Our Story
In 2002 Bluestones founder Guy Ligertwood and Sandrita his Argentinian wife moved back from living in Australia to Guy's homeland of Scotland. On the first night back they had a drink with friend Murray Campbell who at that time worked for an Edinburgh letting agent. Murray needed cleaners for the letting agent’s flats and they needed to work. The only business experience that Guy had was setting up a fairly shambolic but fun Edinburgh freshers ball with Murray a few years earlier! At 27 his longest job had been 10 months due to moving to various places around the world to live so he had nothing to lose.
Within the week and with a little red Henry Vacuum and no vehicle Guy and Sandrita used the Edinburgh buses to get to the properties that they needed to clean! Sandrita remembers ‘we used to get a few funny looks, I had never been to Europe before so the whole experience was quite surreal!’ Sandrita then taught Guy to clean the right way and Bluestone was born!
Guy and Sandrita had planned to go back to Australia but the cleaning became busier and busier. Sandrita was not convinced about her and Guy having to clean flats to make a living and many of Guys friends and family were yet to be convinced that this was a good move for the future! Comments like ‘do you really want to keep cleaning’ spurred Guy on.
Potential clients were called from Guys makeshift office in his bedroom and Kornel Polgar (a Hungarian Architect) was the first employee to be employed by Bluestone who was studying English with Sandrita at the time. Kornel is still with Guy now as a Bluestone Senior Client Manager and to this day he is still the best cleaner that Bluestone has ever had!
At the start Bluestone had great difficulty finding workers to fill the roll of what is now called a ‘Cleantech Manager’ and a ‘Cleaning Technician’. Many of Guy’s friends helped out in the early days and there were some real characters from Spain, Australia, South Africa and even the odd Scot! Then Poland joined the EU!
The business has boomed ever since providing a bespoke property and stair cleaning service for the domestic and commercial market working for private clients, letting agents, developers, builders, housing associations and councils across the central belt. They now have 4 other sides to the business Bluestone Junk, Bluestone Move outs, Bluestone Removals and Bluestone Maintenance and this has added a great width to the services that they can provide for their clients.
The teams are all fully uniformed and Guy is very specific about making sure that the right image of the company is portrayed at all times.
Guy is adamant that 'the Bluestone technicians are the new modern breed of service technicians that clients want. We provide well dressed, well trained, on time and friendly technicians day in day out for clients all across the central belt. If you see a Bluestone crew van empty of all its team they are a well-regimented team. The predominantly Polish workforce has a great work ethic and they get the job done with a smile and no nonsense’.
Bluestone plan on even more growth and with Fi Gilmour now in the General Manager position it looks ever more likely that they will achieve this, “our big jump from a small town centre shop front to our Leith warehouse & offices means our exciting plans for continued expansion into new markets and products can now be possible” (Fiona – Bluestone’s General Manager)
Bluestone's plan for 2009 is to further improve its systems and to drive forward all the separate Bluestone brands. Bluestone wants to push hard to grow the business and with the senior managements vision and team spirit they have a strong belief that these goals will happen.
Sandrita looks back ‘I am very proud of what has been achieved with Bluestone and now that we have two small children to look after unfortunately I do not have a lot of time to help. It seems along time ago that we used to wave down the bus with a Henry Hoover in our hand!’