There seem to be more and more companies offering Wheelie Bin Cleaning franchises. This is a business I just don't get. Why would anyone pay to have their wheelie bin cleaned? Unless you are pouring rubbish into it without using bin liners, it doesn't really get very dirty, does it? Ours certainly doesn't. And I don't know anyone who pays to have their bin cleaned (although I suppose they wouldn't necessarily share this information with me unprompted).
But even if some people do pay to have their wheelie bin cleaned, I can't see how you can make any money out of it. I've just googled "wheelie bin cleaning" and got a bunch of companies wanting to sell me a franchise (and it is interesting that their primary aim seems to be to sell me a franchise, not to actually clean my bin. I'm always suspicious of any franchise company whose website is all about selling franchises, not actually selling the service being offered.)
Most seem to be saying that you can clean 150 bins a day, that's one every 3 minutes in an 8-hr day. That seems quite a lot, surely even the fanciest cleaning machine is going to take 30-60 seconds to actually do the cleaning leaving you 2 - 2.5 minutes to get to the next location. Possible, I suppose.
Those people that do pay for their bins to be cleaned apparently do so once every four weeks. So to get 150 bins a day over a four week cycle you need 3,000 customers (150 x 5 day week x 4 weeks). That's fully 3% of your allocated territory of around 100,000 households (that was the territory size in one franchise I was looking at). That's quite a high penetration: if, say, a quarter of households actually want to pay for a clean, plus there are, say, 4 other competing companies in your area, that leaves you expecting about 6% as a steady-state, well-established figure. So getting to 3% right away is going to be tough.
Or, to put it another way, you'd have to sign up 11 new customers every working day for a year to get to your 3,000. Is that doable? Seems unlikely, unless they are all coming over the internet or some other automated system. If you are having to go door-to-door to sign them up yuo wouldn't have any time to do the cleaning, would you?
I just doesn't seem to add up to me. I'm not at all saying these franchises are scams (at least one of them is a BFA member), I just can't see how it works.
Any wheelie bin franchisees reading this? Can you really do 150 bins a day? And can you economically sign up that many customers to provide that volume of bins?
Thursday, 29 March 2007
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9 comments:
hi bruce
john here from premier clean in kent
just to let you know that i have 4000 customers who pay me £3.50 every 4 weeks to have their bin cleaned. not bad eh you do the sums!and yes i do clean 200 bins per day very hard work but as you can see highly profitable and no franchise fee.!all my own work. just buying new van and equipment and expanding into more lucrative commercial market.
happy days
john
john can you e mail me as i hoping to do this and would appretiate some help thanks.
robingully@aol.com
Hi John
Would you email me back as were starting the same business and windered if you would sell us bin liners etc?
penny.gardener@btinternet.com
Hi there;
I am very interested in setting up my own wheelie bin cleaning business, so any advice any one can send me would be very gratefully received.
Andy (andy.lloyd@hotmail.co.uk)
my email is premierclean@hotmail.co.uk
Hi Bruce
My name is Dan and I am the Franchise Manager from Green Cleen the Wheelie Bin Cleaning Franchise! You raised some very interesting questions that I would be delighted to answer for you! Your first point about how most Franchises seem to be offering you the opportunity to buy a Franchise but not to wash your bin is a very good point! Here at Green Cleen not only do we offer a Bin Washing Franchise, we also run a Bin Washing business currently washing over 7000 bins monthly both domestic and commercial! This means we have experience to offer our Franchisees. There are a few Bin Washing Franchises that do not or never have washed bins so why you would want to pay them money for advise in an industry they don't have any experience in I don't know! In answer to your next question, yes bins do get dirty even if bin liners are used, they also get very smelly and help germs to thrive while attracting rats, insects and other nastys. This is especially true in areas that have now been put on a fortnightly empty! Regarding your question how many bins can been cleaned in an eight hour day, our Duplex Bin Washer takes about 30 seconds to clean a domestic bin and has the capability to clean two domestics at once as well as the bigger commercial bins! All the water is recycled and filtrated and by using bio-degradable chemicals the whole system is 100% enviromentally friendly! (One fill of water will do a whole day's work!) You do have to travel between bins but because your rounds follow the bin mens rounds you will always be in a small area each day! The idea is to build your rounds so you have numbers of bins on the same road! With the training and Marketing plan that we provide there is an 8 week build time before you start washing bins, in that time you get your first 500 customers then we see a steady growth of about 150 customers every 4 weeks till you hit 3000 which is a full van. With a population of over 100,000 in most UK towns and citys that is a very small % to get leaving the opportunity to put more vans on the ground! Once washing bins we recommend as your rounds build you should still be doing an hour or two canvassing daily but it's a very organic business so you pick up a lot of new customers whilst out washing bins! The idea is as your rounds build and you are in an area washing bins, when you finish knock the doors on the roads you have already got customers to build those rounds up where you already are working! We do provide a website for people to book to have their bin washed visit www.greencleen.co.uk
We base our cash flows on doing 150 domestic bins a day five days a week which adds up to 3000 customers that we visit once every 4 weeks which is acheivable in an 8 hour day! We know this to be true because we do this everyday on our own rounds! This means after Fuel, Franchise Fees, Staffing costs, insurance, all permissions from the Council, Enviroment Agency and Local Water Provider you can still make profits of over £80,000 a year! For more information visit www.greencleen.com or call me on 01785 282855.
Does anyone know why this business is not taking off in the US? Is it because the homes are futher apart?
Also - John- you posted a year ago... are you still really doing 200 bins/day ? !!
Anyone thinking of staring, or already operating a "Wheelie Bin Washing Company" should be aware thet the industry is governed by both legislation and guidelines that are being policed more and more by the Environment Agency, Water Companies and Local Authorities who can all make money out of it. Failure to comply can be very costly if caught.
General Secretary
The National Association of Wheeled Bin Washers (NAWBW)
www.nawbw.co.uk
some shrewd wheelie bin cleaners build up their customers' spend as well as the number of customers by selling "add on" products, such as BinScents Wheelie Bin Fresheners. They work in the same way as car valets leave an air freshener hanging from the mirror. Except these beauties contain tea tree oil as well as natural fruit fragrance and so help to kill germs such as e-coli until the next washing cycle.
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