Fish Teaches What Not To Do

hahahaha

:smiley:

Larry,
Thanks for your input. Funny and you made a good point.

To the best of my knowledge, I charge more than anybody else in my area. Every time I think I am charging to little I find out someone else is charging way less. Fish is lower than me but my costomers seem to be happy with my service and pricing. The guy in my area pays his help well and his quality is alright. I think I should raise my residential prices about 15%, but I’m waiting to see how busy I am this spring.

I worked for fish, and I believe the guy who was up for the IWCA board has the south shore franchise. It’s not just the south shore he also has Boston. I believe his father has the north shore franchise. When I was working for fish they were always in the top 5 for most new accounts. This was three years ago.

John (Mr Flintstone),
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a FISH Window Cleaning franchisee. I have operated my business for almost 10 years. And, “with all due respect”, you are incorrect on all 4 points you listed.

  1. Fish teaches a bidding formula that, when followed, results in being Premium-priced in the market.
  2. Fish is not the low standard for quality. Scruffy guys, dressed-like-a-hobo, reaking of Smirnof, that use pickle buckets, broken broom handles for poles, and dry-rotted squeegees are the low standard for quality. Fish standards require far more detail than most window cleaners employ. Fish franchisees are taught to utilize employees to be the primary glass cleaners rather than have the owners clean all the glass. The system is designed to allow the business owner to have time to run/grow his business rather than spending most of his time cleaning glass. Utilizing employees can lead to less-than stellar quality cleaning. It can also lead to great quality cleaning. Ultimately, it all depends on whether you make the right hire in the first place. Nobody is perfect when it comes to hiring decisions. For example, this forum is full of questions regarding hiring employees. This is my biggest challenge as a business owner.
  3. Fish Franchisees are not taught “penetration pricing”. We penetrate the market by writing estimates, at competitive prices, to any and all people that want them. This is usually what creates the animosity between Fish and the rest of the window cleaning world because we are perceived as somehow “stealing” customers. News Flash: if the customer goes with us because our price is lower, than you have been substantially overcharging them. If a Fish franchisee is low-balling, then he’s on his way out of business.
  4. Our workers are paid on commission. I have 8 cleaners at this time. Their pay rates for the last 2-week pay period are as follows: $9.65, $13.54, $14.29, $14.87, $16.30, $17.41, $17.76, $21.18. That is nowhere close to minimum wage. Again, if the Fish franchisee is low-balling, his employees won’t be making any money and will quit. And he will be on his way out of business.
    Your royalty payment quote is incorrect (too high) as well.

Hope this enlightens you. I’m not sure where you got your information but I wouldn’t go there again.

Don Markovich
FISH Window Cleaning
Valparaiso IN

1 Like

This is kinda funny. I did single out something that Fish was doing I found interesting, but unlike many others I am not bothered by Fish locally (we have 3 franchises)

I do know they are hated by route companies here, but those companies “low-ball” as much as anyone and to be honest hire some rather interesting folks to clean.

I do not compete with Fish as I am 99% residential. I do more residential than all 3 franchises combined. Honestly I would not care what they or anyone else charges even if they did resi more.

We should worry more about adding value to what we offer and less about what everyone else is doing.

Why I commented about their site I have no idea…

Haunt me it will

(Yoda voice)

:smiley:

(Yoda voice)

My response below was in response to the post above.

My first 2 points started with “They are generally…”, so I was not saying it’s true of all franchisees.
The information in point #3 comes from some research I did years ago when I was thinking of going with Fish. It came straight from Fish themselves.
Point #4 comes from guys I’ve talked to who used to work for Fish. I’m in the middle of 2 college towns, Fort Collins, CO and Boulder, CO. Perhaps the near minimum wage rate is uniquie in my area because of that. Whenever I meet a young person who’s been employed by Fish they’ve told me they made about $7 or $8 per hour.

I’ve found that Fish consistently prices at $1.50 per pane for in and out…for storefronts or offices. That’s the bottom rate in my area.

