Triple digit temperatures are here and staying cool in the pool is on the to do list. Unfortunately, so is cleaning the pool. Homely, is a company that connects homeowners with contractors to provide a weekly pool service and book instantly online to allow them to enjoy their pools without the annoyance of maintenance.
Co-Founders Zach Hamilton and Charles Lee saw a need for homeowners wanting to obtain pool cleaning services from reliable contractors and decided to merge their combined experience of running a landscaping company and working with web sales and marketing to create Homely.
Hamilton and Lee began their business on the basic principles that there is plenty of work to go around, and plenty of customers looking for reliable contractors. Also, instead of investing in running an entire company filled with depreciating assets, they simply connect people who need each other – homeowners and contractors. “Assets such as trucks, trailers, equipment, insurance and workman’s compensation, are the main reason most service companies stay under one million dollars per year,” Hamilton explains. “We are seeking to minimize risk as much as possible while still participating in the upside of a market that is worth half a trillion dollars and is begging for someone to modernize it.”
Homely operates by determining the cost of the industry, factoring those numbers into a pricing equation, and then allowing contractors to fill in their constants into the equation. After the contractors complete their segment, then Homely advertises to homeowners. “They enter their location and pool information, then bam! instant pricing, instant availability, instant booking,” Hamilton said.
The bonus for using this service is that Homely provides assurance to both homeowners and contractors. For homeowners, they guarantee free quotes to trusted contractors, instant quotes and booking, and a $10,000 Homely guarantee—a promise to rectify problems caused by a contractor. For contractors, they offer confirmed jobs and take care of all the back office work (advertising, credit card processing, quoting, scheduling, invoices, payment); contractors pay Homely $10 for each customer they receive on a monthly basis.
Currently, Homely works solely with pool services, but hopes to expand into other services in the future. They plan to stay only with services that they can quote online without an in-person meeting. Hamilton states that they want to be the “go-to source” for managing your home. “We plan to get there by hustling our butts off, combining a solid web presence with amazing customer service, and bringing only the best contractors on board to service homeowners who are trusting us.”
Find out more about Homely pool service.
3 thoughts on “Startup Connects Homeowners and Pool Service Providers – Homely”
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Looks like a great service for local lead generation for service providers. The site looks pretty good. I’d suggest to them that they should leverage a service like Unbounce or Optimizely for split-testing and swap out different titles and calls to action. I’d also add more social proof to assure the visitor that the site is trustworthy, reputable and can address their pains. Additionally, under the listings for contractors, I would consider displaying their ratings from a service like Yelp (if possible). This will help encourage contractors to race toward the top, not the bottom, when it comes to providing services for consumers.
Hi Joseph,
You’ve made some great recommendations in your comments and it’s very important to us that people know Homely is a service that both Contractors and Homeowners can trust and rely on.
All Contractors are personally vetted before their information is displayed and our ratings feature will come online soon. Taking into account existing online ratings our focus is to encourage quality service and great communication.
Thank you for taking the time to look at Homely and for sharing your feedback. If you have a pool or know someone that does please let us know how we can help.
Charles
Co-founder – Homely
Charles,
It looks like you have a clean site there. We are launching a similar concept for house cleaning very soon as well.
Something I noticed that could irritate consumers in the beginning is letting them know you don’t serve their area yet before having them waste the time entering information. For example, I ran through the questions to get an estimate for service and at the end it told me you didn’t serve my area, however, I entered the zip code on the first screen. You sucked me in and then took a crap on me. 🙂 Just something to consider.