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Comment by papeda | Hacker News Reader

Curious, how does a small commercial janitorial business survive for so long? My naive understanding as a non-business-owner is that small entities can survive or even do well if they offer a product that's hard or not worth it for big entities to replicate at scale. Some examples might be art, or a nice feeling of "buying local" from people you know and like, or a niche product whose market is just not big enough for giants to bother with.

A janitorial business doesn't seem to be any of those things. So it seems like an area where a big company would dominate (because, say, a lot of 1000 janitorial carts is way cheaper than a lot of 10). But, no?

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I don’t know why^, but the largest janitorial/cleaning companies that serve ordinary businesses^^ are franchise companies. Local independents just have to compete against branded local companies.

^I suspect it’s because janitors have access so trust of the individuals involved matters more than cost or having access to a pool of interchangeable employees.

^^There are large contractors that serve really large facilities, but that business isn’t necessary to win to be viable.

I honestly think it has everything to do with having started it in the early 90s and just keeping his customers happy for 30ish years. He has several big local commercial clients from his early years that still use him because they know he or one of his staff will always show up.

Also I think the bigger players in the space, ABM-types, aren’t interested in commercial space smaller than XX,000 sqft where my dad has been able to fit in nicely.

I guess like with many job. You can put a little heart into it and care about the customers. This is something that is hard to replicate in scale for big cleaning company. Not many cleaning companies do that. And those who do are loved deeply by their customers.

There aren't very meaningful benefits to scale in that business. It's labor intensive, and no critical central infrastructure is needed. Capital costs (those janitorial carts) and supplies are a lot smaller than labor costs.

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