Here the video that introduces Jerry Hyde who is our newest franchisee and he will be covering the area of Leeds North. So just off the centre of Leeds and then upwards and outwards to cover Boston Spa, Wetherby, Tadcaster and a few other places which I’ll list here.
As you’ll see in the video Jerry becomes our first ex HM Forces franchisee as he served in the Royal Marines for quite a while. Though for the last eighteen years he has been in he HM Prison Service and has been desk bound as a Senior Prison Officer for the last few years. He leaves the Prison Service on redundancy and is looking forward to taking on the challenge of being an OvenGleamer in Leeds.
Looking at the area it is a fabulous area and we know that he is going to be do well. I just have to start putting some internet marketing in place for him now.
please phone us on 0800 45 82 357 and we will be able to book you straight into Jerry’s Calendar. Please note Jerry starts the first week in September 2013.
Roger is our franchisee in Tamworth. So if you would like to get your oven cleaned in the Staffordshire area. Please contact him on 0800 45 82 357.
Whilst browsing on the AGA site I have found a comprehensive list of AGA models.
The list is very interesting and I didn’t realise that some of the early AGAs were imported from Sweden. I always thought they were all made in the UK. And the very early AGAs have a different front rail so although I thought I’ve cleaned some very old AGAs it looks like all the AGAs I have cleaned have been made after 1941 as the towel rail as we know it today wasn’t fitted until then and the AGA sides were flat from that model onwards. So the oldest I would have cleaned would have been maybe one of those.
How Do I know What Oven Model That Is?
There was a time when I was spouting praises for the Peugeot Partner, it’s nearly a year since we bought that van as our Franchisee van, but to tell you the truth I was never 100% happy with the deal because I’d been spoilt by my old Daihatsu Extol. Although they are now becoming troublesome we have had them for seven years and it was the decision to buy two at the same time in September 2006 that helped to transform our business. Then we added the two Daihatsu’s to the two Ford Transit Connects we had then. The recent trouble with them is because they both have done about 100,000 miles which obviously means that, for petrol engine vehicles, they are perhaps close to the end of their life. But I really loved my Daihatsu and the reason it was just so easy to use mainly because of the two side doors and the tailgate. Everything just flowed at every job and it was just so easy to throw the cleaning kit through the drivers side sidedoor at the end of the job and not have to walk around the van. I found it really did help me to make our system faster and be able to pack more jobs into the day if I needed to, or finish and get off home. We still have now the Peugeot Partner and our older Citreon Berlingo which have just one side door and barn doors to the rear and our employees who use them have got used to them, and like them, and they probably don’t even think about the walk around the van to put their kit in, or how often they get wet because they don’t have a tailgate. These vans also have a three seat bench seat which is useful and our Franchisee in Exeter loves this as he can pick his children up from School in the van. Incidentally I was closely watching the OvenClean franchisee who turned up at the house next door to us to clean an oven and I noticed that he threw ALL of his kit in the back area on top of his tank, it didn’t seem very well organised to me.
So when the new Mercedes-Benz Citan van came out this year I knew that if I could order tailgate ones as a factory order and as they were standard with two side doors I knew I could get the best layout for our use and any future franchisee’s use. So although my first Citan van has barn doors the next one I ordered, and now have, has the tailgate. I have ordered a few more which are being stored to be ready for when new franchisees start. So it means that the new franchisees will get the ideal spec van. With our fit I am putting into two internal LED lights, one in the centre compartment and one in the rear compartment. This means that the franchisee will have some bright light when the nights draw in towards Christmas.
So I have been driving the new van for a few weeks now and I am very impressed with it. I can get the ideal driving position – which for me is sitting dead upright – so I don’t aggravate my hip injury I got from running too much, and the seats are quite hard which I like and the van comes as standard with air con and electric windows and a steel bulkhead. Also there is a parcel shelf above the seats. After my day at Mercedes Van Experience 2013 I can appreciate the value of the EVS system which is fitted and the van really handles very well, better than the Berlingo and Partner. It has stop start technology which I have got used to and use all the time and as the fuel consumption is quoted at approx 62 miles to the gallon I am looking forward to lower pertrol bills for the business once we get more of them. The only thing I haven’t liked is the Cruise control as I had a panic when I had it on when on the motorway and someone I got distracted and then instead of putting my foot on the brake put my foot on the accelerator when a lorry pulled out in front of me. So now I am only using it for maintaining my speed over short distances such as in regulated roadworks. And the other thing with the cruise control was I accidentally knocked when it was on the speed limiter setting at a low speed and when I went to accelerate I couldn’t go past 20 miles per hour; but now I keep my hand away from it. Also the hand brake got some getting used to at the start.
Overall I love the van, its very comfy, great to drive and has all the features we need and it is certainly the best van that we have had. I believe that it has all the benefits that any professional oven cleaner could wish to have on it.