First, I’m not one of the guys you’ve described.
Second, I’ve been consistently hired by customers who’ve left Fish because of poor quality work.
Third, I agree with the strategy you state about the company owner. I am trying to get to the point where I don’t clean glass anymore.
Fourth, I agree with everything you state about employees.

If the customer goes with you becuase your price is lower, then I don’t want that customer anyway.
What is your definition of “substantially over charging”?

The local Fish guys pay hourly. Again, this is information I’ve gotten from former employees.
The royalty payment information I quoted…10%…is also information I got from Fish when I was researching a few years ago.

Sorry if I offended. But, I’ll always speak my piece without fear.

You may or may not be representative of all Fish franchisees.

My local Fish is now out of business per a local commercial customer. The owner typically employed “scruffy college kids who didn’t want to work and took alot of cigarette breaks. If five kids were on a project, only two or three were getting anything done.”

The Fish franchises here are not very good. I am not in any way saying that all Fish franchises are bad. We have 3 and 3 stink. I have watched them and heard many, many stories both within my local market with our industry and past customers.

The $1.50 price is absolutely the norm per pane, per side here (for storefront, other commercial varies). I don’t mean the normal Fish price I mean the normal price for everyone.

Fish does not want to make less money. They would happily charge $9 a pane. Years of competitors driving down industry prices forces ALL of us to come down. Good luck on building a route charging double or triple the price as everyone else. Unlike residential, commercial jobs get hit over and over by competitors using the “pay less money” approach. That is very powerful to a manager trying to stay in budget. After about 4 or 5 of these companies approach them they will think we are overcharging them.

I was working route before Fish ever got here and the price per pane is exactly what it is now (which is terrifying as that was over 10 years ago). We have commoditized ourselves and trained our market as well as the window cleaning industry to bid low.

If you think you have seen the worst of “low-balling”, wait until this year.

$1.50 is the price for in and out service here, not per side.

I did forget about one extremely low priced guy in my area. For example, he charges $5 for a Radio Shack for in and out. The Radio Shack has 9 big panes, 3 that require pole work. Posters have to be removed on the inside. I went in to bid my minimum of $15. This local guy is doing it for $5…and he hasn’t raised his prices in over 10 years. So, there is one local guy who is cheaper…by far…than Fish.

The stores in town that are not his are generally $1.50 per pane in and out. I have some accounts I’ve lost in another town where I was getting about $2/pane…and Fish came in and undercut. The customers have told me what price they’re leaving me for…and it always comes out to $1.50 per pane.

As for lowballing this year, I think you’re right. This type of economy tends to give birth to new window cleaners whose sole strategy is low price. I don’t blame them, though. I was brought into the industry by a company that is almost exclusively store front route work, and their main strategy…with an owner of 30+ years experience…is low pricing. I didn’t get to know my worth until connecting with other window cleaners on the Window Cleaning Network a few years ago.

Anyway, it’s because of the stiff competition and price wars that I’ve taken my focus off of store fronts and am growing the residential & low rise office building parts of my business.

You left out the fact that businesses will scale back on spending. Judging by the massive amounts of them going out of business, clean windows will not be important.

Because of this the market will be fierce and one I will stay far away from…

I must say I was a bit surprised when I noticed the truck of a local Fish franchisee here was filthy, the lettering was peeling off badly, it had dents and scratches all over it and the driver had a cigerette hanging out his mouth and was quite scruffy looking. Looked like an old farm truck with the farmer driving. That made me wonder was this because they are lowballing and don’t have the $ to maintain there vehicles. As we all know in this business appearance goes a long way in showing professionalism. I would think Fish would instill this into there franchisees and be stricked about it. They seems more like just a business opportunity structure with royalties. Seems they let anyone have a franchise as long as they show them the money.

