It’s hard to get any more niched than K&P Enterprises. The company only does cabinet refacing and closet installations—and only does those jobs for The Home Depot as a service provider.
“We are the king of one, not the jack of all trades,” says Ken Baer, the company’s vice president.
It's hard to look at K&P’s numbers and argue with that approach. In just five years, Baer says, revenue has grown tenfold.
“We came into Knoxville and got to $1 million in sales faster than anyone else in Home Depot history,” Baer adds. “We grew from [serving] seven stores to 55 stores in five states.”
Working for The Home Depot has its own challenges, especially at the level K&P is running, but Baer says the company is ready for it. “It’s very hard to get to this position with them,” he says. “But once they like you, they throw so much at you that if you don’t have the foundation, they’ll put you out of business because you can’t handle it all.”
K&P keeps up with all that business through a robust job-recruiting system that relies on short videos to evaluate potential employees. Those who make the cut go through a five-step training process with a test requiring at least an 80% score at the end of each module. From there, they’re sent to a store with a local manager.
That careful training helps K&P keep its own scores high. The firm continuously ranks in The Home Depot’s top 2% for customer satisfaction, Baer says. “They see the numbers and they like what we’re doing, so they keep giving us more stores and more products,” he adds. “We’re happy. They’re happy. It’s a beautiful thing.”
