13/05/2008
IN THE privacy of your own chateau, you can have an army of people working to organise your empire — “life services”, they call it. If you work 80 hours a week like many people in the City do, you really want someone to take care of the rest.
Over the weekend, I was GeekSquaded. A “double agent” by the name of Saoni Bose trooped out to get my home office sorted. The first sign everything was going to be good was when she called three times to inform me of her estimated time of arrival. The District Line was running slow — what else is new? Compare that to your average service provider who tells you to be home from 8 until 1, and then they don’t show up.
But Saoni couldn’t have been more different: she dealt with the customer services people in India for my broadband provider who kept telling her that black was blue, and because she is a hotshot IT girl, she told them right back that black was black.
After two hours, I wanted her to come back to do more — set up my remote home monitoring, do a cleanup of my hard drive and take over my office IT technical operations.
ADDITIONAL PA
It was a lovely experience, and I found myself wanting to learn all about how she did everything. Once I saw there was a system online for how everything should be, my natural organisational obsession kicked in. The good news is there are plenty more life services providers out there.
If, like me, you don’t know how to do anything at home yourself, you can call 0800 Handyman — www.0800handyman.co.uk — and they will paint, hang, move, change, fix, replace and adjust. And then when you’re tired from not doing anything, you can have a massage from a therapist at PerfectlyAtHome — www.perfectlyathome. com — who will come to see you at home.
Alex Cheatle, the founder and CEO of Ten UK — www.tenuk.com — pioneered the concept of “concierge services” in 1999 by providing life services to busy people like myself. I think of Ten as an additional PA. He will sort out tough jobs, recommend suppliers, organise gifts, and plan trips and events.
Ten is now doing £12m of business annually, and recognised as the leader in the space. Russell O’Connell’s growing franchise of home services My Home, www.myhomeplc.com, is backed by City businessman Nigel Wray.
My Home’s model gives them an edge. They buy franchises, and then allow the founder to run their franchise within the My Home brand, but adding more process and leveraging economies of scale in the back office.
The firm has made four acquisitions recently, and is building a multibrand, multi-service firm which will standardise and professionalise all services into the home — from oven cleaning to professional cleaning.
In your own home you can have an army of people working for you, paid by the hour. It doesn’t get better than that.
julie@ariadnecapital.com
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