Publications
Partners
Cape Town - Marvellous Maids began as a training initiative for general job readiness, with candidates sourced mainly for guest houses; now, it's a household name for domestic placements.
When Kate Shuttleworth, 61, started the business almost 20 years ago, she had no prior experience in her chosen field. She purely felt the drive to do something.
Asked why she started this type of business, she says: ''I don't know. I needed to do something; in fact, it started as a training initiative but not training for domestic work because I certainly couldn't train anybody in domestic work. I can't even make a bed."
Seizing the opportunity
Shuttleworth says her privileged white background has helped her to build her business. ''My attorney says I was uniquely positioned to do this because I have a history of working and living in the townships and then of course, I have my privileged white background. I grew up in a wealthy home, not super wealthy but relatively wealthy. So putting those two together kind of gave birth to what Marvellous Maids is today.
"The name, I plucked it from the dinner chatter parties of the suburbs of Joburg. Of course, domestic work is a huge subject of conversation.
"Initially, we were doing training on how to do the job, how to conduct yourself in a job interview and we didn't plan to do this. We started pitching staff to the guest houses. Guest house owners told their friends, and then there were friends who wanted their houses cleaned,” says Shuttleworth.
Having good relationships with people also helped Shuttleworth when she was starting out. "We first placed someone in the president's residency. We later placed three more people. Obviously, for us having a history of placing three people in the president’s residence was something to brag about. Suddenly, we were the flavour of the month and we stayed.
"The business invented itself and it grew fast out of demand. I started out in the Northern Suburbs and the entire board of executors became my clients,” Shuttleworth says.
Challenges
Reminiscing about the challenges she had to face, Shuttleworth says "this business is hard. Sometimes it didn’t pay enough and quick enough to pay the bills".
Like many start-ups, Shuttleworth had no capital to fund her business when she started in 1996. ''I started with literally no money. I had come out of a bad second marriage. I've been writing for a few years, but as you probably know that wasn’t a lot of money.
"I remember that I had no bank account when I started. We started training a few people. If somebody wanted a job done, we would send them, wait until we got paid and then pay them after the job was finished. It was hand to mouth. It was hand to mouth for our workers too.
"For the first few years, we were always behind with things and that was stressful," says Shuttleworth.
"The other challenge we encountered was the interface between poverty and privilege; rude clientele who mistreated our workers. This really broke our workers," Shuttleworth says.
"In the first few years, I couldn’t afford NOT to carry on and I became passionate about it."
Family support
Shuttleworth says working with family has helped a lot in managing stress, especially during the early days.
Her winning secret is the support of her two daughters, who each run their own Marvellous Maids franchises.
"I think when they started they didn’t mean to do it forever. They started working for me. They do it because of love. We make a difference, a huge difference. I think that’s what keeps us going"
Marvellous Maids office building in Green Point. (Liziwe Ndalana, Fin24).
The entire family worked in the business, including Shuttleworth’s ex-husband who still works for the business.
She says her son "who hates this business" helped to build the website because "he is a bit on an IT guru".
''I couldn’t have done it without the support of my family. It’s a huge support. I could never do the whole of Cape Town, otherwise I’d be greyer than I am.
"My daughter, Clare runs the Green Point branch which services the Atlantic Seaboard area and I run the Northern Suburbs branch. My other daughter runs the Table View branch.
"My son has his own consulting business, but he also works for us and we pay him," says Shuttleworth.
Legislation
Before 1997/98 there was no legislation in place to protect domestic workers. Domestic workers had no minimum wage.
Shuttleworth was fortunate to have studied law, so when the law was introduced, Marvellous Maids could easily be compliant.
With the new legislation, and a general lack of understanding what it meant, people were scared to hire domestic workers. "We told them it was not that bad and together with my former husband, we put contracts in place and drafted placement packages."
A Marvellous Maids placement package. (Duncan Alfreds, Fin24).
Making money
Marvellous Maids employs in excess of 200 people across all its Western Cape branches, including franchises. Some of the areas it services include Table View, Bellville, Parow, Airport Industria, Brackenfell right up to a newly found branch in Paarl, Wellington and Franschhoek, Somerset West and Stellenbosch.
"We make money from placing domestic workers, which is the recruitment part of our business, and also off our char services."
Shuttleworth says they don't just employ people, but they also invest in them even though there's no formal training in place. Pointing to one of her star workers, she says: "Look at Zinzi my receptionist, for example. I see her running my business one day. She's sharp and dedicated."
Shuttleworth stresses: "We are not labour brokers, our workers are employed full-time. Our staff are fluid, meaning they come and go all the time even though they are permanently employed."
Marvellous Maids office in Green Point. (Liziwe Ndalana, Fin24)
Survival
Shuttleworth says running a domestic agency is not an easy job.
"Ask yourself why there aren’t many domestic work agencies; there should be one around every corner.
"It’s because this job is hard. You need broad shoulders and a thick skin to run such a business. And we survived,” says Shuttleworth.
* Consider yourself an entrepreneurial hero? Or just have something on your mind? Add your voice to our Small Business Centre:
* Write a guest post
* Share a personal story
* Ask the experts
