Carpet cleaning business Who Who is backing its 20+ years in the industry and introducing a new franchise model.

What started out as a mobile business delivering carpet cleaning services to residential and commercial clients has since developed a number of revenue streams.

Rug cleaning, carpet dyeing, commercial services, pest management and services and a range of other household services have been added to the Who Who suite of services.

The oddly-named Who Who business (named for the owners’ neighbourhood owl) acquired a national firm and the Grace Bros Carpet Cleaning and merged them  into their own.

“They’ve owned the business more than 10 years, and do their own marketing, run a call centre, have an in-house digital agency,” says Doug Downer, who handles the brand’s recruitment.

Doug told Inside Franchise Business, “In the pandemic, when the cleaners couldn’t go into homes, they pivoted to rug cleaning.”

He believes the pick-up-and-deliver rug cleaning stream has huge potential.

And it’s all been designed as a hub and spoke model – the hub will be centralised rug cleaning, the spoke is mobile carpet cleaning.

Typically each hub will operate at least two vans to provide carpet cleaning, rug pick up, ancillary cleaning services and pest control.

As the business expands its new two-in-one model, the hubs will be company-owned initially, and then franchised, with the mobile carpet cleaning individually franchised.

The hub offers the greatest opportunity for scale, says Doug, and will attract entrepreneurial business owners with the capacity to purchase a franchise for at least $450,000.

In contrast, the mobile man in a van options start at about $80,000.

Initially the business will look to sign up franchisees to territories along the eastern seaboard, doubling down on its Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland footprint.