Three Window Cleaning Stories for Wednesday

The Dubai businessman Peter Manzi has a deviously simple plan to clean up: On a recent Monday afternoon, I watched as a shopper stood in the Géant hypermarket in Dubai, contemplating an expanse of window-cleaning products. First, the man picked up a spray bottle containing a blue liquid and examined the ingredients, then he did the same with purple and pink. The bottles of Clearwater, a colourless glass cleaner located on one of the lower shelves, went unexplored. Purple it was.

Clearwater, which is currently being produced in Dubai by an Englishman named Peter Manzi, could very well be the eco-friendliest household cleaner on the planet. In fact, I’ve just taken a swig of the stuff, and I’m fine. This is probably because Clearwater is just, well, clear water. As the bottle informs, it’s “100% Chemical Free”.
Manzi insists that there is more to his product than meets the eye. It’s gone through a filtering process, one involving complicated-sounding things like reverse osmosis. “Normal drinking water has particles in it – calcium, sodium, magnesium,” Manzi explains. “But this is pure water.” The idea is that, stripped of its minerals, water attempts to replenish itself with whatever particles it can find. As Manzi puts it: “It tries to revert back to its natural state. It actually draws in the dirt.”
Even if this is true, it doesn’t fit on a catchy label, so consumers are confronted with something that looks, smells and tastes like the stuff that comes out of their taps. “Yes, this question has arisen,” Manzi says. “I’ve had some comments.”
Manzi, 49, launched Clearwater glass cleaner six months ago, on the back of a window-washing enterprise he founded in 2007. The Clearwater cleaning company has done well, with corporate contracts that include ENOC and Etihad, along with enough individual clients to keep its 25 employees busy. While his firm isn’t the only one using hyper-purified water to clean windows, Manzi says that he’s the first to put it into a spray bottle – a leap, he says, that will one day make him a global force in the household cleaner category. “This could be in Wal-Mart or Tesco,” he says. “Why not?” Earlier this year, as part of an expansion drive, Manzi set up a plant in Barsha; according to him, it can produce 75,000 litres of purified water a day, though it might be a while until the plant is working at full capacity. Meanwhile, Manzi’s efforts to get local supermarkets to carry Clearwater haven’t been entirely successful – all but Geant and Le Marché have turned him down – and he is currently shifting only about 500 bottles a month. “I’m hoping the numbers will go up,” he says. “We’re looking into advertising, doing a proper marketing campaign.”
Despite Clearwater’s limited success so far, Manzi says he is confident that his product will soon be able to compete with more established brands. In fact, he adds, his biggest worry is that larger companies will see what he is doing and develop a clear water of their own. “There are only so many ways to filtrate water,” he says. ”You can’t protect yourself against imitators. The only thing I can do is get this product out there, because if the big players thought they could make money, they’d get it out there pretty quick.” The environmental appeal alone, he adds, makes Clearwater a very attractive prospect for the future.
“There’s a feel about the world now,” Manzi says. “If we want to protect ourselves, we need to start using these kinds of products.” Consumers, however, have 100 years of conventional wisdom telling them chemicals are uniquely effective at doing things like cleaning windows, that a bottle of household cleaner should be a strange colour, have a distinctive aroma and be harmful if swallowed. “The proof is in trying the product,” Manzi insists. “Buy a bottle and try it at home.”
I take Manzi’s advice and test Clearwater on a balcony door that hasn’t been cleaned, to my knowledge, since I moved into my flat over a year ago. As the bottle contains no instructions, I spray it on, leave it for a moment, then wipe it off with kitchen towels. My control group is an adjacent window, which I wash in the same way with ordinary tap water. The tap water window ends up streaky; the Clearwater window doesn’t. I wash a third window with a major-brand, blue-tinted glass cleaner, which also leaves the window streak-free. But I don’t dare to drink it.

A toast to the city's small businesses - A route back to employment: Starting a business offered a route back to employment for single dad Norman Straight, who set up window cleaning company Straight Clean after five years out of work. Mr Straight, 31, from the Marlpit estate in Norwich, was left with responsibility for his sons Jay, 13, Dominic, 11 and eight-year-old Ethan after the break up of a relationship in 2002, and spent years out of work, selling the Big Issue to help make ends meet. But in October 2007 he had an idea to go out armed with a mop and bucket to earn some cash, and with help from business support organisations he set up his company last year.
Mr Straight, who was recently named entrepreneur of the year in a national New Entrepreneur Scholarship competition, went on to win two big contracts, with the Henderson Business Centre in Earlham and an old people's home in Cringleford. He said winning new business was difficult in the recession but being self-employed helped him fit work around his family commitments. He said: “Being self-employed gives you much more freedom as a single parent. As a small business I can offer a personal touch. I know my customers and I treat them as individuals, where a big company would treat everyone the same. “I know most of my customers by name.
“You should think carefully before setting up a business in the recession. People just haven't got much money at the moment. When I go and try and get new business people are cleaning their own windows, even shops are doing it themselves, but I am keeping my head above the water.” Knowing my industry gave me the confidence to go it alone. With a string of shops standing empty across the city, starting up a business in a recession can be scary.

Ex-firefighter red-faced over shed blaze: Red-faced former firefighter Ross Sheppard had to call the fire brigade out when his shed caught fire. Mr Sheppard, 30, was burning cardboard and wood in an incinerator bin in his back garden when the flames spread to a wooden shed. The shed caught fire when Mr Sheppard went indoors to attend to his six-week-old son, Louie, and his partner, Claire Fonteyne, 30. The couple, who live in Awdry Road, Devizes, were alerted to the fire by the barking of their Jack Russell dog, Vinni, and Mr Sheppard quickly filled a bucket with water and threw it over the flames. He refilled the bucket about six times and, as well as attempting to douse the flames, he threw water on to his second wooden shed next to the one on fire to stop it spreading. He was unable to put out the fire but did stop it engulfing the other shed, although two perspex window panels in it melted.
Mr Sheppard, a window cleaner, said: “The flames were about ten feet high and the roof of the shed was well ablaze. The roof was gone so then it was a case of controlling it until the fire engine came. “I probably could have put it out eventually but it was easier to call the fire brigade out. It could have caught neighbours’ sheds so potentially it could have been a lot worse. “I went indoors to feed Louie and I got distracted. If I had stayed with the incinerator bin the shed wouldn’t have caught fire.” The shed that was on fire was destroyed, along with a trampoline and two children’s bikes which were inside.
Mr Sheppard was a retained fire fighter in Devizes for four years from 2000. He was featured in a local news television programme which filmed him as a new recruit to the fire service and followed his progress through training. He left the fire service when he moved from the town centre and could not give the same commitment. Pip Flowers, commander of Devizes Fire Station, said: “While we were on the fire truck driving to the fire we said to each other that we thought it was near Ross’s house. “Ross was a bit embarrassed about it and he had a fair bit of mickey taking from us. Joking aside Ross did everything right when he realised the shed was on fire. His actions in putting water on the second shed definitely saved it from going up in flames. He did well with what he had available to contain the fire.”