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Why did he
start the business? “I had gotten out of the retail, because
the management position that I held working for other
individuals required me to work 90 to 110 hours, you might get
paid for it all, but not likely – we had all this extra
energy, and we both felt if we focused it on our own business
we could hopefully do much better. We believed that there was
more chance for us to succeed on a personal level. In the
construction trade there tends to be a lot of peaks and
valleys. You’re really busy certain times of the year and then
it slows down making revenue undependable, so despite our
fears we decided to make a go of it on our own. Audra had two
jobs, while we started the business. We ran it that way for
the first year-and-a-half; building it gradually, dropping one
job, then the other. This is now what we both do full time and
the best decision was selling our home in town to operate from
our large property in Elginburg.
Simple Improvements is the only
company to offer
 in Eastern
Ontario".
covers all of Eastern Ontario – Cobourg to Cornwall, and up to
Ottawa – but the population density is much smaller between
here and Ottawa, and therefore fewer potential clients, so
that’s why we cover a broad area. At the construction end, we
try to stay within a 1½-hour radius from Kingston – so we’ll
do Gananoque to Belleville, and a bit north from there.
“
is a maintenance free eavestrough covering, that has a
transferable lifetime performance warranty. It adds value to
the home or commercial building and provides peace of mind for
the customer to know they don’t have to get up there and do
maintenance anymore. –Troughs are so important to the house or
any building for that matter. It avoids things like leaky
basements, water damage, fascia problems, mosquito nests. I
tell the client that I have the answer to their problems,
whether it’s contamination from leaves, debris, birds,
squirrels, buildup of ice or snow, asphalt or steel roofs,
is your
answer. It’ll solve any eavestrough problems. There are a lot
of comparable products on the market, but none that carry the
same design, wind and weight abilities along with the method
of installation or Warranty.
actually
clips and screws onto the trough, as well as screwing into the
roof deck, under the roofing material.
can be
installed on all roof types, whether asphalt shingle (the
majority of roofs), steel, clay, slate, or cedar shake, it’s
totally versatile and adaptable, because it’s aluminum, we can
cut, bend and manipulate it to any shape. It’s very strong,
the installation is unique; and the way it accepts water is a
great advantage: there are no holes in the top, so water has
to flow over the product to get into the trough, as it should
be.”
Curtis emphasizes the importance
of trust in his relationship with a customer. “Without
anything being done, we’re giving them a contract, and they’re
going to trust us with their money. One of our biggest assets
is our excellent warranty, and our reputation. We back that up
by the fact that we’re a member of KCA, and BBB, the Home
Builders’ Association, Chamber of Commerce and a member of
Sawdac, so all five of those combined, help ensure that we
maintain a high level of performance. We always advise a
client to research the people you’re going to have working on
your place, this allows the client to start building trust,
whether it’s us or another company. I might not be the
client’s first pick, but one thing I have going for me, I’m
governed by other forces, not just the client saying, I want
you to work for me. I have something outside the regular
parameter that says, I have to maintain 110% for the client,
because my reputation is important, and this is how I ensure
that I have their trust. If there are four bids on the
project, who is the client going to choose: someone like me,
who puts their money where their mouth is, so to speak, or
someone who just shows up with a pickup truck, and has nothing
to back their workmanship except that he says, I’ll do a good
job for you?”
He spoke about the rewards of the
business. “In the renovation business, you tackle all kinds of
variables. When I sit back and look at what we’ve accomplished
over the last five years, we’ve made huge strides, anything
from cleaning a 78-year-old lady’s eavestrough because her
husband fell off the ladder and broke both his legs; you
really see a smile from those. And then we can offer a service
like financing available to clients who otherwise couldn’t
afford our services or products. Then we go on to a larger job
worth hundreds of thousand dollars, and you accomplish the
same workload, you’re just on the job longer. So we started
from nothing, in a small town, made our existence known,
people know our name; and our biggest project is the company
itself. Not everyone understands how much work goes into
running your own business: if the other guys may put 40 hours
a week into a job, we might put in 80-plus, to do the same
job. But it’s rewarding because we’re doing this for
ourselves, the day ends and we know, this is what we’ve done,
and we’ve done it for the family.
“We’re over the hump, we’re
comfortable in the knowledge that we’ve established ourselves,
we’re maintaining the business, the clientele is there, and we
give them the best service we can.”
“The customer service end is the
hardest part of business; you get all personality types; all
different income levels and backgrounds. So it does pose a lot
of different problems. And the variety of staff we have, and
the variety of jobs we do, we’ve evolved along with the
business, as much as it’s grown. When you go in to price jobs
for clients, you develop listening skills, you understand what
their needs are, what kind of budget they have, and that all
helps to serve the client as well as possible. Another
challenge is coordinating all your staff, and all your jobs,
to keep all your clients happy.”
Prominent clients (no names for
confidentiality) require clearance certificates, criminal
checks “And you know they wouldn’t hire us if we didn’t have a
great reputation; same with clients we get through the Home
Builders’ Association.
“We’ve expanded to do more
large-scale jobs, and now we have a masonry division. We
started doing only
and a few
minor home repairs and roofs; now we run a complete staff of
12, plus Audra and myself. The business now consists of a
crew, an accountant and a sales division, and it’s all helped
to increase both the size of job we can do, and the volume of
business. So sales have increased an average of 100% every
year since we started and we keep track because it certainly
hasn’t been easy.
“We brought the masonry division
on board in the spring, because a lot of clients needed
concrete repairs, walkways done, chimneys done, and so I was
going in and doing the roofs, but not being able to complete
the job because I didn’t have a mason on staff to do chimneys
and natural stones and acrylic finishes. So we found a highly
qualified mason and brought him on board.
“We offer a lot of special
options. There are acrylic-finish versions of the stonework,
which is actually existing concrete in place, which we can
then dye it to look like stone. If the customer is on a more
limited budget, and can’t afford to go with the synthetic or
cultured stones in a natural finish, then they can go with
this version. And this version can still handle our climate,
melting ice, and so on. Then there are synthetic, manmade
stones, for fireplace mantles and chimneys, in places where
there isn’t a load-bearing requirement, that is, you don’t
have a footing to set brick on, or you have dormers with
siding or stucco; we offer the option of putting a synthetic
stone finish on those areas and it doesn’t have to have
lintels, so it gives the homeowner a lot more options. Or if
there is a parging problem in the bottom section above-grade,
then we do stonework and mount it on there simply because you
don’t need a footing or a steel lintel, we can retrofit the
cultured stone. Our mason is extremely skilled and has 15
years experience in this type of work.
Curtis hopes that Simple
Improvements will tackle larger projects in the future,
$200,000-plus: new-home starts, or renovations and not just be
the company that was sub contracted by another. “Our new size
allows us to take on jobs from start to finish – more
long-term, larger-scale, commercial and residential.”
To receive a free estimate, please contact us at 613-384-7263
or 1-866-765-6770 Or
simpleimprovements@on.aibn.com &
simpleimprove@xplornet.com
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