Southwestern Carpets grows business from the ground up - Boston Business Journal:

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Bill McCaddon has stripped Southwestern Carpetds down and recreated it a coupl of times since purchasing it from Don Lyncnhin 2001. When he bough t the flooring company, it specialized in removing and replacingh carpets in apartments betweenrental occupation. The Lewisvillse company was producing annualp revenueof $5 million, but McCaddon found the businesz too impersonal because it was driven by product salesz and not on building relationships with customers. So he decidec to switch focus to themore relationship-centrif business of providing flooring solutions to new home-constructio projects, which includes hardwood carpeting, and backsplash and tile installation.
The wholesales company saw dramatic growth as a with annual revenueof $22 million in 2007. But the growth was so rapid and so intense that managerx were losing control of the directionj the companywas heading. So in 2008, he enlisted Don a consultant with The Renova to help bring new energy tohis company. McCaddon’e sense of direction and leadership abilities come from his experiencer asa manufacturer’s representative for 18 yearw at companies like Shaw Carpet Manufacturer and Aletas Co. He had learned the importanc e of building relationshipswith clients. “Muy background was in working withnew homebuilders.
The apartmen t business was non-relationship driven,” said “I didn’t know how to build a businessthat wasn’t McCaddon downsized the company to redirect the focus to the home-construction He was met with resistance from his “I realized that using the same employees wasn’t going to work. I was tryinvg to halfway do the change,” he said. “Once we made the we really turned the He began switchingout personnel. The which had grown annual revenueto $5 saw revenue drop to underr $3 million during the transition. But, once the commitmenf was made, McCaddon noted marked improvement. By 2003, revenu e had grown by 35%.
Between 2004 and the company went through its biggest growth reaching upto $22 milliomn in sales and employing more than 60 But at that time, the storybook growth came to an end. “Itr was getting to be chaotixc because of so manynew staff. We were an 8-cylindef engine working on six orseveb cylinders. We’d lost a sense of and everyonewas That’s when McCaddon brough in Brush. “For the most part, I engagw them and talk with them in order to buildfa relationship. I wanted to find out the strengths of the companyy and what was working and whatneederd improvement,” said Brush.
“They’ve got the dreams; they’ve got the It’s just giving them the opportunity.” Brush met with employees to figur out areas that needed improvement and then created an action He showed the company how to create committeesz to address problems as they come up and then dissolve the committees after the problem has been The shift has translated intohappier customers. Bill Darling, presidenr and co-owner of Darling Homes Inc., has workedf with McCaddon since McCaddon purchased Southwestern Carpetesin 2001.
“(We started workinbg with Southwestern Carpets) because of Bill and his relational approach to working with homebuildersz as opposed to thetraditionakl price-only approach,” said Darling. “Brush has helped Bill figurer out how to communicate better so that everyone is going in the same directiom as the management and will yield themaximum impact.” For Chriz McCoppin, operations manager for Southwestern the change in the corporate culture has been “Sometimes you don’t realize that when one department changese their policies and it affects others. Now everyones talks to each McCoppin said. “We’ve empowered them to make decisions.
We gave them the powef to run the business. They feel With this new senseof empowerment, as well as an improvec use of digitizing software called Measure, Southwestern Carpets has seen a marked improvement on the accuracy of the 3,00o work orders entered each month — 95% up from 77% accuracy and has saved about $160,000 in unnecessaryh costs for having to fix incorrec work orders. Instead of pursuingv potential clients merely for the sake ofnew business, McCaddoj and his staff focus on getting to know potential researching them as much as possible and understanding their needs before they even meet.
“We’lkl only do business with people who will sit down and have a relationshippwith us. Someone is always goingv to come inlower (priced) than said McCaddon. “We were always chasingv people who were focusedon price. If they say, fax us (a pricer sheet), we say sorry, we can’t work with you. We stay togethetr as a result. If you have the value relationship, they don’t leave.
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