Window cleaning services
This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in the cleaning of windows. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
Manual Cleaning operating manualson Part Owner Commercial, gym, vacation-rental and residential cleaning: methods, chemicals and SDS, routines, safety kitOpen ↗- Establishments · CanadaA
- 798
- Under 10 employeesA
- 82%
Size and shape
How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.
Canadian establishments by number of employeesA
Of 798 Canadian establishments with employees, 82% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.
Where they areA
Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.
How businesses here compete
The structural profile of subsector 561, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.
Janitorial, landscaping, security and staffing: low capital and easy to start, so margins are competed down to labour cost. Route density and contract retention decide the outcome.
- Who sets the price
- Tender and the client's procurement; labour is most of the cost.
- The software it runs on
- Workforce scheduling, route and work-order management, staffing front and back office.
Market screens and studies
Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.
Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 56172 Janitorial services covers it.
Cleaning software is two markets that share a name, and both are taken. Residential and maid services go to the horizontal platforms. Jobber (Edmonton; $176M raised to February 2023, the last $100M led by General Atlantic [B]) and Housecall Pro (Denver; $125M in June 2022 from Permira and Vista Credit Partners [B]) sell to cleaners as one trade among 50+, with payments, quoting, CRM and marketing in one login. Jobber now claims 400,000+ service professionals and Housecall Pro 200,000+ [C, vendor]; the best-known cleaning-specific tool, ZenMaid, claims 3,000+ maid-service owners [C, vendor]. The cleaning-only booking tools (ZenMaid, Launch27, BookingKoala) have no disclosed venture funding and compete on price and ease of use against products funded two orders of magnitude more heavily. Commercial janitorial does not go horizontal — it goes to TEAM Software. Contract cleaning needs multi-site inspections, job costing against a fixed monthly contract, payroll for high-turnover crews, and client-facing quality reports, which Jobber and Housecall Pro do not centre. TEAM's WinTeam ERP says it runs 50% of the largest US cleaning companies [C, vendor] and has sat inside WorkWave (an IFS company, EQT-controlled) since September 2021 [B]. Below it the small-contractor tier is already crowded: Swept (Halifax; US$2M seed 2017, iNovia and Afore [B]), Otuvy (the former CleanTelligent, Provo; inspections and work orders, 105,000+ users claimed [C]) and Janitorial Manager (Toledo; owned by Double A Solutions). So the answer to whether horizontal beats specific is: yes at the residential end, no at the commercial end, and in neither is there an unoccupied seat. The vacation-rental turnover niche is a marketplace (Turno, formerly TurnoverBnB; $4.5M Series A 2021 led by RET Ventures [B]) more than software. The owner's own operating record (561722 Commercial Janitorial Services) found 6,009 of 10,768 Canadian janitorial firms have four employees or fewer — buyers who pay $50–$300 a month and churn when the business does. Incumbent vulnerability is what decides it: the incumbents are not weak at either end. The only angle worth keeping is an operator's one: a BC contractor who knows exactly what Swept and Otuvy miss can sell a narrow add-on to them, not against them.
The barrier that lets a founder in with a vacuum and a truck lets in everyone behind them. Contracts are re-tendered annually on price, the labour is scarce and increasingly expensive, and nothing accumulates except route density in one city — which is a real asset and takes a decade to build. The version that works is a disciplined roll-up of small routes, which is a capital-allocation business rather than an operating one.
Software serving this industry
The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.
No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Workforce scheduling, route and work-order management, staffing front and back office.
And what every business buys · 25 generic categories
Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.
Who works here
The occupations employed in Administrative and support, waste management and remediation services, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.
Concentrated in this sectorA
These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.
And the jobs every business has
Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 82% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.
Alongside this industry
This is the most specific level NAICS defines. The other industries under 56172 are its nearest neighbours.
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 561722 | Janitorial services (except window cleaning) | 10,768 | Cleaning Business SoftwareCommercial Janitorial Services |