News Chicago Business, Info & Events
Two high school friends, Kamil Kowalkowski and Filip Boksa established King of Maids, in 2013. The company was founded in Chicago with an initial investment of $6,000 only. In just 3 years, the company generated over $5,000,000 in sales. It is inspiring to mention that both the founders were only 19 years old when they launched the company, and they had no prior work experience, education, or capital to speak of.
The Chicago-based firm was established to fill a need for scheduling fast, easy, and reliable cleaning services among people who didn’t have time to spend days comparing prices. After discovering that most local professional cleaning services didn’t answer their phones, the founders saw a need. The few that did answer were unable to offer even ballpark figures for the price of the service before they visited the premises. In 2013, there was so much difficulty in locating and scheduling a service that it presented a good opportunity for the founding of King of Maids.
At first, King of Maids’ website only had a basic booking form where consumers could examine rates and make immediate reservations. There was zero resistance, and no guesswork was required. According to Filip, most of the funds went toward creating the option to make reservations online. He estimates that about $5,000 was invested in development, with the remaining $1,000 going toward legal fees and getting the project off the ground. Both founders knew they had to put money back into the business to make it to the top of the Chicago cleaning industry. Therefore, the creators intended to invest in developing better software and user experience once the website gathered traction and clients.
At present, King of Maids Chicago has over 9,000 reviews, with an average rating of 4.77 stars. In other words, this wasn’t a fluke. The inventors kept working on the software until it could determine on its own how to hire the best cleaners in Chicago. The software progressed to the point where clients rated each cleaning shortly after it was completed, and the feedback piled up. With time, King of Maids built up a database on each housekeeper, allowing them to weed out the subpar and keep only the best. Whenever a housekeeper failed to meet expectations, they were booted off the site.
Co-founder Filip Boksa in an interview stated that “Excellence is of paramount importance to us. The best from both the customer’s and the cleaner’s perspective. We can retain our top maids by charging a slightly higher rate and compensating them more generously because of the high caliber of customers we attract. In addition, our customers greatly value the effort put forth by our cleaners, and they generously reward them with tips. I’ve seen tips as high as $500 over Christmas, with most typical tips falling in the $40-$100 range. That makes me glad and proud because a nice tip like that can brighten a cleaner’s day and help us keep great cleaners. Many of our cleaners have been with us for five years or longer, having started with us when we opened in 2013. It also speaks something about the quality of our offerings.”
Please visit www.kingofmaids.com if you are interested in learning more about King of Maids.
