John Ebel steps confidently into the ring. He moves toward his opponent, eyeball-to-eyeball, toe-to-toe. And at the sound of the bell and in the flash of a horrific micro-moment, the competitor miraculously grows to 10 times Ebel’s size.
Ebel jumps to a start, rubs his eyes and realizes it’s all just a bad dream.
Or is it?
In 1982, Ebel launched Accurate Door Systems as a sole proprietorship in Canton, specializing in garage door and garage door opener service. He incorporated four years later, and by 1990 had expanded to the point that he built a new facility-8,000 square feet of showroom, warehouse, service area and office space-at 6331 Whipple Ave. in North Canton.
Today, the company employs 20 people and does about $2 million a year in sales-roughly two-thirds of it in the residential market and the rest for commercial customers. In addition to garage doors, the company now sells and installs windows, entry doors, vinyl decks, loading dock equipment and commercial rolling doors.
But four years ago, sales were dropping, thanks to competition from large and well-funded competitors-notably Sears Roebuck and Co., Builder’s Square, 84 Lumber Co. and Lowes Home Improvement.
How did he reinvent the company to thrive in such an environment?
Ebel recently took time out to talk with SBN about the challenges that result when corporate giants close in.
How sudden was the change in the business environment and how did you first recognize it?
Sears has always been around but they didn’t sell garage doors to the degree they do now. They primarily sold garage door openers. We always justified that as, “Well, those are do-it-yourselfers, they’re not really our customer because our customers want an installed product.” But then I started seeing a lot of retail purchases for an installed product. It became a major focus for these larger stores. That became a concern for me because there’s only so much business to go around. I just wanted to make sure we kept our share of it.
What did they have to offer, aside from large advertising budgets, that made their services so attractive?
I think the big draw to Sears and some of these other big stores was their charge cards. We provide financing like 90 days cash and that type of thing here. But people can go to Sears, buy a garage door and put it on their charge card. Sure, they’ll pay more money for it. But they can pay only $15 a month for the next however many years.
When you realized you were now going to be competing with high profile corporations in addition to your existing competition, how did you set out to even the odds?
I decided to play their game on the same playing field. Part of that involved acting big.
When we chose a location, we wanted something on a recognizable, easy-to-find street with good traffic flow. A lot of companies like ours go into industrial park areas, but we took more of a retail attack.
We maintained a good, clean, professional image-a nice-looking building with good signage out front, with our logo, of course. Our installers wear consistent uniforms. If you look at our vehicles, they’re all the same color, lettered with our logo. I put two-way radios in the trucks. We went for consistency all around, even on the invoices, letterhead, envelopes, business cards.
All these things helped make our business look even bigger than it is. Many people often ask me if this is a franchise-where the other locations are and that kind of thing. So obviously, it’s achieving that goal.
What about the role of customer service and quality?
We had to be better than anybody else. Try even harder to do what we said we were going to do. If we said we were going to be somewhere on a certain day at a certain time, we had to be there. When it came to customer service, it was just a matter of being honest with the customer, telling them what we could do and then doing it.
And we put a strong focus on two aspects of quality. One is the quality of the work we do, whether it’s the person answering the phone or the installer installing the door or the estimator going out to sell the product. That’s a people quality. Another is the material quality. We can choose to buy only quality products because we’re not under any exclusive agreements with any manufacturers.
How do you provide better quality and service while still managing to keep pricing in line with your competition?
We can be maybe a little higher because people expect that from a specialty store. But we can’t be twice as high as they would be. So we have to be careful how we purchase. We have to watch the other costs, too. Labor costs. Advertising costs. Make sure we can maintain a margin that’s acceptable to us. It’s a challenge.
What other things did you do to reclaim your share of business?
We had established very good relationships with our vendors, who were also suppliers for these larger stores. Clopay Building Products [asked] us to provide installations for Sears, Builders Square and 84 Lumber because they weren’t satisfied with the work they were getting from their current installers. Cornell Iron Works has a division called Cornell Store Fronts and they deal with chain stores. When they require a rolling door or grill, we install it.
So you’re actually doing work for your competitors?
Yes, but we have to be careful not to compete with them on their jobs, and that puts us in the middle sometimes. We’ve had problems in the past where we’d go out to install a job and the door wasn’t what the customer thought they were getting. We have to be very careful to refer those issues back to the selling party. Now, we make it a policy to measure everything ahead of time so we don’t find any size problems when we get there. And we’re careful not to perform any sales functions or give the customer pricing structures when we’re doing a subcontracting job.
What if the customer considers your work superior and solicits you?
That doesn’t seem to be a problem. I think a lot of customers really don’t realize that someone else is putting Sears’ product in.
What special operational or financial processes did you have to implement to provide documentation in a manner Sears prefers?
We had to learn special forms and things like that. And their biggest issue is scheduling. We need to give them rapid answers when they call and want to know when we’re going to measure a job, when we’re going to install it, if we installed it. But that’s never been a problem because we do all our scheduling on the computer.
Although this is kind of a backward industry, we were probably the first to computerize at all. When we moved into our Whipple Avenue location, we put in computer systems and began the process of becoming automated for business functions. Now, everything is computerized-all the accounting functions, inventory, payables, receivables, payroll, schedules-it’s all done in-house. But it’s not just for the subcontracting or suppliers. I’ve really gone this technology route to try to make us more efficient to provide better service to all our customers.
Has there ever been a point at which you thought that perhaps subcontracting for the big guys was more trouble than it’s worth?
We have found that if there’s going to be a job … that’s more difficult to install, it’s going to be from one of these companies. They’re just generally more difficult jobs for some reason. But we can take pride in the fact that we can perform that kind of job. At any rate, the percentage of work we do for them isn’t a whole lot in relation to our total sales. But any little bit helps.
It looks as if you’ve once again outgrown the existing headquarters. What’s next?
Right now, we’re looking at some other possible locations for this office because we are running out of room. We’re looking at existing buildings as well as a couple of vacant pieces of ground to build on. The next location will have a larger, more elaborate showroom sp
ace so we can display more products. Again, this helps in competing with the larger stores. And within the next five years, I’d like to see an additional two offices at least. So, yes, I guess you could say we’re evening up even the score.
How to reach: Accurate Door Systems Inc. (800) 466-0081; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: www.accuratedoor.com