MAID IN HOBOKEN
727 Monroe St.
(201) 659-9500
maidinhoboken.com
If you’re looking for a twenty-first-century cleaning service, this may be it. The company is less than two years old and is already serving more than a thousand clients throughout Hudson County. Owner Paul Fried, who already owns a real estate development business, refers to himself as a “serial entrepreneur.”
So, why a cleaning service? “I had a very difficult time finding a quality cleaning company,” he relates. “I’d been through every service in the county and realized there was a void in the marketplace.”
The cleaning staff has grown from two employees over a year ago to 24. The company has three vans and one 14-passenger bus, each bearing the name of the company. “We have drivers who drop off cleaners and pick them up,” Fried says. “We furnish all the supplies and all the necessary equipment to clean homes. All the cleaning products and solutions are at least 75 percent eco friendly and certified green.”
A point of pride for Fried is that all his workers are bonded, documented, and covered by workers’ comp. “This is very important for building managers and condo associations,” he says. “If a cleaner gets hurt in a fifth-floor walkup and falls down and is not covered by workers’ comp, the condo association and unit owners are on the hook. It gives a level of security and comfort to a building.”
Fried says, “We demonstrate a level of professionalism uncommon in the industry. We send out an email reminder prior to every cleaning. I work off a detailed software program specific to the cleaning business.”
It’s also unusual for a cleaning service to have a “storefront presence.” Fried says, “That gives us a level of credibility. We congregate in the morning, go over schedules, have a pep talk with the staff. They go out and do their thing and come back for lunch. They can drop off keys and pick up keys.”
It’s also unusual for a cleaning service to hire a consultant. “I love the business side of it,” Fried says. “We hired a consultant who flew in from Florida and spent three days refining our systems. We created a policy manual and employee handbook.”
The company is expanding up River Road and across the river and starting a handyman business. They were getting a lot of calls from clients who wanted a door or a hole in the wall fixed. “We realized there was a niche market for this,” Fried says. “There are not a lot of people who do small jobs, and the model is very similar to the cleaning business.”
Fried has one caveat about the cleaning service. “It’s not the right fit for every client,” he says. “Certain clients need the attention of a single cleaner. We have so many clients we can’t personalize for each client, but it works for 99 percent of people.”
Says Fried, “We’re constantly looking at the model and tweaking it to better train staff and serve customers.”—07030
EAT METAL
720 Monroe Street
E511
(201) 926-9620
eatmetal@mac.com
eatmetal.org
The name sounds a little scary until you realize it is the initials of the artist: Elizabeth Ann Tokoly, who holds a Master of Fine Arts in metalsmithing. Who knew?
She says it was her teachers in high school who steered her toward this specialty. “They saw the way I worked and how I enjoyed doing three D and directed me to apply for this. I’m lucky that it was something I fell in love with.”
But before falling in love with metal, she got a solid foundation in the all the arts, including drawing, collage, painting, and color, many of which are reflected in her designs.
For 13 years, she worked out of a studio in her Jersey City digs. But for the last three, she’s been in the Monroe Center.
She makes necklaces, bracelets, rings, and ear rings in sterling silver and 18 karat gold with colored gem stones and diamonds in various shapes. Those are the facts, but they hardly do justice to her unique designs and the thought that goes into them.
Browse her website, and you’ll find jewelry, which incorporates geometric spheres and circles, and items that echo chain mail. You’ll find engagement rings, wedding bands, and other custom-made rings.
“I have one-of-a-kind pieces, and I do a lot of custom work,” she says. “A client might want to repurpose an old piece of jewelry from her grandmother and make it more current.”
She sells her work online, and she also has a showroom in her gallery in the Monroe Center. Her pieces range in price between $150 and $5,000.
“What I’m doing here is trying to create a space for people to view the work, and it’s also a learning space. I teach classes and have one-day workshops for six to eight people. It’s a small, wonderful, intimate, dynamic learning experience with all kinds of tools that are interesting to look at and learn about.”
The eight-week classes accommodate beginners and advanced students. “Each student will construct a finished piece of jewelry,” she says. “My goal is to enlighten my students on the importance of design, material, technique, and craftsmanship.”
What sparks her imagination? “I’m very much inspired by nature and geometry,” she says. “I really like to view the different geometric patterns. I take time to look at things that happen in nature. My style is contemporary and uses traditional techniques. It exhibits simple lines, primary forms, shapes, or structures. That’s what the work is about.”
But it’s more than that.
“I believe you need to live in a visually stimulating environment to be successful,” she says “Art is a significant factor toward a happier and successful life.”
MISSION 50
50 Harrison St.
(201) 706-7210
Mission50.com
Real estate developer Greg Dell ’Aquila had a building with a problem: too much space. It was a business center but no one wanted to rent large spaces. When he cut services and size, the building started to fill up with one-person operations. That was in 2003. By 2006, the building was 100-percent occupied.
But soon Dell ’Aquila got a call from a prospective client that changed his thinking. The guy didn’t want to work alone in a 10-by-10-foot room.
“In 2008, co-working came out of the woodwork,” Dell ’Aquila says. “It still wasn’t mainstream, but mobile technology was growing by leaps and bounds.”
Three years later, he opened Mission 50, capitalizing on the shared-office concept with lots of open space, little management, and few services.
Layouts include shared open spaces with library-style tables, café-style tables, laptop tables, and lockable offices. Fees range between $25 a day and $1,200 a month.
One member of Mission 50 left a corporate job to become a partner in a small business. He started out with a $25 a day membership. “It was an alternative to home or Starbucks,” says Della ’Aquila, “and now he has an unlimited membership at about $350 a month. He can come any day he wants. He just got to the point where he saw the productivity.”
Some co-working operations have events people promoting collaboration, according to Della ’Aquila. “But we don’t promote collaboration,” he says. “It just happens when human beings are together. Some people come who would otherwise work at home and want the sense that there are people around them; they’re not isolated.”
“Others,” he says, “engage much, much more. They’re finding people—an attorney asking for business advice, someone looking for a graphic designer.”
Mission 50 attracts a broad range of working people, including a mom writing a novel, an attorney who wanted a Hudson County presence, and small, growing companies that don’t know how much space they will need.
Dell ’Aquila says that the shared-space concept could not have worked in the 1990s because people working in home offices were “connected to the wall. They didn’t have the technology to for completely wireless, cloud computing solutions.”
The name Mission 50 has at least three origins: The word “mission” derives from the mission statements of businesses. The building is at 50 Harrison Street, and “50 is an important number for the United States,” Della ’Aquila says—“Harrison, Clinton, Washington, Adams, Jackson, Monroe—the presidents are synonymous with the United States.”
Della ’Aquila is happy with his own mission. “I just found a very good purpose in life,” he says, “helping small business owners grow within themselves.”—07030
PHOTOS BY Alyssa Bredin