When builders Devon Hartman and Bill Baldwin founded their company in 1978, the young duo had one overriding goal: to do jobs that were, according to Hartman, at the “absolute top end.”
And although the pair didn't start out with that kind of project or with that elevated level of clientele, they are certainly there now. HartmanBaldwin Design/Build takes on about 35 projects a year and had a volume of $6.4 million in 2004. Revenue this year will top $10 million. The company has received some 30 local and national awards for design excellence plus a Big50 award from REMODELING magazine in 1993.
“That was a 27-year evolution,” says Hartman, who is obviously pleased with the company's progress over nearly three decades. “It feels better than ever right now. A lot of the problems have been weeded out.”
The 50-employee company operates out of a strikingly good-looking Craftsman building in Claremont, an upscale Southern California community at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains with more than its share of private colleges, including Harvey Mudd, Scripps, Claremont McKenna, and Pitzer.
Perhaps as a result of its proximity to the Claremont Colleges, HartmanBaldwin tends to attract intelligent, highly educated, thoughtful clients. And those clients are loyal: 95% of the firm's remodeling jobs come via referrals, and 10% to 15% of those jobs are from repeat customers.
This vintage Tudor manor, owned by David Kipp, underwent two major remodels by HartmanBaldwin.
Photo Credit: HartmanBaldwin
Ned and Tamara Freed are a case in point. After hearing from friends that HartmanBaldwin was the best remodeling company around, they hired the firm for a dramatic yet sensitive $410,000 remodel of their 1953 modernist Claremont home. After it was done, the couple immediately started thinking about phase two. When asked if he ever considered using a different company for the second phase, which turned out to be a $714,000 job, Ned Freed says: “Not even for a minute.”
Another client, David Kipp, was so impressed with the HartmanBaldwin supervisor who coordinated a near-perfect, $1.2 million remodel of his vintage Tudor home that he claimed the supervisor “has all the qualities I want my daughter to find in a husband.” Kipp and his wife, Carolyn, also hired the company for another phase.
To attract and retain their high-end clients, HartmanBaldwin uses several strategies:
- Design/build structure. Above all, the company practices and promotes the true design/build model, where the designers and builders are all employed by the same company. “Everybody has a hand in the design,” says Hartman, whose pet peeve is architects who design buildings without costing them out, leaving the hapless homeowners to suffer shock when the first bids come in. At HartmanBaldwin, he says, the designers learn to be “molded by the materials.” And with everyone in on the design, there is no finger-pointing between designer and builder. Rather, Hartman says, there's a lot of hand-raising, as in, “Hey, I've got an idea.” For high-end clients educated enough to know that conflicts in remodeling can be avoided, design/build is attractive.
- Client satisfaction analysis. For HartmanBaldwin, client satisfaction is not just a plank in the company's mission statement but a measurable goal the firm pursues vigorously. A couple of years ago, the company set up a series of focus groups with past clients to find out how it could improve its services. Hartman says the results of those events, run by an outside facilitator, were eye-opening.
These days, each client gets a survey form with each billing that asks how the company is doing in four areas: quality of work, communication, attention to needs, and scheduling. A fifth question is open-ended about the whole process. While HartmanBaldwin scores an average of 4.8 points out of a possible 5, it's the scheduling that irks clients most. Perhaps influenced by the maniacal schedules seen on TV shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, clients in today's world want things to happen much faster. In response, HartmanBaldwin is re-engineering its internal processes to oblige its customers' sense of urgency. For instance, whereas a feasibility study once took four months to complete, internal changes have now slimmed that time frame down to less than three months.
Showing off its design/build flair, HartmanBaldwin won Remodeling magazine's top design aware for this light-infused upscale kitchen.
Photo Credit: HartmanBaldwin
- Peer-group investment. For more than a decade, Devon Hartman has belonged to one or more peer-review groups that meet to compare and discuss each member company's systems and progress. He participated for several productive years in one of Les Cunningham's Business Networks groups as well as in one of Victoria Downing and Linda Case's Remodelers Advantage Roundtables peer groups. Both of these groups are composed of remodeling and building companies. Hartman also joined peer-review group TEC International, a global networking organization for chief executives to meet and exchange ideas with other, non-competing CEOs. He's garnered so many good ideas, in fact, that he's taking a year or so off from peer-group involvement to put new systems into place. He says: “Now, my job is to execute, execute, execute.”
- Community education events. HartmanBaldwin spends $60,000 per year on marketing, but the company's strategy is a departure from the typical newspaper, radio, and television ads. Instead, it seeks to educate the community about the remodeling process, not just about the company itself. Toward that goal, Hartman hosts two or three remodeling workshops a month, which typically draw 4 to 14 local homeowners. In them, he helps attendees understand whether they should remodel their home, what the scope of that remodel should be, and various ways to bring it about.
Another educational tool is the company's 26-page “Home Remodeler's Survival Guide,” 4,000 copies of which the firm has handed out so far. HartmanBaldwin also hosts home tours of its remodeled masterpieces to raise money for such charitable causes as Claremont Heritage, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Claremont's history. In this year's home tour, 600 attendees paid $17 each to visit some of HartmanBaldwin's projects. Perhaps this could be considered a benchmark for upscale remodeling firms — when potential clients pay to see your work. If so, HartmanBaldwin has hit the mark.
Freelancer Kathy Price-Robinson writes about remodeling and green building from the central coast of California. She is the author of an award-winning remodeling series, “Pardon Our Dust,” for the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times.