More than just
home cleaning
— The Freska Story
It was a warm Summer day on a small islet of Liuskaluoto in the Helsinki archipelago. Waves were crashing gently against the rocks and seagulls were flying about, free as they do. That’s when and where the idea of Freska was born. In 2015.
F is for Freedom, 2015
Freedom. That was the initial motivation behind the idea, as Sebastian wanted to create something new and make a living in the process. He was sipping on a cold one and chit-chatting with his friend Ed who showed him the website of a UK-based home cleaning company. Sebastian realized that this kind of a modern, easy-to-book home cleaning service did not exist in Finland. The thought stuck with him. So he decided to explore the market. After some planning he pitched the idea of founding a home cleaning company to his friends Esa and Pete.
With some effort, Sebastian managed to get the guys onboard as co-founders. ”It took a while and some pitching efforts to convince the guys”, Sebastian says laughing. No wonder—cleaning homes might not sound like the coolest of endeavors for a gang of rascals in their late 20s.
But as it turns out, home cleaning is not only cool. It is important and valuable on many levels.
Early Days, 2015-2016
Sebastian, Esa and Pete rolled up their sleeves and started to learn the ropes: how to perform a proper cleaning, what equipment to use, what is the duration of a cleaning, how to acquire and support customers and so on. During the early days, they worked from cafes and cleaned their friends’ homes to get the hang of it. Pretty soon they were able to hire their first professional cleaner. And the second. And the third.
Working closely with the cleaners, the guys started to receive positive feedback about how nice they were to the cleaners, which at first seemed puzzling. Surely they weren’t doing anything abnormal? They quickly learned that it is not the default in the industry that cleaners are offered real jobs, good working conditions and treated with respect.
This was a pivotal realization and led to the gang discovering the purpose of the company: to create real jobs and opportunities for cleaners and to be the #1 workplace for them. This became the driving force behind the company's vision and values. Furthermore, it is not a fluffy ideological thing—it is the best way to create value and succeed in the cleaning business. When we take care of our people, they will take care of our customers. Hence, the Freska slogan: Happy cleaners = happy customers.
To Norway and Sweden, 2016-2018
Team work makes dream work. This ol' saying ain't dusty and applies to Freska’s journey particularly well. In 2016 the Freska team learned about a similar venture happening in the picturesque city of Bergen in Norway: Two youngsters, Erik and Dennis, had started a cleaning company called Wipe AS (a source of a thousand giggles!) with ambitions similar to those of the three amigos in Finland.
The boys met up in Helsinki to talk shop and quickly decided to join forces under the Freska flag. Since then we have been creating real jobs and cleaning up the black-market-ridden industry in Norway.
In 2018, Freska wanted to grow its impact in the Nordics and decided to expand to Sweden. Freska launched in Stockholm and achieved rapid growth which has continued ever since. In Sweden, we have since opened up shop in many cities outside of Stockholm. And in just a few years, we've had the privilege of welcoming hundreds of Freskans and thousands of customers to the family!
Not all glitter, 2020–2021
Freska's journey has not been just dancing on roses. In addition to the normal pains of growing a service business—balancing supply and demand, nurturing a healthy company culture and maintaining service quality at scale–Freska has experienced the turbulent times of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were definitely rattled by the effects of the pandemic; cleaners had to stay home with sick kids, customers cancelled cleanings due to restrictions and sales plummeted, to name a couple of critical challenges. We had to dig deep as a group to find ways to survive, but in the end, we managed to come out even stronger than before. The kudos for this goes out to two groups: our superhero cleaners and our loyal customers. Full stop.
F is for the future, 2022 ➡️
In 2022, Freska consists of more than 1000 people who come from more than 70 different countries. This diversity is something we are all very proud of. Freska has performed around 3 000 000 (yes, that is six zeros) hours of home cleaning. This number contains tens of thousands of customers whose lives we have made happier, whose relationships we have improved and whose stress levels we have lowered. And it contains thousands of Freskans we have provided work, community, and opportunities to. These two groups of people are what Freska is built for.
When Sebastian looks at Freska now, he sees a completely different company than in the early stages of the journey, but what has not changed are the core values and purpose.
”The current vision is to become the best place to work for cleaners in Europe”, he says with no hesitation.
In seven years, an idea that was born from a modest goal of personal freedom has blossomed into a company that—fittingly enough—brings many kinds of freedom to tens of thousands of people in the Nordics.
We are just hitting our stride.
Buying home cleaning means buying freedom and giving freedom. What does freedom mean to you?