Want your oven cleaned? Looking for a dog walker? Need your clothes ironed? Time-poor consumers are ready to pay to avoid doing the jobs they hate, writes Michael Kelly.
I heard a primary-school teacher tell an alarming anecdote on the radio not long ago. A "mess" was made in her classroom when she stepped out of the room. When she came back she tried to find out who the culprit was by asking the children who they thought should clean it up. After some soul searching, one little boy said: "The cleaning lady?" I was driving along, wondering how a child picked up such a strange attitude, when a van marked "wheelie-bin cleaning service" went by - and I had my answer. Over the past decade, as our affluence has increased, we seem to have become less interested in menial tasks, and all manner of unpleasant chores have been taken on by service providers.
Can you imagine our parents or our parents' parents paying someone to hose out a wheelie bin, walk the dogs, wash the car, clean the oven, iron shirts or unblock a drain? In the old Ireland, the notion would have been indulgent bordering on sinful.
It is often said we are cash rich and time poor. But isn't "time poor" just a euphemism for lazy? Cash-poor people really are poor. Time-poor people have the same amount of time each day as everyone else. It's how we choose to allocate it that decides whether we are time poor or time rich.
It's rather ironic that, having worked all the hours God sends, we redistribute our disposable income by paying people to do jobs we don't have time for. The uncomfortable truth is that what's at work here is old-fashioned elitism. Farming out nasty chores is a statement of opulence, status and social class.
Answer this honestly: if you were to map out our social hierarchy, where would you put yourself in relation to the guy you pay to queue for your passport? Above or below him? On a par? Is your time more valuable than his?
There's nothing new in any of this, but nowadays there are subtle differences. The types of jobs we outsource have changed, and there are far more of them. More of us can afford to pay other people to do the jobs we don't like. And the service providers have a new view of themselves: there's no cap doffing; instead, they are motivated by a desire to work for themselves. They spotted a gap in the market, then filled it, earning a good living along the way.
We all buy into this little subsector of the economy. You could argue that it's the grease that keeps the wheels of commerce moving. So we shouldn't be surprised to hear a child say: "The cleaning lady will do it." They learned it at the feet of the masters.
AILEEN CLANCY, PLUSH PUPPY
During a visit to Australia for a friend's wedding, Aileen Clancy saw a mobile pet-grooming service. She kept the idea in the back of her mind as a student at the University of Limerick, where she was taking a degree in production management.
After graduating, she bought a Transit van to convert, so she could set up her own service. "It includes the grooming table, bath and equipment, so it's like a little office. I had to import the bath from Australia; it's a special device which has a water tank, pump and heater. It has enough water in it for about four cleans."
The next step was training. "I did a five-week course on dog grooming. Particular breeds need a particular cut, so you have to be trained."
Clancy started grooming full time about a year ago, and business has become brisk. "It was a little slow to start. I was the first to do it in Limerick, and people weren't really sure what it was about to start with. But I'm really busy now, purely from word of mouth. I just pull up outside a person's house, groom the dog and leave. It takes about an hour and a half."
So is it all pampered pooches and wealthy owners? "Not at all. I have no 'type' of customer. There are all sorts - a lot of families where people have very little time. Taking a dog to a groomer and then collecting it a few hours later, that's half a day gone. People like the convenience of it. Grooming is a specialised skill, and people are willing to pay for it."
Clancy charges €40 for an average-sized dog. "Some breeds are more stubborn than others and so are more difficult. I groomed six St Bernards for a lady once, and it took me three days."
Clancy married David Wallace, the Munster backrow, last year. "I don't like trading off it, to be honest, but most of my customers would know, I suppose, and they always talk rugby to me."
Plush Puppy is at 087-6027526.
KIERAN SHEEHAN, OVEN BLITZ
It may be some people's idea of a career from hell, but Kieran Sheehan has been cleaning people's ovens for the past four years. "I was working as a dental hygienist in England but wanted to do something where I would be working for myself. Cleaning the oven used to be my job in the house I was in, and I hated it so I got someone in to do it for me. That's when I realised there was a business model there. I also knew that Ireland tends to lag behind England on services like this and that if I could get started before anyone else I would be laughing."
How does he handle making a living from a job he used to hate so much? "It's all about the tools. The key is to use very sharp blades, as you're essentially dealing with burnt-on carbon. I have my own degreasers that are specially made by a chemist. Before I started I went to cooker manufacturers and found out the recommended way to clean their models. But there's a lot of pure hard work and sweat involved, too."
Sheehan, who is based in Gorey, Co Wexford, is now so busy that he may need to hire an assistant, but initially the business struggled. "It was a really tough slog for the first year or so. I remember walking the streets with leaflets and having blisters on my feet. But these days it's exceptionally busy. Since October I have been doing about 20 cleans a week."
