Prepared for Sylvie Giangolini · Hako Machines Ltd · October 2026
Four things I found after Friday.
You told me these. The next four findings are things you didn't.
Five questions, about four minutes. Your answers come back to me. Everything else is yours to keep.
Question 1 of 5
You said Scottish council business has to go through the framework. Is Hako on the cleaning equipment framework in its own name, or through a distributor?
Finding 01
There's a date on it.
days until the current framework expires
Scotland Excel framework 0523 — cleaning equipment
- DMG Floorcare LtdDistributor · also holds the maintenance and repair lot, alone
- Highland Industrial Supplies LtdDistributor
- Nilfisk LtdManufacturer
Thirteen companies tendered for the supply lot. Three were appointed. Hako is not among them.
Framework positions aren't won when the notice appears. The references, the lot strategy and the pricing have to exist before it. That's a budget line — in the budget you're finalising now.
Question 2 of 5
You mentioned new products coming online that open new markets. Which range did you mean?
Question 3 of 5
Picture the first customer you'd want to win with it. What are they doing today instead?
Finding 02
"Untapped" means three different things. They cost different money.
Nobody sells there
The customers don't know they have the problem. Slow, expensive, and nothing works until you have one flagship site to point at.
Competitors sell there, Hako doesn't
Not a new market — a market that's new to you. Customers already understand the product. They need a reason to change supplier. Faster, and far cheaper.
Fragmented or low value
The economics are the barrier. No amount of marketing fixes a sale that doesn't cover the cost of making it.
The budget for creating demand and the budget for taking share look nothing like each other.
Finding 03 · no question here. this one's already yours.
You made this argument yourself. It's worth more than when you made it.
Clean floors keep fork-lift trucks moving, which keeps production running. That's why the Briggs tie-up works.
Warehouses now run robots as well as trucks. Robots are far less forgiving of a floor than a driver is.
- •Dust, uneven joints and surface defects degrade navigation accuracy.
- •Sensors read the floor — reflectivity and debris change what they see.
- •Fixing it after go-live means sectioned, out-of-hours work. Prevention is dramatically cheaper.
So the machine stops being a cleaning cost and becomes uptime protection on a multi-million-pound robot fleet. Different pitch, different budget, different person in the room — operations, not facilities.
It also gives you a segment that's a situation rather than a sector: sites that have just automated, reachable at the moment the automation goes in.
Do you sell into any site running AMRs or AGVs today?
Question 4 of 5
Last one with a number in it. How long from joining before a new salesperson is running their own live opportunities?
Up to speed and working their own pipeline — not still shadowing someone.
Your ramp, plus one full cycle at the nine-to-ten months you described. That is the time it takes a replacement to produce their first deal of their own — which is why it is also what a departure costs you. It excludes the time to recruit, so the real figure is higher.
Question 5 of 5
If we spoke again in three weeks, which of these would be most useful to have gone deeper on?
Pick up to two.
The takeaway
Yours to keep.
The four findings
Scotland Excel 0523 expires 12 May 2027, with one twelve-month extension available. Thirteen companies tendered for the supply lot; three were appointed. Hako is not among them. Nilfisk is.
"Untapped" resolves three ways, and they need very different budgets.
In automated sites, floor condition is an uptime argument on a robot fleet, not a housekeeping cost. Different buyer, different budget, different room.
A departure costs close to a year of new business in that territory.
What you told me
Three things worth checking this week
- Which entity holds Hako's position on Scotland Excel 0523, if any.
- Whether your first target customer is buying from someone today, or from nobody.
- Your real ramp figure — the number above is a guess until it isn't.
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I haven't proposed anything. If any of the four is worth twenty minutes, reply to the email and I'll make the time.