Gloom and Doom Forecasters

By Bill Bane

Way back in 1962, there were nay sayers who forecast that the carpet cleaning business would get saturated and dry up (no pun intended). The negative talk in the '70s was that shag carpet would kill the industry because it was so hard to clean. But shags were responsible for the development and refinement of our cleaning processes.

In the '80s, it was thought that too much competition and especially bait & switch advertisers would destroy us. Today, the doom ‘n gloom guys say that the popularity of hard floors and area rugs will surely spell the end of the carpet cleaning business. Here are some hard facts to refute those ill-informed statements! In 1962 there were about 6,000 cleaning firms in the U.S. The carpet industry produced 300 million square yards that year. Today there are about six times as many cleaners but last year the mills made more than 2 billion square yards of carpet. That's more than seven times the carpet they produced in 1962.

On top of that, carpet production has been in the billions of yards every year for several years and the average life expectancy is 8 to 12 years. That means there are more than 11 billion square yards of carpet out there just waiting to be cleaned.

The typical home today has more carpet than the traditional small home of a few years ago and also has more hard surface floors and area rugs. Since the market expanded with wood, stone and tile floors, all of which offer great sources of additional income, profit potential has exploded.

The business has changed considerably since 1962 and it will continue to change. Adapt to change, concentrate on satisfying our customers' needs, avoid making business decisions based on what negative people say and you can grow with one of the steadiest and best businesses on earth.

Spring 2009
Cleaning Digest
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