harryhides
Member
I have been following the debate about the definitions of "Bait and Switch" with interest and we have our very own local scam artist who runs several Porty crews, advertises $39.00 specials with a free arm chair cleaning, thrown in. But his most outrageous scam is the selling of super special sauce - "enzyme" pre-treatment for "heavily soiled" carpets @ $ 120.00 extra.
The other common practice that I have observed in our industry is the tendency of the "discount" operators is to charge below cost for "cleaning" and way above cost for Scotchgard, ( or Aqua-gard or Scotch-Mist but that is another topic ), in order to make most jobs profitable.
So my question for Ken and Greg and other bean-counters who track the minutia of their business models is this:
What do you think your profit margin is for "just cleaning" and what do you think it is for "protection treatment" alone ?
I.E.
What is the mark-up on Protection treatment revenues over cost of product and cost of labor to apply vs cleaning revenue over cost of labor and cleaning chems ? I do realize that many other costs like insurance, rent, depreciation and administration complicate this so just give it your best shot.
I have a hunch that discount operators over-charge for Gard because they have to and that high priced operators conveniently follow the pricing habits of the discount operators simply because they can get away with it and not because of figuring their costs and factoring in their own Company mark-up.
I have only picked on you two guys as you are more likely to have the answers to these questions than most - no other implication(s) is intended by me, whatsoever.
With regard to the Lisa/Greg discussion about the effectiveness of Scotchgard or Teflon - I have often wondered the following:
1/ Can we trust the manufacturer's of a product to be completely honest as to their effectiveness?
2/ Why is Scotchgard or Teflon "baked in" when applied at the Mill and how does our "cold" and surface only, application compare ?
3/ Why do 3M and Dupont promote 5 - 7 yr warranties for their product regardless of whether we apply any or not, in the interim ?
4/ I wonder if 2 identical carpets were installed in the same place and one was cleaned and protected annually and the other was cleaned twice per yr with zero Gard applied, which one would look better after 5 or 10 yrs ??
I'm not pushing any particular agenda here, just curious what all of you think about these questions.
Thank-you.
The other common practice that I have observed in our industry is the tendency of the "discount" operators is to charge below cost for "cleaning" and way above cost for Scotchgard, ( or Aqua-gard or Scotch-Mist but that is another topic ), in order to make most jobs profitable.
So my question for Ken and Greg and other bean-counters who track the minutia of their business models is this:
What do you think your profit margin is for "just cleaning" and what do you think it is for "protection treatment" alone ?
I.E.
What is the mark-up on Protection treatment revenues over cost of product and cost of labor to apply vs cleaning revenue over cost of labor and cleaning chems ? I do realize that many other costs like insurance, rent, depreciation and administration complicate this so just give it your best shot.
I have a hunch that discount operators over-charge for Gard because they have to and that high priced operators conveniently follow the pricing habits of the discount operators simply because they can get away with it and not because of figuring their costs and factoring in their own Company mark-up.
I have only picked on you two guys as you are more likely to have the answers to these questions than most - no other implication(s) is intended by me, whatsoever.
With regard to the Lisa/Greg discussion about the effectiveness of Scotchgard or Teflon - I have often wondered the following:
1/ Can we trust the manufacturer's of a product to be completely honest as to their effectiveness?
2/ Why is Scotchgard or Teflon "baked in" when applied at the Mill and how does our "cold" and surface only, application compare ?
3/ Why do 3M and Dupont promote 5 - 7 yr warranties for their product regardless of whether we apply any or not, in the interim ?
4/ I wonder if 2 identical carpets were installed in the same place and one was cleaned and protected annually and the other was cleaned twice per yr with zero Gard applied, which one would look better after 5 or 10 yrs ??
I'm not pushing any particular agenda here, just curious what all of you think about these questions.
Thank-you.