The service is not cheap: a single oven costs €80, a double costs oven about €95 and Aga and Stanley ranges cost significantly more. So why are people willing to pay for it? "They have money but they don't have time," he says. "They just don't want to do a job like this themselves. They don't want to spend their Saturday on their knees getting filthy."
Sheehan believes a key to his success is the fact that he can do a better job than an amateur. "I get the cooker back looking like new. I take doors apart and get in behind the glass. It will be shining afterwards. Also, a lot of people are turned off by the standard oven-cleaning products. I get business from parents with kids or pregnant women who don't want fumes in their house. I have a lot of regulars - people who get their oven cleaned once or twice a year. It's almost like a treat for them. Once you have your oven professionally cleaned, there's no going back."
Oven Blitz is at 1890-333222, www.ovenblitz.com.
JIM O'CONNOR, IRONING EXPRESS
Jim O'Connor, who used to work in quality management in a number of multinational manufacturing companies, always wanted to start his own business. "I was constantly on the lookout for the right service, and I came across the idea of ironing. I researched markets in the US and the UK and realised
it was a service that wasn't being offered locally," he says. The 36-year-old left his job last year and established Ironing Express in October. "It was a difficult decision to leave a good job and a situation where you have a guaranteed pay cheque each month. I knew it was a risk, especially since we have a young baby. But I knew I had come across the right idea, so that made it easier."
The company initially offered the service in Lucan, in Co Dublin. There was an immediate response. "We were really happy with the reaction of customers, and gradually we started to roll out to other areas in west and south Dublin. We started leaflet drops and set up our website."
Ironing Express collects ironing and dry-cleaning from your home and delivers it back to you when it's complete. "That's the key for us. I noticed that the racks in dry-cleaners were always full of clothes, because people either forget or don't have time to collect them. We spend so much time in traffic, getting to work or ferrying children around to schools and activities, that, increasingly, people are struggling to cope. They don't have time to get in the car in the evenings, so the convenience factor is crucial. The vast majority of our collections are after 6pm."
O'Connor was surprised by the mix of customers. "We were expecting lots of busy, young working couples, but there are also lots of single people and young mothers. I think a lot of our customers are people who just hate ironing. It's that type of job. The average household spends three to five hours ironing per week, so you can free up enormous amounts of time by outsourcing the work."
He believes some of the skills he learned in manufacturing help him to operate the business. "Quality and customer service are really important.
Our customers must know that every time they send a load away for ironing they will get every item back and that the quality of the service will be impeccable.
They need to know we are reliable, on time and convenient."
Business is good, and customers are happy with the service, he says. "A lot of our customers are regulars. We do ironing for them each week or bi-weekly. Some of them just call us when the ironing mounts up."
Ironing Express charges €6 a kilogram; a kilogram is equivalent to about five shirts. Collection and next-day delivery are included in the cost.
Ironing Express is at 087-2164109 or www.ironingexpress.ie
LARRY BREEN, GRAVITY LOCKS
Larry Breen has a salutary tale for would-be jobs-we-hate entrepreneurs. For a number of years he ran a successful wheelie-bin-cleaning service in Dublin.
"We saw another guy doing it, and we thought it was a great idea, so we bought a franchise which included a special bin-cleaning unit. The wheelie bin would be attached to the back of the unit and cleaned with a power hose. Then the water used in the cleaning process would be taken back into the unit and recycled, so you're not throwing dirty water on the street and you have clean water for the next job."
Why bother cleaning a bin at all? "They get filthy. You get a build-up of rubbish in the bottom of it, and you get maggots. There is also the smell. We would sanitise and deodorise the bin, and it would stay fairly clean-smelling for a few weeks. It would typically take one or two cleans initially to get a wheelie bin back to its original state, then regular monthly cleans would keep it ticking over."
But why are people willing to pay for this when they could simply get out the hose and some rubber gloves and get scrubbing?
"People just don't have the time. In most families both parents are working. Messy, dirty jobs like that, people just don't want to do them any more. They prefer to pay someone else. The service was reasonably cheap. It was only €5 per clean. At its peak we were doing 100 bins on bin day. We were out at 7.30am and finishing up at maybe 7pm. We followed the bin lorry around, and once the bin was empty we would come along and clean the bin. We had stickers on our customers' bins, so we knew which ones to clean."
After a year building up his business, Breen saw it killed off by the local authority's decision to introduce pay-by-weight bin charges. "People don't put out their bins as much now, and when they aren't going out they don't need to be cleaned. It wasn't worth our while any more. It's unfortunate, but that's the way things go. We had to sell the cleaning unit."
Undeterred, Breen spotted another opportunity in the wheelie-bin area: he began to import "gravity locks" from Germany that prevent people dumping waste in your bin.
"When the bin goes out for collection it's locked, so no one can dump waste in it. Then, when the bin is turned upside down by the refuse truck during collection, the lock releases, allowing the bin to empty. When the bin is put back down, the lid is locked again." Breen charges €60 to supply and fit one of his locks.
Gravity Locks is at 087-2772497