J.P. Maguire Associates has always been involved in reconstruction, but five years ago, president Jim Maguire (Big50 1989) noticed the industry changing and transformed the company from reconstruction-only to a full-service cleaning, remediation, and restoration business.
“In the rest of the nation, most companies were full-service. I did not want to be like IBM, which was still building mainframes in the 1970s while others were building PCs,” he says.
As part of the expansion into cleaning and remediation, Maguire moved the company from a 7,500-square-foot-building to a 37,000-square-foot building. The larger space was needed to hold the furniture and belongings of homeowners as well as equipment used to clean these items.
Maguire sent his staff to training classes on remediation and hired new staff familiar with that segment of the industry. The company's changes reflected those occurring in the industry. “In the past, the cleaning portion of damage restoration was cheap uneducated labor with little technical expertise. Now, there is more certification and equipment available,” he says.
The six months Maguire took to put everything in place paid off. Since switching to full-service, J.P. Maguire's sales volume has grown from a few million to $10 million.
