Clean Machine, a Far Hills, N.J.-based preventative maintenance PC service and repair company is seeking out partners and customers as it expands north of the border and into Canada this year.
Clean Machine founder and CEO, Larry Gordon, established the company to help home and small office users better manage and protect their PCs from adware, spyware and viruses. All of the work is done remotely at Clean Machine’s PC Concierge office based in India.
While the company currently only has a presence in the United States with about 2,000 customers and about a dozen VARs spread throughout the country, Gordon said he plans on expanding Clean Machine’s partner base to also include Canada later this year as well.
“I’m looking to branch out into Canada with new VARs,” Gordon said. “Our partner recruitment strategy will be through networking events and VAR associations. I would hope for about 10 to 12 VARs being signed up (in Canada) in the next few months,” he added.
Gordon has a goal of eventually attaining at least a couple hundred partners dealing in the small business space and says these partners will help the company with its go to market strategy, which Gordon said is primarily channel driven.
“All VARs need to do is sign up their customers’ computers onto our systems and they provide the billing and we provide the service,” Gordon said. “Many VARs also like to white label this to brand it as their own.”
Along with whitelabelling, Gordon said Clean Machine partners have margins that reach 55 per cent. Partners can also benefit from recurring revenue since Clean Machine’s service works through a monthly-subscription fee based model, Gordon said.
“There are no mark-up restrictions on this solution,” Gordon said. “We charge partners $200 per PC per year and most partners are charging their customers anywhere from $300 to $440 a month, so there’s money to be made for them there.”
Training is also provided to partners through webinar sessions to educate them on the service and on the latest PC threats to emerge into the market place.
Clean Machine’s preventative maintenance service Gordon said, is ideal for VARs who deal in the small business customer space with customers who have less than 10 computers. Some of the services which are included in the PC Concierge subscription model are: entire system audits, removal of spyware, adware and viruses, wireless security set up and network troubleshooting and repair services.
Gordon said minimal set up is required on the user’s part because it’s literally just point and click. Once ready to use, the machine requires an active broadband Internet connection in order to run the service. Clean Machine’s PC Concierge then scans the user’s PC for any malicious activity and removes it from the computer and provides the user with a report indicating how well the PC is performing along with anything else the service happened to remove as a result of the scan.
“This service keeps the Geek Squads out of our accounts and therefore allows for good margins and customer stickiness for partners,” Gordon said. “This year, we want to keep expanding, especially in Canada. My message to potential partners is that they can have higher margins and better relationships with their customers and better customer service, dedication and support from us,” he added.
Another company that also specializes in PC protection, but without the remote managed service offering, is Optimize Your PC, which has four software products which include: PC Optimizer, PC Cleaner, Registry Doctor and Trace Eraser.