It’s been one month since we welcomed back in-person classes. And I just need to take a second to thank Clean Image Janitorial for helping us keep our community healthy.
Clean Image Janitorial has been our professional cleaning crew for years, probably like 7. They have always done an incredible job cleaning our facilities. If you’ve ever walked into an Aerial Dance, you know our spaces are clean, they radiate clean, and a big part of that is because of DJ, Wendy and Krystal. When we opened our Appleton location in August 2011 my father and I used to trade off cleaning the floors at Aerial Dance. At that time we only had the front pole studio. And I hated disinfecting the floor and cleaning the mirrors. As soon as the budget allowed I set out to hire a cleaning company and the Clean Image team been an important part of Aerial Dance since. When we expanded to include an aerial program, DJ (the owner of Clean Image) was consulted about the type of foam floor we should put in. Before opening our Green Bay location, DJ was a call I made before signing the lease to make sure they would come up there. They work around our changing schedule when we need them to. They are very kind and respectful to our students and instructors when they see them. They do great work. But in the past few weeks I have developed and even greater love for DJ and Clean Image as they have been helping us source the products we need to keep our community safe.
In my blog “Planning on Resuming” I spoke about the deep cleaning Clean Image was doing before we reopened and the difficulty we were having with sourcing isopropyl alcohol. That hasn’t changed as the state as opened. Most stores now have it but they still are limiting it to 1 32 oz or 2 16 oz per person per day. Let me put that in perspective for you: at Aerial Dance Green Bay we are currently using 16 spray bottles daily and in Appleton 29 spray bottles. Each spray bottle is 16 oz. So for our initial filling we need 23 large bottles. We refill daily and are going through about 16 oz per bottle per week. So we need 23 large bottles EVERY week. Purchasing 1 bottle at a time makes needing 23 bottles every 7 days very challenging.
We tried switching the ethyl alcohol since that is easier to get. Our formulation scientist on staff approved the switch from a virus killing and keeping people safe perspective. But it smells like cheap tequila. And worse, it makes my hands feel like they have a coating on them. When we switched over and I tried it, I didn’t like it. None of my instructors liked it and they are practically bathing in it at the moment so I wanted to switch back to isopropyl but we needed to be able to get it in quantity. Most of the “business” suppliers aren’t opening new accounts at this time so we couldn’t get on board with a wholesale business to business supplier. The few places we could order it online require hazmat shipping so in addition to the increased cost of the product, and paying shipping you pay an additional $300 charge. So for the past few weeks Chrissy, Olivia & I would go to multiple stores and by single bottles at a time. I hated this. First, it’s a waste of time. Second, stores are price gouging the cost…jerks. Third, the more places we go the higher the risk of exposure. So I needed a better solution that was sustainable. DJ to the rescue!!!!!
Yesterday after a manager meeting where we spoke of the desire to fully switch all bottles back to isopropyl and the difficulty in finding it I texted DJ and said “if you see any 70% or up isopropyl on a shelf, I’ll take it!” A few hours later he had provided us 10 bottles for each studio! Then late last night 50 more bottles for each studio. That gives us 3-ish weeks supply! So in two weeks I’ll ask him to procure us more. I seriously can’t tell you how awesome it is to have this in our store room because it means my staff and I don’t have to go t a million places, pay the higher prices, and our students get to use the product we prefer. It may seem like a little thing, be every day during this time of upheaval there are a million problems to solve. I’m so grateful to Clean Image Janitorial and DJ for going outside their scope of “cleaning our facilities” to help us source the products we need to be able to run classes. We are very lucky to have a wonderful company supporting us.