Of the companies that I could think of, I found three of the most ubiquitous makers of cleaning products
(floor, counters, bathrooms, industrial cleaners, etc.). The first is Lysol, made by Reckitt Benckiser. They
make Lysol, Resolve carpet cleaner (not a sanitizer) and some other products. Unfortunately, they don’t
have their profits broken down by products, so we there is no way to tell how much is made off the
Lysol brand, but the overall earnings for 2007 was $5.6B. They are expecting an 8% growth in North
America. Of the $5.6B, $1.56B is from the North American sales.
The next company I thought of was The Clorox Company that makes Clorox bleach and other stuff. Their
earnings weren’t broken down so nicely, but they have net sales of $5.2B in net sales for 2008. They
make everything from 409 (cleaning product) to Brita filters, cat litter, charcoal, and sandwich bags, so
we should probably estimate their sales of home care products to $800M or so.
The last company I saw was a company called Johnson Diversey that makes a bunch of industrial
cleaning products, including carpet sanitization stuff for after floods or whatever. Their carpet sanitizing
products leave some pretty nasty chemicals behind and can cause blindness if even a little bit makes
contact with the eyes. Obviously, this isn’t the most ideal product, so there is a competitive advantage
here. Johnson Diversey has US sales of $818M in 2007.
All told, we’re probably looking at a cleaning service market of $5-10B or something like that. I took an
entrepreneurship class, they said that a 10% market capture is the MOST that you should ever project,
so a target of $500M is the most optimistic.