One Hamilton-based company cleans every corner of America

“It’s one of the very undervalued roles, and it’s one of the same misled areas,” Morrison said. “There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors out there, so we’re all about raising the value of cleaning operations, and it all started out by helping the worker clean better, faster.”

The idea behind Kaivac started at Winton Woods schools, where the company’s founder, Bob Robinson, wanted to find a way to clean the school’s bathrooms with less physical labor and time. Twenty-six years later, products can clean a bathroom in a third of the time without making them touch the floor themselves.

“We always like to say that we clean the areas that matter,” Morrison said. “We take on the toughest challenge and public restrooms are always an issue with folks.”

Although the company started with bathrooms, it has moved to create machines specialized for kitchen, floor and refrigerator cleaning.

The company has machines in every state and continent except Antarctica, according to Kaivac Director of Marketing Jim Pickrel. Walmart, Kroger and Wendy’s all sport Kaivac equipment.

Morrison said the company has been able to break through to different spaces by innovating quickly to find solutions to specific problems. This has led the company to hold more than 20 patents, with more currently being approved.

“We are not scared to take chances,” Morrison said. “There’s always something new going on at Kaivac. From an innovation standpoint, we are experiencing tremendous growth as an organization which means our employees have new opportunities.”

Pickrel and Morrison said the company had a large demand for its nation-leading cleaning science solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, Kaivac had been known to clean surfaces as close to disinfected as possible without using sanitizing materials. The studies combined with the company’s national reputation to create demand as the world shut down.

“When covid hit, everybody else was wondering; ‘Is the world going to shut down? What’s going to happen here?’ when our phones and order lines were ringing,” Morrison said. “Once people saw how important cleaning was, they naturally gravitated towards us.”

The company is shipping cleaning machines daily while finding new clients across the country.