WEST MONROE — After 35 years of working for someone else’s company, David (Dave) Ciereck is now operating his own business. Ciereck launched Dave’s Hard Surface Restoration, the “doing business as” name of Ciereck Enterprises, LLC, in July. He operates the business from his home in the town of West Monroe. He started the business […]
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WEST MONROE — After 35 years of working for someone else’s company, David (Dave) Ciereck is now operating his own business.
Ciereck launched Dave’s Hard Surface Restoration, the “doing business as” name of Ciereck Enterprises, LLC, in July. He operates the business from his home in the town of West Monroe.
He started the business after working seven years as an operations manager for Equipment & Controls Africa in its office in Cabinda, Angola. The U.S. headquarters of Equipment & Controls Africa is in Carnegie, Pa., according to its website.
With his visa expiring, Ciereck left Equipment & Controls Africa in July to return home to Central New York to focus on starting his own business with an eye toward eventual retirement.
“I didn’t want a regular job. I wanted a business,” Ciereck says.
While searching online, he “stumbled across” The Master’s Touch, Inc. of Glendale, Ariz. from which he purchased his floor-restoration business.
In conducting his research, he couldn’t find “a lot of people” offering that type of service in Central New York.
In describing its business system on its website, The Master’s Touch says, “Start with a proven hard surface cleaning & restoration system that provides you the ability
to earn a six figure income!”
Both Ciereck and the website of The Master’s Touch indicate it is not a franchise.
A franchise requires royalty payments, he says, but that’s not part of Ciereck’s agreement with Masters’ Touch. Franchises require their franchisees to operate under their rules, Ciereck adds, while he’s “free to expand and do whatever else I feel is necessary to do.”
It also didn’t require an agreement restricting his service to any specific geographic location, he adds.
“I purchased the equipment and got the training from them, and I get lifetime support from them,” he says.
When asked how much he had to pay to acquire the equipment from The Master’s Touch, Ciereck declined to disclose the figure, saying only, “It wasn’t cheap.”
He used his own assets for a “good chunk” of the down payment. Salt Lake City, Utah–based Aztec Financial, LLC, which provides financing for entrepreneurs working with The Master’s Touch, lent Ciereck additional capital to make the down payment, he says.
Ciereck’s investment included trailer-mount equipment for high-pressure, hot-water extraction for the cleaning of carpets, tile, and grout floors.
“Main-line work is tile and grout cleaning, restoring tile and grout to its original color and cleanliness,” he says.
As Ciereck describes it, grout is the series of lines between tiles on a hard-surface floor.
“Tile itself is very hard. It’s non porous, so dirt cannot penetrate it. The grout is very porous and dirt gets in it and stays there,” he says.
Ciereck also handles carpet cleaning, concrete cleaning, and grease removal.
He’s also getting calls from customers asking if he has the capability of placing an epoxy coating on concrete for painting those surfaces, he says.
“We can do this,” he adds.
So far, he’s serviced about a dozen commercial customers and about 30 residential customers, he says.
Ciereck is currently hoping to hire two full-time employees before year’s-end and another two full-time workers by the end of 2014.
Besides generating additional revenue, Ciereck wants some employees so he can start focusing on the marketing of his company.
To get the business started, The Master’s Touch designed the Ciereck’s website, and he maintains its content with updates.
“It was part of the package,” he says.
The Master’s Touch also provided him with marketing brochures and he speaks with company officials every few weeks, he says.
Ciereck declined to disclose any revenue figures for 2013 or projections for 2014.
He worked for 35 years in the industrial maintenance and restoration field. In addition to his most recent work as operations manager for Equipment & Controls Africa, he also spent time as a plumbing foreman for Burns Bros Contractors of Syracuse.
As Ciereck looks to grow his restoration business in 2014, he has a simple philosophy.
“We never make promises we can’t keep,” he says. “You can never get caught in the truth.”
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
