National property restoration company plans Portland presence
PuroClean Systems LLC
PuroClean, a Florida-based restoration company, plans to expand to Portland by mid-summer.
PuroClean Systems LLC, a Tamarac, Fla.-based franchise company that cleans and restores property damaged by fire, water or other disasters, plans to expand to Portland by mid-summer.
The company, which has 198 U.S. franchisees and 33 in Canada, is looking to make Maine the 37th state in which it has a franchisee.
“The Portland area has more than 4,500 water and fire damage claims yearly,” PuroClean CEO Mark Davis told Mainebiz in a phone interview, citing figures from researcher A.M. Best. He added that amounts to $58 million in direct water and fire mitigated losses in greater Portland. The company plans to hold two information sessions at the Hilton Garden Inn Portland Downtown Waterfront on March 31, one at 10 a.m. and the second at 1 p.m.
Darrel Depot, the Williston, Vt., franchisee owner with 18 employees, also is scheduled to be at the event to answer questions.
“I’ll tell them if I don’t think they’ll make it and tell them things to think about,” he said. “I don’t want someone to fail.”
Davis said he’s open to either converting an existing restoration company into a franchisee or having someone start one from scratch. Starting a franchise from scratch would cost about $160,000 for the vehicle, clean-up equipment and the franchise fee, which is a one-time fee of $50,000. PuroClean also gets monthly royalty payments ranging from 2% to 10% of gross payments from franchisees’ restoration projects. Each franchisee serves a territory with a population of 250,000 people, Davis said, adding that greater Portland has about half a million residents within a 30-mile radius of the city.
Davis said the Portland franchisee will likely have five to eight employees, including staff and technicians to work in the field. He couldn’t quote the average salary for a technician in Maine, but said PuroClean pays slightly above national average for its workers. For a water technician, he said, the U.S. average payment is $14 to $18 per hour.
Last year it signed two national accounts, insurers Liberty Mutual and Allstate, which he said will give PuroClean a minimum of 20% of their claim volume in any zip code. He also recently signed Chicago-based real estate company Cushman & Wakefield, which has an office in Portland, as a national account.
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