A Boston-based home improvement company that has hit $5 million in annual sales in just two years aims to keep growing through a combination of technology advances and subcontractors’ dislike of office work.
Renoviso started as a vinyl window specialist in Massachusetts and has expanded to install doors, roofing, and siding from southern New Hampshire to northern Delaware. This web-based business builds its own technology to serve the customer from lead to punch list.
“We’re the general contractor,” co-founder Brian Waldman says. “We pull the permits, have the licenses and insurance, and we get great customer reviews.” It apps help organize labor, the taking of photos, billing, scheduling, and swapping out products through change orders.
“All the things that gum up the works, we can do with technology,” Waldman says.
The company’s 19 employees focus on generating business through an inside sales team, managing projects and developing new computer applications. On-site tasks are handled by roughly 100 independent subcontractors, some of whom spend nearly all their time working for Renoviso.
“They do their own measurements, and tell us what to order,” Waldman says. By removing from these independent contractors the burdens of finding customers, ordering products and collecting on the job, “We take away all the things that are frustrating to them,” he says.
Fellow co-founder Eric Horndahl seconds Waldman’s view, saying “We’re taking off their plate all the things they aren’t good at.”
Renoviso typically attracts two types of subcontractor. The first is the pro who has several crews and—often because of a lack of marketing skills—is having trouble keeping that final crew busy. The second is the individual subcontractor who loves doing the work but is uncomfortable with selling and marketing. “They just want to get paid for their time and skills,” Waldman says.
The company started in metro Boston in late 2014, expanded to the New York tri-state metro area in August 2016, and launched its service in the Philadelphia market last April. Short-term, it aims to deepen its current service areas. Longer-term, it’s interested in expanding further South and getting into more categories.
But whatever it does, Waldman says, “this business is all about control. … I need predictability and volume that’s profitable and manageable.” That’s why it doesn’t look to ever get into general remodeling.
It’s also why it believes the bigger it gets, the more value it will accrue from the technology it has created.
“Once we automate a task, its value grows,” Waldman says.
