Carpet Cleaning Start-Up Business

It’s not a stretch to anticipate lawsuits brought against your carpet cleaning start up business. For example, if you ruin an expensive white carpet in the process of cleaning, the owner might sue you for damages if you refuse to or are unable to pay to make it right. A more serious case could arise from use of the wrong chemicals, or not storing them properly while working, which could lead to poisoning a young child. In that case, you’d be sued for personal liability and related legal issues. One lawsuit has the potential to wipe out your business, and therefore you need to keep the following legalities in mind:

• Use a service agreement that customers will sign, that will help to protect you in liability and property damage cases
• Sign agreements with independent contractors that indemnify you if a customer sues you for your contractor’s work. This means that the contractor agrees to be responsible for any damage if they are the cause of it. Make sure they have the proper insurance in place to back that up.

Line your legal ducks in a row to protect you from disgruntled employees or customers, who have legitimate claims against you, may sue you for damages.

Don’t operate your carpet cleaning start up business without insurance. The costs may look high when you’re first starting out and don’t have your first customer yet, but you’ll regret it if there’s a problem and you’re not covered. Your insurance agent may allow you to delay coverage for 30 days, giving you time to land a client. Whatever you have to do, whether selling assets or finding other ways to cut costs, you should buy general liability insurance and business property insurance. The insurance company will pay for legal defense, and damages up to the coverage amount. If your equipment gets broken or stolen, business property insurance can pay you to replace it. You might even consider insurance that will pay you for any loss of wages. Check with your homeowners, automobile or renter’s insurance company about business insurance. The company may offer you a discount for buying multiple policies with them.

You’ll want to break a major marketing rule when it comes to marketing your carpet cleaning business, and that’s the niche market rule. Experts often encourage business owners to select a target market to serve, and to market your services to them. While that works well for many businesses, especially online business, it may work to defeat you in the end, since most of your clientele will be local and confined to a specific geographic location. You may not want to travel beyond 25 or 50 miles to clean carpets, and if you limit your audience to other small businesses (as one example), you may not have enough income to sustain or grow. A better approach is to focus on a specialized way of cleaning carpets. For example, you could market yourself as the best choice for steam cleaning carpets. You could launch an educational marketing campaign designed to teach prospective customers about the health, sanitary and aesthetic benefits of steam cleaning, compared to shampoo based cleaning.

Manage your customer relationships well and you’ll stay in business. Mistreat customers and take them for granted, and you can kiss your carpet cleaning start up business good bye. One thing that you can do that will have the most impact is to follow up with them after the carpet cleaning. Make sure they’re satisfied, and do what you reasonably can to ensure that they are happy with the work done. They’ll refer you to friends and others in need of carpet cleaning.

Don’t forget to write a business plan for your carpet cleaning start up business. You’ll be able to avoid many financial and marketing mistakes when you invest the time to research and write your plan.

Image Credit: Josh Klute