If you know me well, the beginning of this post will probably sounds a little "blah, blah, blah" but I'd like to set this up for why we so heavily committed to odor, nicotine and soot removal a few years ago.
Here's where the "blah, blah, blah" hits. Our aim is to focus on opportunities that lead to the growth of our customers' sales. Several years ago, it became apparent that many of our remediation, restoration and waterproofing customers were a little frustrated by their real estate relationships. I began to think..."what service(s) can profitably keep our customers in front of their customers (real estate brokers/agents)?". The answer was clear. Besides curb appeal (what we call exterior restoration services), odor problems are an ever present problem for real estate agents, brokers and their clients. That's when we began offering chlorine dioxide products.
As we've learned, where there's odor, there's likely to be build up of soil loads from the odor (after all, odor is just a smaller particle). For example, if there's cigarette smoke odor, there's likely to be nicotine staining. If there's curry odor, there's likely to be heavy oil deposits throughout the cabinets, walls and appliances of a kitchen. If there are pet odors, there is likely to be urine in the corners of rooms and on base moldings (pets love those base moldings!). While Grease Gobbler has always been a good solution for removing oily residues, it wasn't perfect. I wanted perfect.
Going back to my industrial manufacturing days at Paradigm, I remembered our work with Alcoa Aluminum Corp. As a metals manufacturer, they cleaned 24/7 to remove the cutting oils from floors that otherwise created slip & fall liabilities. To solve their problem, we created a 100% active cleaner that worked so well, that as expensive as it was, competitors could never knock us out of the account, and they constantly tried.
Fast forward to Enviroguard and I knew we had the formula, but let's be honest, a 100% active product would be too expensive in gallons even if the dilution ratio was in the 1%-3% range. Field testing began immediately. On one particular fire job, I think in Oklahoma City, James Hoover (who owns and operates Enviroguard of the Central States) reported awesome
results on a fire job that we had tested with Grease Gobbler just one week prior. From there samples were sent out to customers and before we knew it, the Code Orange formula was proven and approved!
A couple weeks later, Johnny Hicks at PuroClean over in New Bern shot me a text with a short video of Code Orange at work on a nicotine job. The results were quite frankly awesome, and if you'd like to check it out yourself, here's a YouTube link.
With proven results in hand, and the knowledge that Code Orange and our Dutrion Chlorine Dioxide can be paired for 1-step cleaning and odor elimination, I'm hoping that this family of products (including our VaporLock Odor Sealers) becomes as popular as products like OxyPrep, Oxypar and MaxGuard (some of the most popular products in our mold services lineup). In fact, for structural soot removal, we already know that OxyPrep and Code Orange can be combined together (50/50) and then reacted with Oxypar for a REACT|EXTRACT for Fire Damage system. And if REACT|EXTRACT for Fire Damage can approximate the efficiency of REACT|EXTRACT for Mold Remediation (check out this quick video), we'll save our customers between 60% and 70% in labor when cleaning up fire jobs!
To say the least, I'm excited for what all of this means for our customers, and now I'm turning my attention to the tools to parallel what we've created for Mold Severity Indexingâ„¢. Soot Severity Indexingâ„¢ will similarly pull together the customer education, assessment and estimating details to ensure that our customers are consistently profitable on jobs and that good information transfers from the initial interaction with the customer all the way through job completion.
Code Orange is a concentrated formula and is available as single gallons for $55 and 4x1 gallon cases for $192. If you'd prefer it in 5-gallon pails, we'd love your feedback. If you'd like a way of dialing in the exact dilution on every job with Code Orange, request our labeled test bottles when you order.
If you haven't done so yet, become a Member of our new website at EnviroguardDirect.com. and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. We're working on training, tools and more to assist your growth every day.
If you're looking for a great to belong to that focuses on best practices, check out Market Makers. We meet once a year to keep one another sharp, accountable for growth and to share best practices.
Finally, if you're looking for a great manufacturer's factory certification that isn't an extended sales promotion, check out the 2023 Enviroguard Mold Services Certification. While the course is available at your location, we're also hosting a class here on June 22nd, the day following Market Makers.