Julian Gaze, one of the founding members of Janitorial Direct, started the business in 1987 as a carpet cleaning company and initially focused on cleaning domestic carpets.
They diversified into cleaning carpets in commercial organisations like nursing homes, restaurants and hotels thus enabling them to establish domestic cleaning contracts and to employ cleaners who visited customers in small red vans.
- The business went from strength to strength, winning commercial contracts with large companies such as Halifax, British Sugar and Victoria Carpets. This side of the business was eventually sold to concentrate on the larger daily office cleaning contracts.
- Rapid expansion followed and a small supplies division was established to support the cleaning contracts. However Julian found the advice and supply of cleaning products to be very poor. Therefore, whilst the contract cleaning business continued to expand, it was eventually sold to Bowdraper.
- The resource and knowledge gained running the contract cleaning company was used to start and develop a new company called Janitorial Direct. This company was developed with the philosophy of “The right product at the right price at the right time”.