Trading As VS New Venture

Ompl

My parents currently own a small cleaning company.
They gave me the opportunity to take over the business and I gladly accepted.
To put a new spin on things and bring it up to speed I decided to develop a website and app where customers can place orders on-line and book slots for cleaning appointments. I will also create a new name for the business, so its more appealing, easier to market etc.

I am looking for advice. Pros v Cons.
As I essentially creating a new image for the company, would I be better to set up a trading name under the current company or let the current company keep running and form a new business from scratch.

Interested to hear peoples ideas on which is a better way to start. Any help greatly appreciated as I 50:50 on both options at the moment. Leaning slightly towards the option of setting up a trading name, as I guess it would alleviate the ball ache of registering a new company etc.

Gloomtastic!

Ompl wrote: »

My parents currently own a small cleaning company.
They gave me the opportunity to take over the business and I gladly accepted.
To put a new spin on things and bring it up to speed I decided to develop a website and app where customers can place orders on-line and book slots for cleaning appointments. I will also create a new name for the business, so its more appealing, easier to market etc.

I am looking for advice. Pros v Cons.
As I essentially creating a new image for the company, would I be better to set up a trading name under the current company or let the current company keep running and form a new business from scratch.

Interested to hear peoples ideas on which is a better way to start. Any help greatly appreciated as I 50:50 on both options at the moment. Leaning slightly towards the option of setting up a trading name, as I guess it would alleviate the ball ache of registering a new company etc.

How long have your parents been running the business? Is it profitable? If it isn’t broken why try and fix it?

Fair enough to add to it ie the website and App but just changing an established name, so you can claim ownership, may be counter intuitive.

Axwell

As above, are clients and customers aware of this change of ownership taking place? Are you likely to potentially lose some f them if they see a new name on the business and think someone new has come in and taken things over and is changing things, or is it better to just add the new features to the existing business and spruce things up. Be careful with changing what is already established and doing more damage in the long run.

Ompl

Our plan is to keep the current company operating as normal from its brick and mortar base, because as @Gloomtastic! has mentioned, if its not broke dont fix it.
Then when we launch our website and app under a new trading name, we will inform all our current customers so as they have the option to switch over to our online operations or remain as they did if that is their preference, which I feel many of our less tech savvy customers will prefer.
The main reason for creating a new trading name/identity is we feel it will be much easier to market and feel many will see it as a new company providing greater convenience than their current provider and may be inclined to switch over?

But in terms of starting out, I am wondering the advantages to starting out fresh as a limited company or would it be better to set up a trading name and continue operating from there.

Gloomtastic!

If I was a potential customer, thinking of hiring a company to clean my premises most probably when it's vacant, then I would be reassured by the fact that your company is long established as opposed to new. I would therefore choose the trading as option.

I could then correctly state The New Office Cleaning Company, Established 1982.

G-Man

Maybe use the digital to explore new pricing and customer options or a new market segment... I dunno - hitechs, home office people etc. Therefore you are not discommoding existing customers in any way until you are sure it works.

antoinolachtnai

You are in a really treacherous business, entering a really treacherous period.

Are you really in a position to start marketing, online or anywhere else? Do you have the margin to really expand through small teaching out to new customers especially small ones who make ‘appointments’? Appointments for cleaning are unlikely to be workable. It’s either recurring work or it’s just a nixer for someone or a job hunting opportunity for your best employees.

I like your process improvement concept. I would focus on making the service you offer really excellent and cutting your costs.

I would focus on reaching out and retaining the existing customers. It is a time for customers to drop vendors they don’t personally know and depend upon.

Trojan

There's a lot of opportunity for "COVID-19 prevention" in the cleaning space. Every hospitality business has to not only clean far more frequently, but also show the fact that they're cleaning more frequently.

MrCostington

I would have thought it would be much easier to simply create a new registered business name, so it's still your existing company owning it. It sounds like you want to do a rebrand.

To help migrate, you could market things like so - "NewCo Cleaning, brought to you by Existing Trusted Cleaning Ltd", or, "NewCo Cleaning, a division of Existing Trusted Cleaning Ltd".

I used to work for Stena Line. They took over Sealink. They rebranded in three steps, Sealink Stena, Stena Sealink, and finally just Stena Line. You could do similar.

Good luck!