John,

Glad to hear your piece. No need to fear anything. Ponder this…If I were to generalize all non-franchised window cleaning guys/companies you would not like it. You all are not all the same so I would not lump you in with the bad ones. Saying “Fish is this” or “Fish is that” is generalizing and unfair to the franchisees that are conducting themselves acordingly. I have an idea, maybe the forum should be separated into 1. independents and 2. businesses that have employees. I say this because we all want to serve the customer and make some money for ourselves. It’s just that the dynamics of how we operate our businesses are different. Businesses that use employees, will have more to worry about in terms of quality control because we have turned over the responsibility to someone else. This doesn’t make us inherintly bad or poor-quality, it’s just a fact for this style of operation. In turn, Independents should NEVER have quality issues since they are doing the work themselves. However, you will have to turn work away sometimes. If you had 4 large jobs call you out of the blue and wanted cleaned on the same day without any ability to move them around, (unless you could be in 4 places at once) you would have to make some decisions. Because you could not fulfill all the customers needs, I would not dismiss this person as unwilling or incapable of providing good service, it’s just the fact of the guy’s operation. We all have challenges in all of our operations. Some run their business better than others. Some are franchises, some have learned from friends or family, some have bought or inherited their business. We all had to learn somewhere. We all make mistakes. It is 100% true that what Fish teaches is not always practiced perfectly by all franchisees at all times, and that is soley the fault of the franchisee. The teaching is sound, ethical and solid. Check out the Fish mission statement. They really do “walk the walk”. I also respect you for doing a great job in your area. If your price structure can be supported by your quality and service, then don’t worry about figuring out how we price. I also urge you not to shy away from the basic commercial route work due to competition. Some of those people want what you are able to provide. Quality will prevail over price over the long haul. Keep up the good work. The industry needs good people.

Don Markovich

1 Like

That is a good idea Don

Most of us have no idea what it is like to have people depending on us for a steady stream of income. Days of being slow take on an entirely new meaning.

I had 5 employees at one time and all I did was worry about them (making money). That got me very aggressive. I will likely hire a few this year but I will be very prepared this time.

I have to agree with Don on this issue. I have never seen anything like wowclean described. The FISH franchise here (until they went under) was always looking sharp with vehicles and uniforms. I have never viewed them as anything than just another competitor.

For instance, our Culvers restaurant is a franchise owned by a local man. The place is bright, clean, modern and the food is great. On the other hand there is a local hamburger place here that is not any of those things and it’s been busy making money for over 30 years. These two business models are both successful at selling food with a very different approach. So, which one is right?

To me the bottom line is what matters. I suspect The FISH here went under due to poor managent. It seemed to me their service and pricing was good. I wouldn’t be so quick to rush to judgment everytime you see a FISH operation working.

The bold is my response.

I am not for segregating the forum totally. Most of us like to learn from the big guys and I get your point.

That said they should be able to have a place where they can talk shop with out a bunch questions on “how to”.

If Chris wants to talk about mailing 500,000 pieces, 99% of this forum can’t relate. I think that these guys can teach us a lot but this forum is a community also. Sometimes the big guys may want to bounce ideas off of other guys in [U]their[/U] situation. Maybe talk employee issues without some guy that just worked for someone yesterday whining about the discussion.

If they want to share with us smaller guys they can, but I feel most of the bigger companies do not interact on here because there is too many small fry that can’t possibly relate, and they don’t want to explain it.

that’s my $1.50

When I asked the question I really didn’t know I was opening a can worms so to speak. I have heard of the franchise it self. unfortionatly everyhting I have heard till now was bad. I can’t see how you could build something so big with only negitive talk. That was the reason for my question. I didn’t intend for it to be a bashing session against Fish. I do like the fact that a few that have or curently worked for Fish stepped up to comment. That goes a long way and deserves some respect. Personaly I would like to see everyone that wants to do what they do make money at it. franchise or not we all want to live great lives. How we get there is a game we all have the right to play the way we want to. I try my best not to judge another company, for all I know I could be doing things backwards. This site is by far one of the best. If we all had to pay for the info we recive here most of us would be broke or in debt. Thanks everyone! I really enjoy talking with you all and the info is priceless.