51ºÚÁÏ

After years of working out of a refurbished racquetball club in Manchester, the move to 217 Chesterfield Towne Centre expands Fish Window Cleaning’s ability to train owners and support its more than 200 franchise locations, said company president Randy Cross.

Fish Window Cleaning was founded by CEO Mike Merrick in Chesterfield Valley in 1978. Today, it has about 220 franchises across the country. Cross, who owns a Fish Window Cleaning in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said the company opens about 10 new locations annually.

Justin Carroll, the owner-operator of a Fish Window Cleaning in Sunset Hills, said his team of 10 employees does about 250 jobs a week. Carroll’s territory covers from the Central West End to Festus; clients include Suntrup dealerships, Mercy and Dierbergs.

“If it has glass we will clean it� he said.

His friend helped him get a job in Fish Window Cleaning’s corporate office but after six years there, Carroll said he wanted to work more in the field. He had no experience washing windows or running a franchise, he said, but following the company’s playbook and sticking to the system has worked.

“It’s so funny that it wasn’t even on my radar and here I am fully invested,� he said. “Nobody wakes up and is like, ‘I want to be window cleaner.’ We can teach you the window cleaning part. The window cleaning is the easier part.�

Franchisees frequently travel into 51ºÚÁÏ to attend a week of training, which includes classroom lessons, window cleaning practice and door knocking to try and win new customers.

The company’s new 12,500-square-foot space includes an office built with different types of windows and French doors for trainees to practice squeegeeing. Cross said trainees also practice on the windows of neighboring businesses.

One room is set up as a mock office, complete with desks and displays, to demonstrate to visitors what their own locations should look like.

“I wanted franchisees to see and experience exactly what they’re expected to work inside — and so showing it exactly as we’d like them to go out and do it was important to me,� Cross said.

‘Clean windows are clean windows’

Besides one location at 450 Weidman Road in Ballwin, all Fish Window Cleaning stores are independently owned. That’s because CEO Merrick believes in the franchise model, Cross said.

The company focuses on commercial businesses, largely because commercial customers need more consistent care and those jobs are not weather-dependent, Cross said.

His location in Michigan, where he lives part of the year, services chain companies such as Taco Bells and Belle Tire.

“Everybody thinks window cleaning — they think you either do homes or high rises,� Cross said. “Everybody likes to talk about the big jobs that they do but I don’t like the big jobs. I like small jobs because there’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of repeating revenue.�

Carroll said his Sunset Hills office has new jobs and clients every week.

“At the end of the day clean windows are clean windows. Our competitors are also providing clean windows,� he said. “It comes down to the experience and our appearance. We keep everything looking sharp with uniforms and branded equipment and material.�

Even though brick-and-mortar stores are closing across the country as consumers favor online shopping and services, Cross said new businesses just move into those vacated spaces — and they also need their windows cleaned.

The biggest threat to the window-cleaning market right now is the rise of automation, Cross said. Businesses, like New York-based Drone Ops Solutions and Colorado-based Dronewash+, are using drones to clean windows, a strategy these companies tout as when it comes to high-rise jobs.

But the window-washing industry will be one of the last things taken over by robots, Cross said, because “the quality isn’t quite there yet.�

“We say ‘window cleaning’ and most people kind of turn their nose up at it,� he said. “But it’s a really great business.