Expanding The Window Cleaning Family Business

Jim Vaughn's license plates honor a window cleaner's best friend. Click to enlarge.

Gresham's All Clean Window Service is thriving as father hands reins of family business to son - When Jim Vaughn got into the window-cleaning business in the 1970s, many computers were the size of his van. Now, 35 years later, Vaughn carries a computer in his pocket, but the tools of his trade have not changed much: It still takes a squeegee to clean a window.

Even so, Vaughn's All Clean Window Service has rebooted and modernized in the past year and a half, since his son Brandon joined as a partner in the company based in the elder Vaughn's Gresham home. Like his four older siblings, 29-year-old Brandon Vaughn spent years scraping the grime off glass alongside his father before making his own way into the working world. Unlike his brothers and sisters, Brandon was drawn back, particularly as his father nears his 64th birthday and thinks about climbing fewer ladders. "Windows just run in our blood," Brandon Vaughn says with a chuckle, noting that his brother tints windows and one of his sisters sells window coverings.

Jim Vaughn left a job printing telephone books and newspaper inserts so he wouldn't have to work nights. At the time he was a young father with two daughters and a third on the way. Two sons would follow. "My family was more important," he says. "I didn't want to be away from my kids." A retiring acquaintance was selling off a small window-cleaning business, and Jim Vaughn thought it might be a better fit for family life.

Jim Vaughn, (right) who turns 64 in a few weeks, will leave more of the window washing to son Brandon and two employees as he scales back his workload at All Clean Window Service in the coming years. Vaughn's business has been cleaning glass in Gresham and surrounding areas for the three and a half decades.

Like father, like son. Brandon Vaughn also had two young kids when his job marketing machinery demanded ever-increasing travel, and three decades later he came to the same conclusion. A business is born - When Jim Vaughn washed his first windows in the late 1970s, it was tough to earn $800 a month during the slower winter months. For a while, he and family members did janitorial work to make ends meet. He grew his business just enough to fill a schedule for himself and one more worker and then kept it on an even plane for years. At one point he sold part of his client list to keep from getting too busy.

Increasingly, more aggressive companies are moving into the window-washing business, but Jim Vaughn says he never felt it because he kept his customers happy. At least a fifth of his customers today have been with him for 25 years or longer. "Unless they move or pass away, or the economy hurts them, very rarely do our customers leave," he says. One customer, Jeff Baldwin, general manager of Suburban Chevrolet in Sandy, says he's had other people make bids to clean his windows. "I won't even listen to them," he says. "(Jim Vaughn's) word is his bond. He does what he says he's going to do."

The Vaughns plan to keep that same approach now that Brandon is on board, though with a bit more volume and significantly more technology. In the past year or so, Brandon has built a website and rebranded the company, including new graphics on their shirts and vans. He outfitted them with iPhones and iPads, fully synched with their schedules and accounting software. They are armed with carbon fiber window-washing poles and automatic water filtration systems. They've added gutter cleaning, roof treatment and pressure washing to their menu of services. "I love this kind of stuff," Brandon Vaughn says . "My dad passed on his entrepreneurial spirit to me."

Jim (left) and Brandon Vaughn help customer Geri Nevis enjoy a clear view from her rural home southeast of Gresham. Click to enlarge.

Trust matters - So far, it's working. Brandon Vaughn says sales have increased 30 percent over last year and 50 percent when comparing last month to February 2012. They employ two young men who also attend the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall on Salquist Road where the Vaughns are active. Their customers range from residents of modest ranch houses, who pay about $100 per service, to mansion owners and big commercial building managers who can pay many times that sum to make their windows sparkle. Commercial businesses often schedule them for monthly cleans while most homeowners opt for twice-yearly service.

The Vaughns are expanding both the residential and commercial sides of their business. Most of their customers are in an area that includes Gresham, Sandy and east Portland, but they have some customers stretching from the Willamette River to Welches. Building a larger customer base is part of the family's succession plan, creating enough income to allow Jim Vaughn to work part-time and supplement retirement while helping to support Brandon Vaughn's and their employees' families.

The younger Vaughn says they don't want to expand All Clean so much that customers no longer recognize the person on the other side of the glass. "If we have enough (business) to take care of ourselves and our families, that's all we need," he says. "I think that's why our customers appreciate us." The level of familiarity and trust that the Vaughns have built with customers is much of the reason they are booking cleaning jobs well into 2014, they say. It's why Geri Nevis has kept them coming back to her home built on a hillside between Gresham and Boring for the past 35 years. Well, that and the fact that her back windows are more than two stories above the ground. "I'm not going to climb those heights," Nevis says, "and my (late) husband had no intention of doing them."