While in high school in 1994 in Bay Village, Grant Alexander earned extra cash by starting a car detailing business out of his parents’ garage. He continued the gig through his college years and as business increased, Alexander knew he had found his niche.

GK’s Custom Polishing was officially established in 2001, offering car, motorcycle and watercraft detailing, transportation and storage. Then one day his father suggested Alexander get in to stonework polishing.

“Detailing in Cleveland is kind of an eight months of the year gig,” Alexander says. “I was looking for something to do in the winter.”

Alexander found that something in hard surface polishing – cleaning everything from natural stone and marble to tile and grout. In 2002 GK’s had a new division of the company.

Today, GK’s cares for the hard surfaces in most downtown Cleveland hotels, from the polishing and sealing of marble floors in lobbies to cleaning and polishing the tile and grout in bathrooms.

When the owners of the Drury Plaza Hotel began converting the old Cleveland Board of Education building into an upscale hotel, they called Alexander. “It was an old city building and they had marble floors everywhere,” he recalls of the job. “It was a three-month project with tons of marble. You don’t just go in and restore a commercial building overnight.”

With the Republican National Convention next week, Alexander is busier than usual, making sure the downtown hotels sparkle and shine. While as much as 75 percent of his commercial work is from recurring contracts with places like Marriott, Westin and Renaissance, Alexander anticipated his clients would want some extra work both before and after the convention.

“We sent letters to all of our commercial contracts three to four months ago to start preparing for additional work,” Alexander says, adding that the more foot traffic the hotels get, the more the floors have to be care for. “The higher the traffic, the more we get called in.”

Alexander’s clients started calling for hard surface work almost immediately, and they will keep calling after the convention is over and visitors are long gone.

"It's good for the front end, since our contract clients called us months ago and needed a lot of additional work,” Alexander says. “It’s good on the back end because there’s so much traffic.”

In fact, the company’s 30 employees will be working through most of the year.  “Business is up 30 percent over the course of the year,” Alexander estimates.