Hurricane Katrina rages through your town, and in its wake, your home is left in ruins.
The roof has caved in, water has soaked through every room, and the cherished belongings that once filled your home with warmth and memories now lie buried under debris.
In the chaos of a disaster, it’s easy to feel like everything you’ve worked for, everything you hold dear could be gone in an instant:
- Uncle Joe’s favorite rocking chair
- Great Grandma’s handmade dining room table
- The grandfather clock your dad received after a 40-year career
But what if there was a way to restore not just your home but its very heart—the personal items that carry your history, memories, and life?
The Three Stages of Restoration
Restoration is a multi-billion-dollar industry. When disaster strikes, there are three steps to restoring the house to new:
Step 1: Remediation – the team that comes in to remove the water, cut out the damaged drywall, rip out the carpet, set up the fans, etc.
Voda Cleaning & Restoration is one of the fastest-growing franchises in this space. Earlier this year I hosted one of their franchisees on my podcast.
Step 2: Contents—the company that moves, stores, and cleans all the damaged contents, such as the kitchen table, the rocking chair, TV, photo albums, and more.
This step requires care and precision as generations of emotion are tied to your family’s possessions.
Read this email to learn more about this step!
Step 3: Reconstruction – the company that rebuilds the damaged room back to new. These general contractors work with the family to pick up new flooring, repair the drywall, paint, etc.
This is the most complicated step in the process.
“Contents” Business Model
The Contents business is a storage + cleaning business.
As a business owner, you have a small team of employees who move the damaged contents from their home to your warehouse. The insurance company will determine what gets cleaned & stored vs. thrown out.
Then it’s a waiting game. The longer the contents sits in your warehouse, the more money you make.
Insurance-driven: 100% of the bill is paid by the customer’s insurance, which prefers restoration over replacement, reducing their cost.
Recession-resistant: disaster doesn’t care about the economy. Pipes can break any day. Storms set their own schedule.
Highly fragmented: The contents restoration market is highly fragmented allowing new operators to pick up market share
Earnings Potential
While contents storage & restoration has been around forever, it’s newer to the franchise industry.
Below is a snapshot of Item 19 of two different content restoration brands.
If you work with my team to find a franchise we’ll see what’s open in your market and provide you with a list of 40+ questions to ask other franchisees and the franchisor to help with due diligence.
Brand 1:
Brand 2:
Start-Up Costs & Ideal Franchisee
Start-up costs vary widely depending on the size of your market, the warehouse space, improvements you need to make, leasing vs. buying the box truck, the amount of working capital, and more.
The total investment could range from $150k to $500k.
You’ll narrow down the budget as you go through the process.
Ideal franchisees should be skilled at relationship building. This is 100% business-to-business.
If you aren’t comfortable picking up the phone to cold-call potential referral partners, this probably isn’t a good fit for you.
But this is just one industry of literally thousands that are available in franchising. If you’re an entrepreneur there is a perfect match for you.
Next Step
Want to learn more about the content storage & restoration business?
My team will confirm your market is open and provide you with free resources to help you through the discovery process.
This includes checklists, professional referrals and more education.
You’ll also get invited to join a live “ask me anything” group call I host every week.
Cheers!