This week we have started off well in the office. On Monday we had our best day every of taking sales, it fact it was so high we all had to double check it as we didn’t believe it. It beat all our other one day sales, so a fabulous day. Tuesday was over our daily target too so a great Tuesday too. Wednesday wasn’t that good but we still have two days to get a great result for the week.
RAC out and after they confirmed that this vehicle was covered – the vehicle membership wasn’t on one system but was on another – they came out to have a look. The problem was a hole in the radiator. So they took the van back to the garage we have been using for a our repairs and they told us the next day that it was going to cost £497 to replace the radiator and it would take a week for the parts to arrive. So first I got in a strop about this as I was sure that when our other Daihatsu’s radiator went last year it was only a £100 quid to fix it, and “Why was there such a big different in the prices”. But I had to apologise when later they told me that the price before had been £395 and that had been with their Fast Fix Centre which was no longer in operation. And the new price with a discount applied would be £437. So we went ahead with.
Our other Daihatsu van has also been in the garage for about two weeks now waiting for brake cylinders from Japan to fix the leaking break cylinder. So both of my old vans in the garage and it’s now time to think of selling them as we can’t afford to have unreliable vans and they have got to the age when a fix is close to £500 each time and the time off the road could be two weeks off to get parts for then. So they have to go as we can’t operate like that. We are getting them both back today – so they must have fixed the radiator or sourced a new one very quickly.
As we were stuck for a van to get jobs already booked in I commissioned my new Mercedes-Benz Citan van, with the tailgate, so that we would have a full complement. I have decided to order another one to get another demonstrator in to show perspective franchises, or as my wife is now calling them ‘our future franchisees’, as I now don’t have a ‘virgin one’ which really does make a difference. So we should have that at the beginning of September. And that will mean that we have bought four vans in 12 months.
I’ll do another post on our new Mercedes Citan van with the tailgate as it really is a cracker and I love it.
franchisees next week on our process and we are going to order the kit for them and then they will be ready to go.
The reason we are doing this is that we are trying to increase the number of times each of our clients use our service and by adding these services we think it will increase the number of visits to each client.
On Thursday because Alan was off sick, and because the people were moving out of their apartment that day and it had to be done on that day, I went and cleaned a fridge freezer and a dishwasher. I bought a new steam cleaner as the one we had before wasn’t working and the new steam cleaner worked very well. So in all it took me just under two hours to clean the two appliances. We charged £141 for cleaning them. I enjoyed doing the job it really did make a difference, and the new steam cleaner is a cracker. It was nice to get out of the office, and I haven’t cleaned either of these for a while. I learnt some key points that I can share with the franchisees on our training course next week.
When we took our son to swimming lessons on Sunday when we parked the car in Clifton in Bristol we saw a mini fork lift truck coming down the street with a 5 foot Gromit on it. We watched as they positioned it outside the Redgrave Theatre.
On the way back from swimming and driving through the part of Clifton before we got to The Clifton Suspension Bridge we saw a truck with about 20 Gromits on the back, they were off loading them and putting them in position. We then went to the Riverside Garden centre and saw that they had had one just delivered. And then we saw The Matthew ship moored on the quayside with a Gromit on it.
Yesterday when I was in Clifton I saw the Clifton Gromit in The Mall Gardens.
Well it is part of Gromit Unleashed. 80 5 feet high Gromits have been positioned in Bristol and a few of them are in locations outside of Bristol, for example there is one at Weston Birt for the ten weeks 1st July 2013 to 1st September 2013 . They are going to be in position for 10 weeks and then they are going to be auctioned off at the end of that time with all proceeds going to The Grand Appeal Charity raising money for Bristol Children’s Hospital.
We have decided to raise funds for this charity too and we will contribute £2 of every sale we make in the same 10 week period towards the charity and are asking each of our customers if they would like also to contribute £2 to the charity. The Charity is close to our heart as our son was born 10 weeks premature in St Michaels Hospital in Bristol and it with their expertise and care that helped him to survive and be the strapping 5 year old he now is.
So the amount we raised as of yesterday, so doing it for four days is a total of £110. We have contributed from 44 bookings and we have had additional contributions from customers willing to contribute. We have put a large Gromit photo on our office window and we are putting a dot on it for every contribution.
So we are very optimistic looking at raising a lot of money for the Charity and having a very spotty Gromit of our own in our window.
of 14,000 clients and asking them nicely if they’d like to take advantage of our special offers for existing clients. As we take payment on booking it works very well. And as we measure our daily stats it means we can work out the daily total and also the average spend of each client. So last week Charlotte started and this week Jack started.
Durham University has been on mentioned a few times this week as with the extra people in our office we have started looking for a new bigger office and have recently looked at a very strong possibility and the landlord of the building had a connection to Durham University – his daughter went there. My wife Catherine also went to Durham University and now Jack, who has been an undergraduate at Durham for two years, has joined us.