Home is where the profits are, as two entrepreneurs in York and Ryedale are proving. RON GODFREY meets the men who prove that where there's muck, there's brass.

FOR Richard Wilkes it was a case of out of the frying pan and into the oven - where business is hot, hot, hot.

Richard, 49, was one of the 20 people in the sales and engineering department of Tenneco's York division whose jobs survived when the shock absorber manufacturer closed its Shipton operation.

They were moved to the Northminster Business Park in Poppleton, but the celebration did not last long. He was later among a cull of another ten jobs.

So Richard used all his considerable selling skills to find the best franchise on offer at numerous franchise exhibitions and settled for the York operation of Ovenu, the Berkshire organisation that cleans domestic ovens, operating out of his home in Burtree Avenue, Skelton.

After all, oven cleaning is well-known as the yuckiest, most backbreaking job in the kitchen and if somebody had to do it why not him - for a fee?

Now, exactly a year later, he is valeting about 12 ovens a week and the demand is growing.

That is not bad going considering that his negotiable price, based on the sophistication of the oven, averages at about £52.

Celebrating his new venture's first anniversary with a birthday cake baked by wife Eileen in his own spotless oven, Richard said: "I suppose I make about £2,500 per month before overheads, but with the growing demand I foresee myself eventually sub-franchising out to three or four operators each with a van. Already I have a customer waiting list."

The van is essential for the cleaning process which takes about three hours. In the back is a dip tank full of gas burner-warmed alkaline solution into which some oven components go before being cleaned.

The rest of the oven is dismantled and cleaned with non-caustic dirt-removers.

The inside of the oven is painted with a solvent cleaning gel and while this is left on for half an hour he removes and cleans knobs until they glisten.

"I've been doing a lot of work lately for letting agencies in York like Hunters, as well as private homes where people want to sell up and make a good impression.

"A lot of my customers are new tenants or home owners who can't stand the state of the oven they've been left. Encouragingly I get five or six recommendations every week."

Updated: 11:06 Friday, March 05, 2004