Diana Richards has been in the vacuum cleaner business a long time. One of the things she found over the years is that people don’t know the basic workings of their machines, and they are quick to throw the vacuum away if can’t easily be  fixed.

“If they were only educated that vacuum belts are rubber and they do break and need to be changed,” says Richards. “Your carpet would be cleaner with a new belt.”

Richards owned a small vacuum repair shop with her husband in New Castle, PA, which closed in 1992 with her divorce. Her experience led to Vacuum Services International, the nation’s largest vacuum cleaner remanufacturing facility.

Richards started the Vacuum Helpline, a call center for repairs and trouble shooting, after spending two hours in a parking lot with her car running helping a customer with a broken machine.

“I started to see my retail customers say, ‘here’s a broken vacuum. If you can repair it, fine. It not, throw it away and my company will send me a new one,’” explains Richards. “All for a minor maintenance issue. I’d say this business started because of a belt.”

Eighteen years later, VSI customers send their broken vacuums to the Valley View warehouse, where they are disassembled, remanufactured and working as good as new. The costs savings is 50 to 60 percent less than buying a new vacuum. “It’s a tremendous savings for corporations,” says Richards. “It saves hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Not to mention Richards’ services are good for the environment. She has saved 12 million pounds of broken vacuums from landfills and remanufactured half a million machines. “I was green before green was even a tag line,” she says.  The Helpline fields between 1,500 and 2,500 calls a week.

The biz employs 23.

Source: Diana Richards
Writer: Karin Connelly