Choosing the Best Niche to Start a Restoration Service Business

Start A Restoration Business By Choosing The Right Service To Provide

When disasters strike, homeowners and businesses turn to disaster restoration service businesses to help get them on track to recovery. From floods to fires and beyond, damage restoration encompasses a massive $210 billion every year, according to business analytics firm AM Best Company.

But the landscape for starting a restoration business is crowded with competitors, each attempting to carve out a niche in an increasingly competitive space. What niche is right for you to start a restoration service business?

Never fear! BELFOR Franchise Group’s Blue Kangaroo Packoutz is here to unpack the complexities of starting a restoration business. Before you leap into the industry, it’s important to take a few minutes and survey the landscape. Once you’ve gotten a handle on the scope of the restoration service industry, then you can decide what kind of restoration service business you’ll start.

What Kinds of Restoration Service Businesses Are There?

Think about the kinds of disasters that can strike a home or business. Tornadoes, hurricanes, hail, and flooding are just a few examples. Beyond the weather, though, there are fires, burst pipes, earthquakes–the threats to property and the damage caused by those threats is nearly endless.

However, all property damage tends to break down into just a few categories. After all, the cause of the damage may change, but the kinds of damage are pretty much universal. That’s why the restoration business has segmented into several broad categories of service, each targeting specific areas of home or business restoration.

At times, the restoration industry can overlap. Untangling these businesses can be a bit of a challenge. Here’s a brief look at several of the broad categories of restoration repair businesses and how they relate to one another:

• Water Damage Restoration:

  Whenever water intrudes into a home, it causes damage to ceilings, walls, flooring, and contents. Water damage restoration businesses focus on removing the water and mitigating ongoing damage through drying the structure out and removing any materials that could, potentially, cause problems down the road.

• Fire Damage Restoration:

  Fire damage restoration focuses on two areas of service, with part of the industry providing reconstruction of damaged portions of structures and the other segment of the industry devoted to removing smoke damage. Many fire damage restoration businesses focus on a single aspect of the fire recovery process.

• Drywall Repair:

  Smoke and water deal different kinds of damage to drywall in homes and businesses. At the same time, other kinds of damage dealt by everything from careless kids to reckless drivers also requires drywall repair. These companies specialize in restoring or rebuilding drywall after damage has occurred and restoration has begun.

• Insurance Restoration:

  This highly specialized area of property restoration businesses is keyed to working with insurance companies throughout the entire disaster recovery process to “put property back together.” That means these businesses provide demolition services for damaged areas of a home and roofing repairs for wind-damaged businesses. The sweeping variety of services typically requires a state-issued contractor’s license and advanced training in insurance restoration.

• Contents Restoration:

  The newest area of restoration business services is content restoration. This specializes in taking the contents of a home or business, cleaning and restoring them to original condition. As well as returning them to their original place. Prior to the creation of this segment of the industry, contents represent a huge area of unrecoverable loss and one of the most traumatic parts of a disaster for homeowners and businesses.

These are just a few of the areas of home and business restoration services that drive the billions of dollars in revenue in the restoration industry. While this list is hardly comprehensive, it does show the diversity of services, as well as the overlap and complexity of these businesses. However, one area of the restoration service business stands out. It’s a new field that has the potential to spare insurance companies and property owners billions of dollars in losses each year.

The Content Restoration Business is a New and Innovative Growth Sector

As recently as just a few years ago, the idea of content restoration was foreign to most insurance companies and property owners. If contents were damaged, they were considered a total loss and discarded.

Suffer a home fire, and you might be able to locate a few pictures and Grandma’s china, which you could wash yourself. A flooded home meant tossing out the new sofa and the heirloom rug.

That’s because the cost of restoring personal property usually exceeded the cost of replacing those items with newer versions. However, recent innovations in water and smoke mitigation have given rise to an entirely new sector of the restoration industry.

With content restoration businesses, insurance companies and the owners they represent now have a cost-effective means of reclaiming items that have been damaged by smoke or water. The result is an essential business that provides peace of mind to property owners and an immense value to insurance companies.

How the Content Restoration Business Works

Only a handful of companies provide full-service content restoration services to individuals who have suffered an insured loss. Blue Kangaroo Packoutz is one of those providers. Content restoration is a straightforward process for the home and business owner.

After a disaster, the Blue Kangaroo Packoutz team arrives on location to remove furniture, documents, books, pictures, artworks, and electronics. These items are carefully packed and transported to our processing facility. Here, they undergo a complex process of assessment and disassembly.

After assessing and disassembling items, Blue Kangaroo Packoutz technicians begin the process of cleaning and restoring each piece. For electronics, that may mean replacing damaged components. For that heirloom hutch, our expert furniture restoration technicians will mitigate water damage and refinish the piece. You might have to reupholster or get a deep cleaning for that expensive new sofa.

After the restoration is complete, they place items in secure, climate-controlled storage to await return to the home or business. Once we repair the damage of the home or business, our team of professionals return each piece to its rightful place, putting the customer’s life or business back on track.

The Contents Restoration Business is a Wide-Open Field

For water damage or insurance restoration, the field of competitors is crowded. Also, some restoration businesses have a much higher threshold of entry due to licensing, training, or specialized equipment needs.

Unlike other sectors of the restoration industry, the threshold for entry into the contents restoration business is much lower. At the same time, the field is essentially wide open. There are only a couple of national brands providing contents restoration. Blue Kangaroo Packoutz is one of those brands.

As insurance companies face an increasing number of natural disasters, the market for contents restoration will only continue to grow. Homeowners and businesses will need the services companies like PACKOUTZ can provide to get them back on their feet.

Your New Contents Restoration Business Provides an Essential Service

When property owners suffer a flood, fire, or other damage, they’re immediately plunged into a state of distress. The stresses of the moment are compounded by an overwhelming sense of loss when they realize they’re also at risk of losing decades’ worth of memorabilia, business records, and precious heirlooms.

Contents restoration businesses like Blue Kangaroo Packoutz can provide them with a sense of peace because their most precious possessions are in the hands of trusted, experienced professionals.

Here are just some of the kinds of possessions Blue Kangaroo Packoutz restores:

• Antiques restoration and refinishing
• Art framing, cleaning, and restoration
• Document cleaning and restoration
• Electronics restoration
• Furniture reupholstery and refinishing
• Textile cleaning and restoration

Home and business owners can trust PACKOUTZ to repair, restore, and return their property in a timely fashion at an affordable price. Contents restoration contractors restore both the contents and memories.

Starting a Contents Restoration Business is a Timely Decision

The decision to start a contents restoration business right now makes sense because the industry is still young and growing. However, the process of opening a new contents restoration business can seem daunting.

Blue Kangaroo Packoutz provides business owners with the skills and tools they need to succeed in this new field. We’ve built a business model and processes you can rely on to guide you through the complexities of the industry. Blue Kangaroo Packoutz is a pioneer in the contents restoration business, and you can benefit from our years of experience.

If you’re ready to jump into a growing industry with the potential for decades of success and start a restoration service business, reach out to a member of the Blue Kangaroo Packoutz franchise sales team. Or, for more information on this potentially lucrative opportunity, download our free Franchise Information Report.