Hey Lee... I'm not on a cruise this week, but I sure will be next week! In fact, I am getting married on a cruise one week from today. lol
How did VacAway come about?
Out of frustration! I just wasn’t completely happy with the then available carpet cleaning products and spotters. I wanted better, higher concentrated products that would eliminate or greatly reduce resoiling issues.
So with lots of experimentation and the assistance of a very young, retired DuPont Chemist we started developing the VacAway line.
Describe the average day at your Chemical Company.
Busy, busy, busy… Filling orders, developing new products, improving others, providing product technical support to our customers, working on marketing, and all the other things that are involved in any viable business.
Describe the average day at your Cleaning Company.
Not Applicable…. We sold it effective Sep 08. The sale has allowing us more time to spend working in our VacAway business which is growing like crazy. We grew by over 40% in 2007 and will have grown by well over 50% again in 2008! 2009… who knows? lol
Please list the products and or services you provide.
Rather than list each product it is much easier to just place a link to our products page on our website.
http://vacaway.com/products_display/ Other products are in the works and of course we also have the carpet cleaning business software
“ChaChing” that we have made available
FREE to many of our customers.
Where would you like to see your VacAway in five years?
I want VacAway to continue to develop even better cleaning products…. We do not aspire to become a very large company. We just want to develop the best products on the planet and keep our company size small enough to avoid the management headaches larger companies have.
How do the Bulletin Boards help your companies?
We have enjoyed a tremendous amount of the best advertising one can hope for….
Word of Mouth!
Without the bulletin boards our growth rate would have been slower for sure. Before I started VacAway, I used to post a LOT on all the boards. I know if I continued to post a lot, it would help sell more products, but I have always disliked seeing others take that sales approach, so now I don’t post nearly as much as I used to. On top of that I don’t have much time available for the boards… Maybe I can find more time for posting in the future now that I have sold my carpet cleaning company.
As a business owner, what is the biggest challenge you face on a daily basis?
#1 is time to get it all done. #2 is Warehouse Space.
What frustrates most about your two businesses?
Running two businesses was too time consuming….Now that I only have one business, lack of time is still the most frustrating part. Lol
Pick five Board Members to be your RD division.
R&D folks have to have a mind of their own and be able to call a spade a spade. No YES men will work! They also must be able to test products SIDE by SIDE against the best competitive products they know of. Without testing side by side the testing is absolutely useless and will be very misleading. If I am working on a new liquid product the tester must test it side by side against the best competive liquid on the market. Testing a liquid against a powder is useless information for me.
PigMan Sutley has been a pretty good R&D guy… Sutley has got a lot of flack when he has praised any of my products…. He gets accused of getting free products, but that just isn’t true. The only thing free any tester ever gets from me is the product as it is being tested. And then they get it in only small amounts. Once a new product is released, testers pay the same amount for it as everyone else (no discounts)!
Although, I haven’t really used his services much I believe one the best guys on this board to test things is MEAT. He is a stand up guy that will not pull any punches and give you his HONEST opinion.
Jimmy Ladwig can be a pretty good tester if he would just stop comparing potential liquid products to powders. ;-) One thing is for sure if Jimmy says he even slightly likes something you can be sure that he actually LOVES it! A compliment from Jimmy really, really means something and a praise from him is like finding a needle in a hay stack!
My best tester, so far, is a 30 year HWE guy that doesn’t post much on the boards and wants to remain anonymous, but he knows his stuff and has been an invaluable R&D guy. There are a couple of others from this board that I have just started using as testers, but it is too early to comment on how good they are yet.
Thanks,
Steve Smith