Once upon a time, not too long ago, the public face of home improvement wore a beard and a plaid flannel shirt. He was Bob Vila, his show was This Old House, and he was it when it came to remodeling in the mainstream.
Times have changed. While only two of the four major networks currently broadcast remodeling-related shows, any homeowner armed with cable television and a remote control has access to a full menu of home-related programming. There's even an entire station, HGTV, dedicated to shows about remodeling, interior design, and other around-the-house hobbies.
In addition to running Plaskoff Construction in Tarzana, Calif., Matt Plaskoff is the “construction consultant” for ABC's <i>Extreme Makeover: Home Edition</i>.
Credit: Danny Turner
Several remodelers have gotten into the act. Matt Plaskoff, president of Plaskoff Construction, in Tarzana, Calif., serves as the “construction consultant” for perhaps the most high-profile of these shows, ABC's “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” Each week, the program features the complete renovation of one home. The catch? The whole project has to be finished in seven days.
Plaskoff, whose company has done five remodels for the show, says that his involvement has given him a sales and marketing boost.
“When I tell clients I've done the show, they immediately connect me with speed and credibility,” he says.
Keith Steier has the same point of view. His company, Knockout Renovation, in Brooklyn, N.Y., recently did a project for Bravo's hit series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The episode won't air until April, but Steier is already promoting it, referencing it on the company Web site and displaying posters autographed by the show's famous hosts in both locations. He's already reaping the benefits.
“It's a reference by association,” Steier says. “There's no limit to how long something like this can create residual leads.”
Along with the extra credibility, though, come extra — and often unreasonable —expectations. Plaskoff says he occasionally comes across homeowners who want their project done in the same fashion as the ones they have seen on television. When that happens, Plaskoff tells them “ABC can afford to do what it takes to get it done quickly. Can you?”
The good news is that some of them can. While completing projects on this kind of accelerated schedule isn't for everybody, a company that is set up to do it can find it quite lucrative. One of Plaskoff's recent clients is paying him 50% more in exchange for a speedy completion.
Charity Begins In HomesWhile reality TV is one area where remodelers are cast in a positive light, there is far too much negative press, due to a relative handful of unscrupulous contractors. Homeowners might follow up a viewing of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with the local news, where they see an elderly lady who was bilked out of several thousand dollars by a contractor who got full payment up front and left before finishing her roof. They might read, as homeowners in Orlando, Fla., recently did, a long series of articles about shoddy construction practices. They might go online and find a consumer advocacy Web site cautioning them to get three bids for every job and to never make a large initial down payment.
These types of exposés can make things hard on the vast majority of remodelers, who take honest pay for honest work and pour a lot of effort into customer service. But when a contractor does his job, completing the project on time and on budget, it's not newsworthy; it's dog-bites-man stuff. The media has a long-established policy of reporting mainly bad news. So homeowners embarking on their first-ever remodeling project may come into the process with a certain skepticism, particularly if the only other information they have has come from friends or neighbors who've had bad experiences.
As a countermeasure, savvy remodelers with the means to do so jump at the chance to provide a little positive PR to the industry.
Credit: Compoa
Mat Vivona Jr., of Father & Son Construction, in Troy, Mich., is something of a “go-to” guy in his area when it comes to charitable work. Partly because of his relationship with a former newscaster who is now the company's television spokesman, Vivona has done several projects with the local Detroit media, including installing a heating system for a poor, elderly woman and helping restore a home that had been broken into and vandalized with racial and ethnic slurs scrawled across the walls.
A great deal of Vivona's willingness to take on such charitable ventures is pure philanthropy. “I believe that part of being a professional is that you have to give back whenever it's feasible,” Vivona says. “If someone calls you and it wouldn't take all that much, you have a certain duty to perform community service.
“It's a great feeling, too,” Vivona continues, “knowing you've made a difference for someone who is down on their luck.”
But while giving back is his main motivation, Vivona certainly doesn't mind the side effect of bolstering the public image of the remodeling industry. “It builds a good rapport with the media — who are all too quick to jump on a negative story,” he says.
