time available for the boards… Maybe I can find more time for posting in the future now that I have sold my carpet cleaning company.

As a business owner, what is the biggest challenge you face on a daily basis?
#1 is time to get it all done. #2 is Warehouse Space.

What frustrates most about your two businesses?
Running two businesses was too time consuming….Now that I only have one business, lack of time is still the most frustrating part. Lol

Pick five Board Members to be your RD division.
R&D folks have to have a mind of their own and be able to call a spade a spade. No YES men will work! They also must be able to test products SIDE by SIDE against the best competitive products they know of. Without testing side by side the testing is absolutely useless and will be very misleading. If I am working on a new liquid product the tester must test it side by side against the best competive liquid on the market. Testing a liquid against a powder is useless information for me.

PigMan Sutley has been a pretty good R&D guy… Sutley has got a lot of flack when he has praised any of my products…. He gets accused of getting free products, but that just isn’t true. The only thing free any tester ever gets from me is the product as it is being tested. And then they get it in only small amounts. Once a new product is released, testers pay the same amount for it as everyone else (no discounts)!

Although, I haven’t really used his services much I believe one the best guys on this board to test things is MEAT. He is a stand up guy that will not pull any punches and give you his HONEST opinion.

Jimmy Ladwig can be a pretty good tester if he would just stop comparing potential liquid products to powders. ;-) One thing is for sure if Jimmy says he even slightly likes something you can be sure that he actually LOVES it! A compliment from Jimmy really, really means something and a praise from him is like finding a needle in a hay stack!

My best tester, so far, is a 30 year HWE guy that doesn’t post much on the boards and wants to remain anonymous, but he knows his stuff and has been an invaluable R&D guy. There are a couple of others from this board that I have just started using as testers, but it is too early to comment on how good they are yet.

Thanks,

Steve Smith

 

[Walt]

Hello Steve,

Thanks for taking my calls personally when I have had questions about your products. And thank you for developing greener products that work.

Is Fiber Cop the same product as the product made by Hard Ball?

Are there anymore "green" products on the horizon?

Congratulations on your upcoming marriage.

 

[SteveSmith]

Hello Steve,

Thanks for taking my calls personally when I have had questions about your products. And thank you for developing greener products that work.

Is Fiber Cop the same product as the product made by Hard Ball?

Are there anymore "green" products on the horizon?

Congratulations on your upcoming marriage.

No, Fiber Cop isn't the same product as that produced by Hard Ball. ALL VacAway products are produced completely by us... We do not private label one single product.

As for GREEN products, we don't have any more on the drawing board at the moment, but that doesn't mean we won't have. Walt, do you have any type of GREEN product in mind? If so, let me know as we are always looking for new ideas from the trenches.

Thanks,

Steve

 

[R W]

I just ordered a few chems from Steve. I tried and like the "Grime Reaper" as a prespray. Also the HellGell, Rust remover, and POG.

 

[LeeCory]

Bob Savage isn't really all that annonymous

 

[Jimmy L]

Thanks Steve for the compliment.

#1 in my book.

 

[Brian R]

Thanks for the Post Steve.
Congrats on getting Hitched.

 

[hogjowl]

Bob Savage isn't anywhere near 30 either.

 

[Jim Bethel]

Congrats for next week Steve!

 

[tmdry]

Steve,

First off, i am a client of yours, and your produts and customer service are top notch.

Will there be any specials on Cyclone VLM, i like the product but go thru it alot, but the $70 bucks a gallon tends to be a bit high for us and i've had to use other products.

I'm sure there's a pretty good reason for it to be the most costly cleaning product you have, others favorites as Red Vanish and Hel Gel are great and priced right in my opinion.

Bill

 

[hogjowl]

What in the world is it that you encounter that makes you have to use so much of Cyclone VLM? It's a great product, but it's use in my business is targeted at some pretty specific soils/stains that aren't encountered on an every day, or job, basis.

Do you run crews?

Is it possible they are gunning it on more occasions then necessary? Huffing it for the smell?

If you HWE, order the HWE version.

