He saw a window of opportunity – and now Tidal Services CEO Ralf Hodgson is riding the crest of a wave as a Make Your Mark award-winner.
After starting a window cleaning business eight years ago in Aycliffe, Ralf realised there was a gap in the market for things to be better organised.
Tidal Services was the result – a firm that since 2023 has emerged as a fully-managed window cleaning marketplace with a dynamic pricing algorithm that, at the time of nomination for the award, had four full-time employees, 10 freelancers and was working with 140 window cleaners across the UK.
By digitising bookings, payments and route optimisation, it empowers cleaners to scale their businesses while offering customers a reliable and seamless service.
And while his firm covers around 78% of the UK at the moment, CEO Ralf – who was presented with the award by Kristoffer Childs of category sponsor Husqvarna UK – is looking to expand.
He said: “I built my own round up very locally and traditionally, then I started scaling up by franchising at the beginning of Covid.
“Then we started developing a tech platform to manage our own operations and since then, we’ve been on a bit of an exponential growth.
“I just thought ‘why not’?’ I’m not tech-minded but we’ve got an investor who handles that side of things – I run the operations and marketing-related stuff.
“We’ve been there, we’ve done it, we‘ve knocked at doors, we’ve figured a lot of it out and now we’re just doing it on a much bigger scale and using tech to help us.”
Winning the Innovation Award is, says Ralf, a “massive privilege”.
“I really wasn’t expecting it,” he said.
“We got nominated, rolled the dice and came out on top so it’s tremendous.
“But for everyone who got nominated and for all the finalists, it’s quite an achievement.”
And he says being based on the park for the past two years has proved an eye-opener regarding Aycliffe’s national reputation.
He smiled: “People we deal with always seem to know where Newton Aycliffe is! It’s always ‘oh yeh, junction 59, where the Maccies is’!
“I don’t know why but everyone seems to know where it is, which speaks volumes.”
And as for the future, Ralf has big plans. He explained: “We’ll keep doing what we’re doing but on a bigger scale.
“We’re aiming for 1,000 window cleaners and 250,000 customers in three years and then we’ll see where we go from there.”
Tidal Services edged Contego Environmental Services and Digital Edge to the Innovation award at the 2025 Make Your Mark Awards, which was delivered at Hardwick Hall, in association with Senstronics, in front of just under 300 guests.