Born out of desperation

Caroline de Castro and Nicole Oxenbridge’s blossoming cleaning business and social enterprise, which pays all its workers a living wage, was born out of total desperation.

For Caroline de Castro and Nicole Oxenbridge, partners in business and in life, the business story all began when they both moved from successful jobs in Sydney to Wellington about four and a half years ago to be near Kiwi-born Caroline’s family. 

But the move was far from easy. Both had held senior roles in the NGO and social services sectors in Sydney but once back in New Zealand, neither could find work.

That, they say, was scary. 

“We went on the dole while we were looking for work and were starting to spend our savings. It was very scary,” says Caroline.

They finally found a few hours work at a local school cleaning for just above the then minimum wage, but once the WINZ benefit was redacted to account for their earnings, they were still on the same amount of money.

Nicole says they were in a desperate situation and the way up was blocked.

As they couldn’t afford to rent their own place they were boarding with another person and offered to clean that house to offset a small part of their board.

Nicole says they were also forced to use food banks occasionally to make ends meet.

As they continued to search for work, they were visiting the Hutt City Council libraries daily to access free Wi-Fi and, as a consequence, became friendly with the local librarians. 

One told them about a Ministry of Social Development programme called ‘Be Your Own Boss’ which helps job-hunters start their own business. 

They jumped at it and once they had been through the course, the programme also provided seed funding to help them buy a car and commercial vacuum cleaners and establish a website to set up their new cleaning business Fresh Desk. 

Their first commercial contract was with the same Lower Hutt school along with a few end-of-lease jobs cleaning houses for property managers. But as they grew they leaned towards the commercial contracts which were more secure.

In 2015 as the business grew through referrals they took on their first staff member.

Today, all eight staff are paid the living wage of $20.55 an hour – $4.05 above the minimum wage. 

As their website notes: “Our customers are making the world a better place within the cost of a cleaning contract. Employing Fresh Desk is an opportunity to redirect your cleaning spend towards making a difference and reducing inequality. You can have a deep and transformative impact in your cleaners’ lives.”

This philosophy of paying their staff fairly and ensuring staff have the opportunity to upskill with NZQA qualifications has paid off – their client base has continued to grow.

Nicole says they “didn’t know a thing” about sales and marketing and branding as their backgrounds in community health meant that making an impact for their clients was what counted.

She says they also had “a naive understanding of the living wage and just wanted to pay people fairly because it was the right thing to do”.

“Why wouldn’t we? Cleaning is hard work and undervalued.” She believes the majority of cleaners are on the minimum wage. And their own experiences of living on a low wage was another reason they wanted to pay a fair wage.

The next step was an accelerator programme that the Akina Foundation runs which taught them a lot about customer validation and business skills.

The programme was designed for social enterprises and while previously they hadn’t considered themselves as such, foundation staff said that by paying the living wage and ensuring their employees undertook NZQA qualifications they were, in fact, becoming a social enterprise.

While the business has morphed into a social enterprise, Nicole says that to be in business you have to make money “but we like to say our business is a business with heart”. They get satisfaction from doing the right thing.

Staff feel valued and are keenly taking up the qualifications they are supported to undertake.

“But we’re not saints,” say Caroline. “There is a healthy degree of self-interest and we have had so much help – money and training from ‘Be Your Own Boss’; Hutt City Council’s Lunch and Learn series and the Akina Foundation programme.”

Like supports like

Fresh Desk’s challenge is to win enough business in a market where the lowest bid usually wins. Its experience has been that organisations which are themselves committed to paying a living wage will look to work with like-minded companies. That’s how it won its cornerstone Auckland clients, Oxfam and Greenpeace – both living wage employers. 

A second programme in 2018, SAP Social Sabbatical, saw a team from SAP New Zealand and Australia and DB Breweries spend two weeks working alongside Fresh Desk in a volunteering initiative. The corporate employees brought skills in strategic planning, marketing, finance and organisational development to help social enterprises solve strategic challenges and plan, develop and implement priority programmes. 

Akina identifies organisationally mature social enterprises and prepares them to take maximum advantage of the opportunity.

Caroline and Nicole say it was great having these talented people “divert their corporate brains to think about us” and they are very grateful.

The work they undertook through that programme has seen them land a big Auckland client, Sanford, which was revamping its Auckland Fish Market with a number of eateries and retail outlets.

The couple, who’ve moved to Auckland, were recruiting for the Sanford contract when NZBusiness spoke to them.

The Wellington business is being looked after by one of their first employees, who is undertaking a first line management certificate to enable her to take on this supervisory role. 

But they reiterate, their success to date is all thanks to all the help they received. 

Caroline and Nicole are also looking at their social impact and endeavouring to measure the impact of the business on their employees’ lives, as well as working with Akina to develop a “Theory of Change” for their social and environmental impact.

They say not knowing anything about running a business and learning how to do so, along with getting processes in place, has been a big learning curve. 

“We keep making mistakes but are learning from them.”

And knowing they have a great team means they can focus better on their strengths. Caroline looks after sales and marketing while Nicole concentrates on operations. 

Fresh Desk has moved towards 100 percent eco-friendly products and is now working to help clients start measuring their waste. 

They have also recently partnered with another company to offer clients a sustainability audit and educational workshops on how the client can reduce its waste.

Caroline’s advice to other new business owners is to find the people who will help you. 

“If you can lean on other people and learn from them – go look for those people.”