A rather quick & varied history of one of the blogs sponsors for today - Jeff Brown of "Reflections Window Cleaning" & "The Discount Sign Center." Jeff is based in & around Somerset in the UK.
After a 9 year military career in the RMC, Jeff became a electronic security Engineer and spent 15 years installing, servicing and repairing intruder alarms, CCTV Systems and fire alarms. Jeff found that after 15 years he was becoming bored with this job and fancied a change from the 24hr call-out and 7 days a week routine. He just happened to mention it to one of the neighbors who he never even knew was a window cleaner. His neighbour & partner had been window cleaners for the past 30 years & were planning to retire within the next few months and looking for someone to take over the business! First of all Jeff laughed at him and said "somehow I can't see me as a window cleaner," went home and told his wife, and she to laughed too? .. This opportunity played on his mind and it dawned on him that he could finally become his own boss, so he sat the wife down and chatted to her and asked her - "what her thoughts were on the idea?" She said "you have nothing to loose so give it a shot"... cutting a long story short.
After a 9 year military career in the RMC, Jeff became a electronic security Engineer and spent 15 years installing, servicing and repairing intruder alarms, CCTV Systems and fire alarms. Jeff found that after 15 years he was becoming bored with this job and fancied a change from the 24hr call-out and 7 days a week routine. He just happened to mention it to one of the neighbors who he never even knew was a window cleaner. His neighbour & partner had been window cleaners for the past 30 years & were planning to retire within the next few months and looking for someone to take over the business! First of all Jeff laughed at him and said "somehow I can't see me as a window cleaner," went home and told his wife, and she to laughed too? .. This opportunity played on his mind and it dawned on him that he could finally become his own boss, so he sat the wife down and chatted to her and asked her - "what her thoughts were on the idea?" She said "you have nothing to loose so give it a shot"... cutting a long story short.
Jeff took over the window cleaning round from Stan and Stewart back in June 1997 and joined them before their retirement, working with them to learn all the tips and tricks of traditional window cleaning. Finally at the end of June - Stan and Stewart retired and left him to get on with it. Straight away, Jeff employed his wife Lynne (known by many on the forums as the Boss!) on a full time basis, and with a full round of 500 customers (most of whom were way under priced), he also employed his 3 daughters on a part time basis. It seemed at times Jeff was being bombarded with new customers when they were seen: 4 female window cleaners! Time went on and the girls all got married and left, so Jeff & Lynne had to cope with a huge round! Gradually he gave away a couple of hundred customers to another window cleaner in the area. Three years ago Jeff took the plunge, and invested in a water fed pole system and found he was able to cover the smaller round quite easily. But then just after the wfp change over, his wife, Lynne (the Boss) was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and her condition gradually became worse.
The time came to decide what to do with the window cleaning business, his eldest girl now married with 3 boys told him that she would like to take over the whole business and the Boss and Jeff were more than happy to pass it onto Michelle - his eldest. She bought herself a van and Jeff fitted it out with the wfp system, she decided she wanted a sign written van and called on the services of an online DIY vinyl sign supplier and after a great deal of issues with the company her signs finally arrived - but not to the specification she requested. But Michelle being Michelle decided that she would fit the vinyl signs. When she turned up at the door to show Jeff, the first thing Jeff asked was "who fitted them for you?" Her reply was "I did them myself," this got Jeff thinking - 'now that most of my days are spent at home looking after the Boss', he looked into what was involved with supplying vinyl signs, but he never wanted to get into it in a huge way. He purchased all the equipment and decided that the main customer base would be the window cleaners - but found he was getting small orders from around his own town and all by word of mouth. Now Jeff still wanted to focus on the window cleaners to keep the business small - again another decision was needed? "Do I open up to everyone and neglect the window cleaner?" Not likely! So he decided to give the window cleaner the biggest discount that he could, but make enough money to cover his costs! So anyone who looks at Jeff's website - look out for the 3 stage discount that he offers to the window cleaner.
Jeff began doing some signs for Window cleaning clients and the feed back he received was encouraging to say the least. Kindly the clients supplied photo's of what they used their signs on, because its not just cars and vans that can be sign written - it is most of our equipment. Jeff showed pictures on the "Waterfed Pole Training Academy" (website owned & run by Jeff & Joe) of his daughters tank, backpack and improvements to her own vans sign writing. Poles, trolley's and the back of car windows have been sign written with signs produced by Jeff for you to install yourself.
Jeff decided he wasn't happy with just doing vinyl for his equipment so branched out to producing vinyl printed clothing, and the results so far are very encouraging. So encouraging in fact, that Jeff has branched out again and decided to do sublimation printing. Tests are still under way - so Jeff can now offer promotional items for your business! Jeff says "the range is huge," so look in now and again to the website to see the items on offer. This side is run by the boss who Jeff managed to talk into giving the window cleaners a discount above anything else. The new "Discount Signs" website is still under construction and will be finished soon. Jeff says
Jeff can be reached at:
Discount Signs
See Jeff's New Products
Reflections Window Cleaning
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