Forbes Features Men In Kilts

Men In Kilts go from strength to strength, Tressa Wood center, Brent Hohlweg Left. Click to enlarge.

Will Kilt-Wearing Window Washers Be In Your City By 2017? - If you want men in kilts standing on ladders as they wash your windows, you may be able to rent them if you live in the right North American city. The company behind this innovation is Men In Kilts that describes itself as “a franchised window and exterior cleaning company whose cleaning technicians wear kilts while they work.”

As I learned from interviewing its founder Nicholas Brand on July 25,  Brand was born in Vancouver, BC and his father immigrated there at age 25 from Aberdeen, Scotland. Men In Kilts — they do not ‘go commando’ — is already in nine north American cities — with 66 more by 2017.

He decided to start a business in 2002 when he was 24. As Brand explained, “In high school, the teacher who inspired me most had a successful tourism business and one of my uncles had run a successful business and retired at 50. Six years after high school, I was working at a Vancouver Boston Pizza and decided with my wife’s support to start a business. I thought about three possible opportunities: landscaping, painting, and window washing.”

The lack of competition and the low entry barriers steered him to window washing. “Landscaping was too competitive and painting required too much technical skill. There were no window cleaners in the market, and I only had a few hundred dollars in my bank account,” explained Brand.

The company has a good story behind its name. Brand said, ”Right from the beginning, we decided to have our men wear kilts. My friends and I were at a bar and one of them thought that kilts would reflect my proud Scottish heritage. Kilts have been worn for hundreds of years; soldiers wore them into battle in World War II; and everyone knew the movie, Braveheart [a 1995 movie about William Wallace, a kilt-wearing Scottish rebel who leads an uprising against the cruel English ruler Edward the Longshanks].”

The business started gradually. Brand said, “My wife and I started walking around Vancouver handing out flyers and for the first few years we lived off her salary from her job at a paper company and ate macaroni and cheese. Each time I hired a new worker, she sewed him a new kilt.”

In 2008, Tressa Wood, former VP of Operations at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, was on maternity leave. She read an article in the local newspaper about Men In Kilts and its interest in franchising the service. As Wood explained in a July 25 interview, “I would see the guys from Men In Kilts around town with their truck wrapped in tartan and it would make me smile. I contacted Nicholas and talked about how I could help with franchising. I joined as CEO in 2009.”

Men In Kilts stumbled with its first franchise in east Vancouver — but the learning was valuable. According to Brand, “We wanted our new cleaning technicians to spend two to three weeks shadowing the experienced ones so they could learn how to clean windows as we had done before we started franchising. But in a new territory, there were no experienced people. So we had to improve our training.”

Men In Kilts is now in nine cities. “We are in Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia and the Jersey Coast,” said Brand.

The cost of a Men In Kilts franchise is fairly low and the possibility of earning back the franchise depends on revenues and cash flow. As Wood explained, “The start-up fee for a franchise – given out by zip or postal code — varies between $45,000 and $150,000 depending on the number of households — $20,000 per 100,000 households — and the number of trucks. We also charge a [7%] royalty fee and a [6%] fee for handling inbound calls and scheduling. And the annual revenues of our franchises varied from $100,000 to $3.5 million.”

Wood looks for people who are comfortable wearing kilts when she looks for someone to lead a franchise. “We look for people who really want to take control of their futures; have a strong customer-service orientation; are outgoing enough to like the attention they’ll get when they wear a kilt; get the job done efficiently; solve problems on-the-fly with a MacGyver-like mindset; have the energy to take advantage of all the opportunities in the residential and commercial markets.”

When people call in to its central call center, Wood notes that most of the callers are female. “Overall, 60% of the calls are from women and 40% from men. Residential callers tend to be more skewed towards women and commercial callers are more often men,” she explained.

Men in kilts washing windows on ladders could lead to awkward moments but Brand has a handy response: “People ask me: ‘What happens on windy days?’ I tell them, ‘We let the wind answer that.’”

How to Balance a Gimmick With Serious Business. Tressa Wood pictured center.

How to Balance a Gimmick With Serious Business: By Tressa Wood (CEO, Men in Kilts) - Back in 2009 when I first told people I was joining Men In Kilts and we were planning to franchise, some people said, “Really, Tressa? Isn’t that just a gimmick?” Gimmick is defined as, “an innovative stratagem or scheme employed especially to promote a project.” Another definition is, “a unique or quirky special feature that makes something ‘stand out’ from its contemporaries.” We definitely stand out and I would agree that we are unique, maybe even quirky. People stop, look, and smile when they see us. That is pretty powerful. But how do we ensure the perceived gimmick is more than just that? We put it aside, and built our business strategy and systems as if the gimmick did not exist. We quickly got to the point of, “Forget the kilts. How will we become the leader in this market, even if we were ABC Window Cleaning franchise?” Here are some ways to help your seemingly off the wall name or idea becomes more than a gimmick: 

FOLLOW UP WITH CUSTOMERS IMMEDIATELY 

We found that most of our competitors did not make it a priority to respond to customer inquiries within the day, let alone within minutes. We built a centralized customer service and sales center where our team answers customer calls from across North America in less than 60 seconds. Market research is an important first step as this type of strategy would have been difficult to implement after franchising had begun.  

BUILD AN “EXCEED EXPECTATIONS” CULTURE 

 It really is the little things that matter. Our teams are on the lookout for opportunities to provide a little more than expected, in any situation. The question is always: what can we do that’s even more unique than the kilts we’re wearing? For example, changing a hard-to-reach light bulb for a customer while we’re cleaning their interior windows, getting involved in the community and supporting a charity, or even stopping to help someone change a flat tire. We encourage everyone at Men In Kilts to go the extra mile and do more than people would expect from a window cleaning company.  

MEASURE FEEDBACK 

We’re not perfect and if we make a mistake or someone isn’t happy with our work, we want to know so we can make it right. We follow up with customers after every job, we use the NPS (Net Promoter Score) system to measure where we stand in terms of service, and we listen to our customers. We also guarantee our work. If businesses are not accountable to delivering what they say they will, customers will not stay loyal.  

AS THE CEO, STAY DIRECTLY CONNECTED TO CUSTOMERS 

The CEO needs a direct line to the customer. It is not something you can pass off. The NPS email goes out from my alternate email address, so customers can respond to me directly. I have a copy of every NPS response delivered to a folder in my inbox, which I review weekly. Considering happy customers are critical to our success, I make it a priority to stay connected.  

LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY … and keep your growth plans in mind. 

Every role in our company can be done from a home office. This mobility allows us to keep overhead down, attract great people and remain flexible and responsive as we grow and navigate our way through start up. We also ensure we are respectful of the Scottish culture, and we wear our Wallace tartan kilts with pride. We make every effort to manage the brand and never cross the line from being fun to being “sexy,” which can be a challenge. We once had a women call us to try and book our service during a wedding shower, which we respectfully declined. Don’t get me wrong, while it takes a lot more than just wearing a kilt to make customers happy, we leverage the kilt angle as much as possible. It makes marketing virtually a breeze and the PR is fantastic. So if you are thinking of ways to stand out and be different, make sure you do it with taste and purpose.