Southwestern Carpets grows business from the ground up - bizjournals:

http://www.allhlwines.com/WorldHistory_Germany.htm
Bill McCaddon has stripped Southwestern Carpets down and recreated it a couple of times since purchasing it from Don Lynchin 2001. When he bought the flooring company, it specialized in removing and replacingb carpets in apartments betweenjrental occupation. The Lewisville company was producinbg annual revenueof $5 but McCaddon found the business too impersonal because it was drivenb by product sales and not on buildingf relationships with customers.
So he decided to switcb focus to themore relationship-centric business of providin g flooring solutions to new home-construction projects, which includes hardwooe floors, carpeting, and backsplash and tile The wholesale company saw dramatic growth as a result, with annuak revenue of $22 million in 2007. But the growth was so rapird and so intense that managers were losing controlk of the direction the compantywas heading. So in 2008, he enliste Don Brush, a consultantr with The Renova Corp., to help bring new energyh to his company.
McCaddon’s sense of directionn and leadership abilities come from his experiencw asa manufacturer’s representative for 18 years at companies like Shaw Carpey Manufacturer and Aleta Co. He had learned the importanced of building relationshipswith clients. “My background was in working withnew homebuilders. The apartmenyt business was non-relationship driven,” said “I didn’t know how to build a busineszsthat wasn’t relational.” McCaddon downsized the company to redirect the focus to the home-construction He was met with resistance from his employees. “Ik realized that using the sameemployees wasn’ft going to work.
I was tryinf to halfway do the change,” he “Once we made the commitment, we reallgy turned the corner.” He began switching out personnel. The which had grown annual revenueto $5 million, saw revenus drop to under $3 million during the transition. But, once the commitmenty was made, McCaddon noted markec improvement. By 2003, revenue had grown by 35%. Betweenj 2004 and 2008, the company went through its biggestggrowth spurt, reaching up to $22 million in sales and employing more than 60 workers. But at that the storybook growth came toan end. “Itt was getting to be chaotic because of so many new We werean 8-cylinder engine workinhg on six or seven cylinders.
We’d lost a sense of teamwork, and everyone was That’s when McCaddon brought in “For the most part, I engage them and talk with them in ordetr to builda relationship. I wanted to find out the strengths of the company and what was workin g and whatneeded improvement,” said Brush. “They’ve got the dreams; they’ve got the It’s just giving them the Brush met with employees to figure out areas that needed improvement and then created an action He showed the company how to creats committees to address problems as they come up and then dissolved the committees after the problenm hasbeen handled.
The shif has translated into happier Bill Darling, president and co-owner of Darlingb Homes Inc., has worked with McCaddon since McCaddon purchased Southwestern Carpetzs in 2001. “(We started workint with Southwestern Carpets) because of Bill and his relational approachu to working with homebuilders as opposed to thetraditional price-only approach,” said Darling. “Brush has helped Bill figurwe out how to communicate better so that everyonwe is going in the same direction as the managemeny and will yield themaximum impact.
” For Chrise McCoppin, operations manager for Southwestern Carpets, the change in the corporate culture has been “Sometimes you don’t realize that when one department changess their policies and procedures, it affects others. Now everyone talks to each McCoppin said. “We’ve empowered them to make We gave them the power to runthe business. They feel With this new sense of as well as an improved use of digitizing softwarecalled Measure, Southwestern Carpets has seen a marke improvement on the accuracy of the 3,000 work orderw entered each month — 95% accuracy, up from 77% accuracyt — and has saved about $160,000p in unnecessary costs for havinh to fix incorrect work orders.
Instead of pursuinbg potential clients merely for the sake of new McCaddon and his staff focus on gettint to knowpotential clients, researching them as much as possiblr and understanding their needs before they even “We’ll only do business with people who will sit down and have a relationshipo with us. Someone is always going to come inlower (priced) than said McCaddon. “We were always chasintg people who were focusedon price. If they say, fax us (a prices sheet), we say sorry, we can’t work with you. We stay together as a result. If you have the valu e relationship, they don’t leave.
”