 

[tmdry]

Marty,

I do both just like you do. However i don't always extract if i don't have to. So i would like to have VLM for that main purpose, still got a bit of HWE Cyclone left.

No crews here, but i do use Cyclone as my main spotter, since it does a great job, i tend to use it frequently on usually every job.

 

[hogjowl]

Marty,

I do both just like you do. However i don't always extract if i don't have to. So i would like to have VLM for that main purpose, still got a bit of HWE Cyclone left.

No crews here, but i do use Cyclone as my main spotter, since it does a great job, i tend to use it frequently on usually every job.

I no longer carry both on my truck. I only use VLM cleaning techniques on commercial jobs and never encounter the need for Cyclone in commercial cleaning situations. So I only carry the lessor expensive HWE version these days, and seldom need to use even it.

You say you seldom need to extract ... I think I am safe in intrepreting that to mean that you seldom use HWE unless you feel you need to. I'm thinking you may be using the Cyclone VLM too much because you are trying to vlm clean too many situations that really require HWE. If you'll get into the habit of REALLY cleaning more of your jobs, you might find your need for Cyclone greatly reduced.

There's no need to thank me for this advice.

It's really just common sense.

 

[tmdry]

Okay i'm going to go buy the biggest truck right NOW.

no disrespect either.

:roll:

 

[hogjowl]

I thought I smelled a vlm hack.

Stop bitching about the price and just be grateful Steve has developed a product that helps you get away with hack cleaning residential carpets.

 

[SteveSmith]

Cyclone VLM is very expensive to produce, thus the higher cost. However, Cyclone HWE works slightly better and is a lot less expensive. When asked about the two, I always try to steer people toward Cyclone HWE as it only has a very, very slight tackiness, but all you have to do is either extract or go back over the area with any quality encap product and there will be no tackiness left.

We plan to revamp the Cyclone HWE version in the near future. Once that project is completed, it will have ZERO tackiness and work even better than it does now...

Steve

 

[Wayne Miller]

Steve and I go back a long time. You won't find better people in this business. There's a small handful of folks I know beyond any shadow of a doubt, come thick or thin, I can count on. He's one of them. We worked together back in our franchise days. It's a long story, but I ventured into a lot of stuff and did a lot of things because I knew he had my back. I knew he wouldn't run off like a scared rabbit like so many others did. He has more character and integrity than most. And, he's been like that from our first phone conversation. He if says something I can take it to the bank. That quality and strength of character goes into everything he does.

 

[ron markam]

Congrats on the wedding Steve I am sure you two will be very happy.Steve has a great lineup of products from the encaps to the hwe stuff like grime reaper.I enjoy the personal touch his company offers and his daughters cheerful and personal demeanor. Plus it does help a bit that he is local. LOL Keep up the good work doc.

 

[Jeremy]

Getting hitched, huh? Well, that is awesome! Congratulations to both of you. Enjoy the cruize!

 

[Brian L]

I like many of Steve's products. One thing you can count on is he will ship your order out right away. I really like that.

I placed an order with Steve late last week and it arrived today. I have two orders right now that were placed a week earlier from two other companies that advertise on this board and have not seen anything from them yet. 15 days now since the orders were placed.



Thanks Steve.

 

[Wayne Miller]

Ain't that the truth. I ordered a bunch of stuff last Thursday. Five boxes of goodies were sitting on my porch Monday.

 

[Grant D]

I too love many of the vacaway products.

One suggested change for a future version of cyclone hwe would be to make an odorless (or at least very mildly scented odor) version of it. Though most like the smell some felt it was too strong.

 

[hogjowl]

Canary alert!

 

[Jim Martin]

I used some of that Cyclone HWE on 3 nasty black ink spots the other day and I will never use anything else...

very good product.....

 

[hogjowl]

His custom labeled spotter is good too, Jim. And he's not posting on the IICRC thread that we all should pay yearly money to fund the advertising program like your current spotter supplier is.

 

[Mikey P]

Yep.


On Ink spots I come in with Peroxide, Ammonia, Rubbing Alcohol, and Cyclone.


and scissors if those dont work.