Ethical, all female housekeeping business welcomes 30th franchisee
Domestic housekeeping franchise business Bright & Beautiful is celebrating reaching its £1.5m turnover mark, just five years after owner Rachel Ray spotted a real gap in the market for an ethical, professional, family and eco-friendly homecare business, designed for busy people.
Since then Manchester based Rachel, 43, has enabled 30 women to start their own business and has also generated 130 jobs for other women, most of which are “family friendly” hours. The company now has a £1.5 million turnover, 30 franchises across the UK, employs over 130 women, is growing by an average of one new franchise per month and recruits between 10-20 new employees each month, delivering eco-friendly cleaning, tidying, laundry and ironing services.
Rachel who lives in Sale, Greater Manchester and has two young daughters, says: “Reaching our £1.5m milestone is an incredible feeling and it is hugely rewarding to be creating employment for so many women all over the UK. Having worked at the top of the corporate ladder myself, my vision for Bright & Beautiful was always to support and empower women and we see more and more women who want a career but who are not prepared to sacrifice their family for the sake of their job. The fact that they can deliver an impeccable service for our clients, earn a good salary running a Bright & Beautiful franchise, manage their own team of professional housekeepers and be there for their children after school has really been the secret of our success.”
Rachel’s business model is based around a franchise system that trains women across the UK to manage a team of professional housekeepers. The franchises are all run by businesswomen who wanted to explore a new balanced career – from former sales managers, fashion buyers and policewomen, just like Rachel herself, who left a high flying career as a business consultant and accountant to strike out on her own.
At a time when female unemployment is at a 23 year high in the UK, Bright & Beautiful is bucking the trend by creating employment opportunities for women all across the country.
A rapidly growing industry – a million more people now employ a cleaner than ten years ago – the domestic cleaning business is also a grey area in the UK, in that it is largely unregulated; workers don’t receive holiday or maternity pay and there is very little quality control. Rachel’s business implements proper training, salaries and fair working conditions for all of its 100% female workforce and the past year has seen her lobbying her local MPs to effect a change in the law.
Aswell as employing more than 130 people, Bright & Beautiful has helped to keep hundreds of homes clean and tidy across the UK. In just one month the professional housekeeping teams will:
- Vacuum almost ¼ of a million square feet of floor
- Iron over 15,000 items of clothing
- Polish over 23,000 taps and 58,000 square metres of glass
- Manage over 8000 hours of housekeeping
Since launching in 2007, Bright and Beautiful has taken the housekeeping industry by storm with a radical, ethical and eco-friendly approach to business that is designed to support women and their families in the UK and overseas.