Posted by Sudbury Northern Life
Building on a trend that has become popular in many metropolitan areas throughout Canada and the U.S., Sudbury's first personal concierge service opens up your hectic schedule.
"A personal concierge is basically your personal assistant on
an as needed basis," said David Mitchell of David Mitchell
Concierge. "Some common services we'd offer are house
cleaning, errand services, so personal shopping, grocery
shopping, department stores, last minute gift shopping...
really anything that would save somebody time in a day as long
as it's legal and ethical."
With people often wishing for more time in the day, while trying to balance their work and life schedules, Mitchell says a personal concierge can become their on-call personal assistant.
"I think there are many people who fall into one of two categories. Either they're in a position where they've come to a point in their life where's it's difficult for them to get these things done, maybe they're not as mobile as they once were, maybe transportation's an issue for them and therefore having someone that can assist them with some of these errands is really a matter of necessity," he said.
"There's also the people who would simply like more time and they're so hectic with work schedules and everything else that having a concierge allows them to dedicate more time to the things that they find important - family, friends, leisure time."
Even though the economic downturn has hit Sudbury with numerous layoffs and job losses, Debbi Nicholson, President and CEO of the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce, says this type of service could weather the economic storm simply because it does give people back their free time.
"People are extremely busy these days and time is a commodity unfortunately that you can't grow," she said. "So, if people could use a concierge service or those programs that he offers to their benefit to allow them to free up time to do other things than obviously I think they would be in great demand."
Although this is a type of service that not everyone would
be interested, she said there's still opportunities for
success.
"There are still a lot of people in businesses that are doing
extremely well in spite of this economy and if those are the
people that he's appealing to than I could see his business
doing very well."
His clients often wonder how they managed without him.
"Where do I start?" said Kevin Kilbey, a client of Mitchell's. "Laundry. I'm a busy person and there's times when, because I'm single and I'm busy and it's time consuming, (I don't have time to do it). Call them up... it's gone, it's back, a little bit of cash. Terrific."
Mitchell has both residential and business clients.
"So some of my clients use me more for the typical services that an average person would need such as shopping services, house cleaning, we offer a wait service," he said.
"So if you needed to have a repair person or an installation person come in, but they don't have to take the day off of work, we're able to go into their home and actually wait for the person to come in and do the work. As far as my business clients go we also offer personal assistance services, which would be similar to hiring a personal assistant to work for you, any number of tasks that would free up time in their schedule, administrative etc."
Watch Northern Life's video report on this story to hear more from Mitchell on his business and for pricing and contact information. Visit www.northernlife.ca/video and search for "personal concierge".
