For Lisa Michalson, starting up a business in the cleaning industry was a baptism of fire. She and her husband Garth were in their first year of operating when one of the major players tried to use legal pressure to shut them down. Garth had previously been a wholesale manager for the now-defunct Godfreys stores, and they didn’t take kindly to the new competition.

“They threw everything under the sun at us, which was very stressful,” Michalson says. “We were trying to build the business, not knowing how far they’d go. We had a young family, with a daughter under one and another on the way, and we had to put everything on the line.”

The resulting legal case, although a costly exercise, came to a happy end. Some eighteen years later, Michalson can accentuate the positive. “You know what, it’s sort of like, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Having an enemy at that point, when we were just getting going, made us go harder.”

Godfreys came back with offers to buy out Cleanstar on several occasions, but Michalson and her husband were determined to make their business work. It was the best decision they ever made. “We were on a mission to do our own thing after that, and we created a very different business to theirs. We just do what we do, with no limitations.”

Michalson says it’s this individual approach that has drawn customers to Cleanstar over the years. Being comparatively young business owners, they were happy to embrace innovation and creativity. “We didn’t stick to what everyone else was doing. We just continued and continue to go with our gut in our unique decisions and choices, which helps us stand out.”

And, while they have a large range of products for a family business, they’re still humble where it counts.

“People like us because we’ve got a face. I think people still like to be able to speak to the owner and I’m available to speak to anyone. We’re a bit of an old-school business in that way.”

Old-school or not, Michalson has continued to push for innovation and change. She is a keen advocate of the “right to repair” and the need to introduce a law that would encourage businesses to fix goods or equipment before disposing of them. As it stands, most businesses would prefer customers to dispose of a machine that is not working—often for easily-fixed reasons—and buy a new one. Michalson says laws like those already introduced in Europe would encourage the necessary training and skills development to repair, rather than adding to landfill.

“It became a common theme over the years, talking to customers,” Michalson says. “People wanted to know if there was anyone who could repair equipment or if there were any young people with the skills who they could employ.”

The lack of skills is a sticking point Michalson has been working to overcome, speaking to the government about the possibility of TAFE courses incorporating repair training into courses. More recently, she and her team have been working with Professor Leanne Wiseman at Griffith University, whose area of research is the legal and regulatory responses to the right-to-repair movement.

“Leanne is very driven and has been to a lot of overseas conferences and summits. Once we connected with her, she opened up the issue for us and gave us access to some of those summits, where we’ve been able to go along and present. We’re just trying to motivate some change, but it can be so hard to get to the right people in government.”

Now that she and Garth are no longer the new kids on the block, Michalson is able to look back and see how the industry has changed since they first got started.

“It’s certainly become stronger, and it’s grown a hell of a lot, I think, especially since COVID. People have come to realise the importance of cleaning and hygiene.”

Another positive is that she’s no longer such an oddity for being a woman at the top of the cleaning game.

“When I started, there were not many women at all. There’s a lot more women involved now, which is great. It’s still obviously male-dominated, but slowly, slowly, we’re getting there.”

While her career might have started with a bitter rivalry, that hasn’t been her experience of the broader industry.

“There’s a lot more players in the game now, but most people know each other. It’s a bit of a unique industry, I think, where people might compete, but there is also respect among each other.”