Alan Chachapoya, the managing director of DSC Solutions, a Lancaster County-based commercial cleaning company, is seeing opportunities where others do not. Chachapoya recently bought Guaranteed Property Services, another Lancaster-based company in the same industry.
Founded in 1997, Guaranteed Property Services operates Guaranteed Carpet Services, C&S Cleaning, and Personalized Commercial Cleaning. Mike Graybill, the owner of Guaranteed Property Services, will join the DSC management team.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition was self-financed. “We self-fund all of our deals,” Chachapoya said in an interview with biznewsPA. “It gives us a stronger negotiating position with the sellers because we’re able to move quicker and have a more flexible structure when it comes to putting together the deal.”
The buyer: DSC Solutions started operations in 2018 and expanded by obtaining cleaning contracts for governments and Fortune 500 companies.
Last year, it began pursuing acquisition phase by prospecting for commercial cleaning companies primarily in Chester, Dauphin and Lancaster counties.
In November 2023, DSC Solutions bought Select Building Services, which had been founded in 2006 in Lancaster County.
“It’s not a very glamorous industry. No one really wakes up and says they want to get into a cleaning company or to start or acquire a cleaning business,” Chachapoya said.
So, when he saw the demographics of commercial cleaning companies, he realized that baby boomers running them didn’t have exit strategies and were likely to shut down. “That makes them very attractive for someone like us because there is really not a whole lot of competition when it comes to buying these companies.”
The background: DSC Solutions has grown from a one-person operation to 300 workers in Central Pennsylvania.
About 150 more people work in operations in several states nationwide. Chachapoyaalso has a contract in Ecuador, where he was born before moving to Lancaster at the age of 10.
Sales companywide at DSC Solutions are now “over eight figures,” he said.
What’s next: Chachapoya, who said he will soon turn 29, has come to love Lancaster and intends to continue basing his operations in the city.
“We have deep roots in the community, and I fell in love with the city,” said Chachapoya, who studied international business at Millersville University. “I wouldn’t really consider going anywhere else.”
