North Wales firms must ‘rewrite the rules’ to survive, says Wrexham company CEO

North Wales businesses are having to rewrite their business rules to survive and thrive in 2026, says the CEO of a fast-growing Wrexham-based commercial cleaning firm.

Carlton Relf, who started Maidscando two years, explains: “Company founders in North Wales aren’t just trying out new creative ideas to be clever or fashionable – they are having to rewrite their business rule book just to survive.”

The region’s small businesses have been hit by a triple whammy of energy price hikes, higher payroll costs, and National Insurance increases over the last three years.

These extra costs have left firms with little or no breathing space, such as using extra sales revenue to reinvest in their operations, with West Cheshire / North Wales Chamber of Commerce quarterly data from Q3 2025 showing that only 1.2% of the area’s companies had increased their investment in plant and equipment.

As a result, company founders and senior executives are having to reinvent their business models or adapt their products for new markets.

Faced by low margins in commercial cleaning, Maidscando Ltd developed a ‘technicians not cleaners’ approach, to add greater value to its cleaning services.

Its cleaning technicians not only deliver higher cleaning standards but they also become each customer’s ‘eyes and ears’, identifying future maintenance or cleaning issues, such as damage to site floorcoverings or difficulties with building cleaning schedules, before these issues can harm the customer’s brand or undermine their sites’ hygiene or maintenance standards.

Carlton Relf comments: “Our technicians know our customer sites backwards, so with their expert cleaning and radically honest fault reporting, we are at the heart of improving both customers’ site cleanliness and their overall estate management. By rewriting our business rules, we have transformed the value we add to our customers’ daily operations.”

Maidscando’s innovative ‘technicians not cleaners’ approach has also increased company technicians’ enjoyment of their work – and it is boosting Maidscando’s client satisfaction leading to more customer contracts.