That's especially true in Vivona's area. Troy is about 15 minutes outside of Detroit, one of the nation's largest media markets, and where, according to Vivona, the local television stations have concentrated on profiling dishonest home improvement companies. One station recently began running a weekly contractor “Hall of Shame” segment on its news broadcasts. “Every Tuesday night, there was a report about a remodeler doing a horrible job,” Vivona says.
The situation in Detroit is probably as bad as it gets, and it certainly wasn't helped by an incident a few years ago when, according to Vivona, a prominent weatherman at one of the local stations lost a lot of money on an addition that never happened.
Still, while the amount of coverage varies from market to market, it's inarguable that the majority of media coverage about remodelers is negative. So even if the media in your area isn't terribly aggressive in seeking out and exposing shoddy builders, it pays to do what you can.
Chris Shurian is another remodeler who, like Vivona, does charitable work mainly to give back but doesn't mind the positive press he receives as a result. His company, Classic Construction Services, in Provo, Utah, is heavily involved in philanthropic endeavors, many in conjunction with Shurian's peers and colleagues. “Our home builder's association spends a lot of time and a lot of energy improving our image in this area,” he says. Those efforts include the annual Cougar House — a house built by the HBA with donated labor and materials that is subsequently sold, with all proceeds going to an athletic scholarship fund to local Brigham Young University — and a “Subcontractors for Santa” program, in which the HBA identifies homes that need help or fixing up. It's usually small stuff, maybe installing a new front door or a furnace, but it's far-reaching: Shurian says local builders and remodelers worked on about 50 homes this year.
Why does he participate? “There are people out here trying to remodel homes who have no business doing it,” Shurian says. “We have a bit of a reputation to fight. Professionals have to fight the image of what people think of contractors.”
He adds, “We do it every year, to improve our image and gain exposure for the home builder's association.”
This holiday season, however, he went a step further, coordinating his own reality TV–style project. “I wanted to do something within my company, something a bit more,” he says. Shurian identified a local family whose house needed some fixing up, sent them to Disneyland (with some extra spending money), and in less than a week, completely remodeled and furnished their home, right down to new towels on new towel racks, all new appliances, and wrapped Christmas presents under a fully-decorated tree.
Shurian estimates that 90% of the time and materials were donated and says his company picked up the tab for the rest. “They were expecting us to come in and make it livable,” Shurian says of the family. “Beyond it being livable, it was completely decked out. There's no way they would have been able to do that for their own home. It never would have ended up this way.”
Credit: Jon Deshler
The press coverage the project received was tremendous. The local ABC affiliate got wind of the undertaking and interviewed the family, filmed them departing for the theme park, shot video of the project being built, and broadcast a tape of the family returning to their new home. Two local newspapers and one magazine ran long feature articles, complete with photos. Several radio stations also picked up the story, and Shurian received a call from an Extreme Makeover: Home Edition producer, looking to get an interview and footage for a special episode of the show.
“We're motivated to help people,” Shurian says. “The media portion of it wasn't a motivator but the fallout.” But what a fallout it has been. While Shurian doesn't think he's gotten any leads as a direct result, the community has taken notice. Shurian says he received an anonymous note complimenting his work, and some of his customers clipped the newspaper articles and sent them to him.
Moreover, the buzz generated during the project was also beneficial. Shurian reports that his wife and a few of her friends were in charge of decorating the house, and calls from neighbors poured in, wondering what they could do to help. Many people just dropped off money, telling Shurian to use it as he saw necessary. And the construction management program at BYU sent over about 50 people to help out on the Saturday the project was finished.
That kind of publicity goes a long way in the small town of Mapleton, where the family — and by Shurian's estimation, another five or six thousand people — lives. You can bet that the community will remember this story for quite some time.
It's hard to find a negative aspect of donating resources for this kind of project, but if there is one, it's that you start to get asked to do this stuff all the time. “They come to expect you to do it every time they call,” Vivona says.
