OK, OK…I’m a neat freak. Growing up, I was the kid more interested in reorganizing a cluttered bookshelf or an overstuffed toy chest than getting dirty playing football. Even as an adult, I’m a bit fanatical about regularly making my bed, cleaning my room and scrubbing my bathroom (I even color code my wardrobe).
Wilame Piteri understands where I’m coming from. He’s the President and Founder of Sol Enterprises, a professional cleaning service based in Saratoga Springs that has clients in seven states across the Northeast. “Quality is really important in this business,” says Piteri. “If it isn’t clean, then we didn’t do our job right.” Sol Enterprises provides a full-spectrum of janitorial services, including high-speed floor burnishing and waxing, restroom sanitation and replenishment, window cleaning and secure trash removal.
Piteri grew up in the sprawling, industrial metropolis of São Paulo, Brazil. At the age of just 17, with an old truck that his father had given him, Piteri opened his own trucking and transportation company called Osasco Express. Within two years, his trucking company was the biggest in Downtown São Paulo, delivering up to 40,000 parcels a month. As well as he was doing, though, Piteri had his sights set on much bigger things—a lot farther away. “I have friends here in the Northeast,” he says. “One year, I visited some of them in Rhode Island, and I liked it a lot. They told me that this country was amazing and full of opportunities.”
Leaving Osasco Express in the hands of his brother, Piteri moved to the US in December 2002 with just $300 in his pocket and no real business plan. But he did have some friends in Saratoga. “I started my career as a cleaner on Ballston Avenue, and I fell in love with Saratoga Springs on the first day,” says Piteri. Within six months, he’d opened his first business in the Spa City, WW Cleaning. Though no longer in business, WW Cleaning gave Piteri the experience to found Sol Enterprises in 2012. Skip ahead seven years, and Sol now has more than 300 employees, and services large and small companies alike (including Price Chopper’s Market 32), as well as households from New York to Maine and all states in between.
As for what makes Sol Enterprises outshine the competition, Piteri tells me that the company has its own brand of wax, finishers and cleaners, and even makes some of its own equipment, such as the company’s grout cleaner. “This allows us to keep the price low and the quality high,” he says. Sounds like my neat freak self may just have to finally let go and give these talented professionals a try.
