The high school helper who ended up running Action Craft
Michael Greenwood was a high school helper to the man who started Action Craft in 1984, and he now runs the carpet cleaning business by himself.
Petaluma, CA
The white van that Action Craft Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning works out of carries its history on the side. “Action Craft” runs along the panel in gray letters, with an arrow shooting off the end of the last word. Under it, in smaller type, is “Since 1984.” Two place names sit lower down, Petaluma near the back and Marin near the front.
Michael Greenwood, who owns the business now, chose none of it. “I think the name I got is pretty good, but I didn’t come up with it,” he says. “I took this business over from someone.”
The someone was a man named Bud, who started Action Craft in 1984. Greenwood knew him first as a boss. In high school he worked as Bud’s helper on jobs. Bud retired around 2011 or 2012, as Greenwood remembers it, and his son, Dominic, took over. After Dominic died, the family asked Greenwood, the former helper, whether he wanted the business.
He said yes. “I had opportunity,” he says. That makes him the third person to run Action Craft, and he runs it alone. “It’s just me,” he says. When a job is big enough, he calls one of a couple of men he pays by the job. Otherwise the work is his, and so is the result. “I’m the only one responsible for my quality of work,” he says. “It’s my reputation on the line.”
Greenwood came to the business with flooring already in the family. His father sold flooring for 30 years, and his uncle sold it with him. Greenwood worked for the owner of a Petaluma carpet store, and he has installed carpet and done other kinds of flooring work himself.
That background still feeds the job. Much of his work has come through people he knows in the flooring trade, and many of those customers bought new carpet within the past few years. He makes sure they know what the purchase requires. “Your manufacturer of your carpet requires you to get it cleaned at least one to two times a year in order to uphold the warranty,” he says.
Once he has cleaned a house, the customer tends to stay. “I’m their guy,” he says. By his count, each customer sends him at least one or two more within a year or two. Sometimes a neighbor books him for the following week. Sometimes the neighbor wants it done the same day, and he does two houses in one day.
Most of that work has been in Marin and around Petaluma, though he has been willing to drive as far north as Healdsburg for a full day of work. He would rather take fewer, bigger jobs than compete on price. “I’m not at all interested in competing with people that are maybe able to provide a service for a cheaper rate,” he says. “It’s just not worth it for me as an owner-operator.”
Residential carpet is what he likes best. He takes commercial jobs, and he knows about the low-moisture encapsulation method that lets some commercial cleaners cover something like 10,000 square feet a day. But houses are his strength. “With carpet cleaning, I can do it well,” he says. “I know what I’m doing.”
Upholstery is harder work, he says, and harder to make good money at. Action Craft still cleans it, in homes and offices and in cars, trucks and RVs. “Other guys are more meticulous and they like to do the upholstery cleaning,” he says. “Carpet cleaning is more my favorite.”
He uses as little cleaning chemical as a job allows, where some cleaners lean hard on chemistry to get carpet clean. “How I was taught was, only use what you need,” he says. Before he quotes a job, he likes to see it, so Action Craft asks customers to text or email photos first.
One customer, Kirk C., wrote in a Google review that Greenwood got pet and coffee stains out of the carpets at his business. The carpets weren’t new, he wrote, but they looked new again.
Greenwood’s first year as owner was hard. His cleaning machine broke down during the busiest stretch of the year, and he was down for two or three weeks while he waited for a new part and got it installed. “It was a rough year,” he says. “But it was a learning experience. I made it through.”
He has kept learning since. “There’s all the other stuff that goes along with the craft of my service,” he says. “There’s different techniques, there’s new stuff comes out.”
What he has never minded is the labor itself, the part some cleaners complain about. “Some guys, they’re like, ‘Oh, the carpet cleaning, pushing the wand around all day is like backbreaking,’” he says. “For me, it’s not.”