A New Power Couple Hits Barrow

I was very impressed when I went to interview Steve Pole in his new business centre in the Sileby Road industrial estate. His was a tale of determination, imagination and compassion; not quite what I was necessarily expecting from a cleaning business.

Steve and his wife, Jo, run a fast-expanding company called Dazzlers Cleaning Services. It started in 2007 when Jo decided to quit her job, buy some cleaning equipment and set out to be a domestic house cleaner. She was obviously good because she soon needed to recruit helpers as she expanded her client base, so much so that Steve had to give her a hand with the admin. The business grew steadily and in 2019, Steve took voluntary redundancy from his main job to get fully involved with the business. By this time there was a staff of 22; the business was run from their home in Woodhouse Eaves and it became a limited company.

Then, in 2020, Covid struck. The business was shut down from March because the cleaners clearly could not enter clients’ homes. But although their employees were furloughed, Jo and Steve just missed out on the various grants offered and had to survive on personal savings to pay their bills.

Undeterred, Jo, clearly a power-house, set out to make the best of a bad job. In between home-schooling their two sons, she persuaded some of her customers and local businesses to donate food which she and Steve (and some of their staff) turned into sandwiches. For 12 weeks they distributed these free to children at a primary school in Loughborough who would have qualified for free school lunches had they been in school (which was shut).

When schools reopened Jo turned her attention to inventing a unique style of face mask which, when not being worn, could be buttoned onto a wrist for convenience. The facelet® became a patented product in the UK and they sold tens of thousands to the public and to businesses including the Hotel du Vin/ Malmaison chain of hotels for their staff.

More recently in 2023, still not satisfied, Jo invented a new party game called Next 5 Words. It has been taken on by the games- maker Cheatwell and is available online. “Jo never stops” says Steve!

In June 2020, Dazzlers reopened with about half of their staff. By September, staffing was more-or-less back to before Covid but with constant crises as people were off sick or unwilling to work. The next two years were very hard but by 2022 things had turned a corner and they opened new office space in Quorn. The experience of lockdown and on-going threats of more bother with Covid led Jo and Steve to launch laundry services in addition to cleaning. That meant more staff and space for big professional laundry machines. When a unit became available in May this year in Barrow, they jumped at it. Now there are 33 staff members and Dazzlers also offers domestic laundry, ironing and dry cleaning to local customers; contract laundry and linen hire to businesses and Airbnbs in addition to all the cleaning they do. They are proud of being an independent business rather than a franchise (which many of the well-known names are). They are proud of Dazzlers’ core values of being independent, friendly and professional.

Barrow provides an ideal location enabling the business to serve the surrounding villages. Jo and Steve really feel their determination to grow the business and raise standards is working. They have arrived even though the work is relentless.

Barrow Voice wishes them every success.

Judith Rodgers