Saying “no” can be tricky and most remodelers abhor doing it, but it's a skill that absolutely must be learned.
Tom Kelly, of Neil Kelly Co., an award-winning, well-established remodeling firm in Portland, Ore., says he, like Vivona, is asked to do much more than he is capable of. “We do a ton of this stuff,” Kelly says. But he turns down a ton, too, and, like nearly everything else in his company, he has a system for it. “You've got to come up with some good ways to say ‘no' in this world,” he says.
People who inquire about monetary donations or other charitable contributions from Neil Kelly Co. are told, first and foremost, that the company receives more requests than they can comply with. Then, they're told that the company, as a matter of policy, only considers programs that have a connection to children in the company's area and to an employee or client. “If it meets those criteria,” Kelly says, “it'll get into the queue to be looked at. If not, it won't get that far.”
Kelly's vice president of human resources gathers and processes all requests, with Kelly himself giving the final approval.
Your Own VoiceOne way to establish yourself as a reputable company is to cooperate with the media, making yourself available for articles or television stories about any aspect of the industry. Kelly says that when the local news outlets do an exposé on the construction industry, they often call on him to tell their audience, for example, what to look for when hiring a contractor. “We love that kind of PR,” Kelly says.
If you think you don't have time for an interview, think again. Reporters looking for quotes and information generally aren't interested in sitting down with you for an hour. They are often up against a deadline, with a schedule even tighter than yours. Particularly if you're dealing with a print reporter, five or 10 minutes may be all you need to invest. It's well worth it.
There are other, simpler ways, of course. A good Web site with project photos and contact information is one; snazzy marketing materials are another. A well-organized, impressive office area can go a long way toward enhancing your image with the customer. Trucks, shirts, and job signs with the company logo all bring an air of professionalism.
Such promotional items are common at large, multimillion-dollar firms. But smaller remodelers often don't have the money to spend on such luxuries. In fact, on the face of it, these companies appear to be the exact type of contractors that the media and consumer advocacy groups warn about. These contractors aren't worried about how the media portray the industry as a whole. They're concerned about distinguishing themselves in the public eye from the handful of peers who do substandard work and conduct business dishonestly.
“I actually like the bad press,” says Rick Stacy, owner of R.A. Stacy Construction, in Bergen, N.Y., near Rochester. Stacy, who employs one full-time helper and his son part-time, continues: “It gives me something to sell against; it gives me the basis to stand out.” Stacy says his marketing and sales are steered toward making that distinction. “A lot of my customers have had bad experiences,” he says. “That's the customer I go after.”
Stacy stresses prompt response time, quality products, professional techniques, and the fact that he rarely uses subcontractors to ease the homeowner's minds.
Matt Moody, a Cabot, Vt., remodeler who works by himself, solves the problem by focusing on customers who already know him or his work. “I don't advertise and hit people who are strangers to me,” Moody says.
This is a good point. Most of the “truck and dog contractors” that homeowners should look out for are the kind of guys that show up at the door uninvited, saying things like “I have material left over from another job” or “I was in the area.” By not showing up randomly, Moody automatically seems more professional.
Stacy, too, doesn't want to appear too anxious for the business. “It's like the advice you'd give to a girl looking for a good husband,” he says with a laugh. “You've got to play hard to get.” In other words, if you appear too desperate to do a certain job, homeowners will view you suspiciously — probably with good reason.
Moody is also careful about building relationships with customers. One bad experience has the power to sully his reputation, so he chooses his clients carefully. “If there's ever any discomfort [between me and a potential client], I usually don't work for them,” he says.
Curt Trampe has six employees, and his Springfield, Ill., company, Home Works, did about $600,000 in volume last year. But when he started six years ago, it was just him, his truck, and his tools. He suggests taking advantage of technology and printing up some letterhead and business cards as a way to project professionalism.
But his real key to success is a lot simpler than that. “When I started my company, I had been in remodeling long enough to know that if I just returned phone calls, showed up when I said I would, and did what I was going to do, that I would have plenty of work,” he says. “Then, I'd be more the exception than the rule.”