WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY LEADS TO AWARD WIN FOR RALF
Aycliffe Business Make Your Mark Awards
INNOVATION
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Husqvarna UK new products engineer Kristoffer Childs( left) presented the Innovation award to Tidal Services CEO Ralf Hodgson.
WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY LEADS TO AWARD WIN FOR RALF
He saw a window of opportunity – and now Tidal Services CEO Ralf Hodgson is riding the crest of a wave as a Make Your Mark award-winner.
After starting a window cleaning business eight years ago in Aycliffe, Ralf realised there was a gap in the market for things to be better organised.
Tidal Services was the result – a firm that since 2023 has emerged as a fully-managed window cleaning marketplace with a dynamic pricing algorithm that, at the time of nomination for the award, had four full-time employees, 10 freelancers and was working with 140 window cleaners across the UK.
By digitising bookings, payments and route optimisation, it empowers cleaners to scale their businesses while offering customers a reliable and seamless service.
And while his firm covers around 78 % of the UK at the moment, CEO Ralf is looking to expand.
He said:“ I built my own round up very locally and traditionally, then I started scaling up by franchising at the beginning of Covid.
“ Then we started developing a tech platform to manage our own operations and since then, we’ ve been on a bit of an exponential growth.
“ I just thought‘ why not’?’ I’ m not techminded but we’ ve got an investor who handles that side of things – I run the operations and marketing-related stuff.
“ We’ ve been there, we’ ve done it, we‘ ve knocked at doors, we’ ve figured a lot of it out and now we’ re just doing it on a much bigger scale and using tech to help us.”
Winning the Innovation Award is, says Ralf, a“ massive privilege”.“ I really wasn’ t expecting it,” he said.“ We got nominated, rolled the dice and came out on top so it’ s tremendous.“ But for everyone who got nominated and for all the finalists, it’ s quite an achievement.” And he says being based on the park for the past two years has proved an eye-opener regarding Aycliffe’ s national reputation.
He smiled:“ People we deal with always seem to know where Newton Aycliffe is! It’ s always‘ oh yeh, junction 59, where the Maccies is’!
“ I don’ t know why but everyone seems to know where it is, which speaks volumes.”
And as for the future, Ralf has big plans. He explained:“ We’ ll keep doing what we’ re doing but on a bigger scale.
“ We’ re aiming for 1,000 window cleaners and 250,000 customers in three years and then we’ ll see where we go from there.”
PREVIOUS WINNERS 2024: HUSQVARNA 2022: VALHALLA NORTH 2018: EXCELPOINT 2016: STILLER WAREHOUSING & DISTRIBUTION 2015: LOSTBOX 2014: EMERALD BIOGAS
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