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

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Bill McCaddon has stripped Southwestern Carpetx down and recreated it a couple of times since purchasing it from Don Lynchin 2001. When he bought the floorinhg company, it specialized in removing and replacing carpete in apartments between rental The Lewisville company was producing annual revenueof $5 million, but McCaddoh found the business too impersonal because it was driven by product salee and not on building relationships with customers.
So he decided to switcnh focus to themore relationship-centric business of providing flooring solutions to new home-construction projects, whicgh includes hardwood floors, carpeting, and backsplash and tile The wholesale company saw dramatic growth as a result, with annual revenue of $22 million in 2007. But the growtjh was so rapid and so intensw that managers were losing control of the direction the companhywas heading. So in 2008, he enlistec Don Brush, a consultant with The Renovaa Corp.
, to help bring new energy to his McCaddon’s sense of direction and leadership abilities come from his experience asa manufacturer’xs representative for 18 years at companies like Shaw Carpet Manufacturerf and Aleta Co. He had learneed the importance of building relationshipswith clients. “Myg background was in working withnew homebuilders. The apartment business was non-relationship driven,” said “I didn’t know how to build a busines that wasn’t relational.” McCaddon downsized the company to redirect the focus tothe home-construction industry.
He was met with resistance fromhis “I realized that using the same employeess wasn’t going to work. I was trying to halfwayy do the change,” he said. “Once we made the commitment, we reallgy turned the corner.” He began switching out personnel. The company, whicg had grown annual revenuseto $5 million, saw revenue drop to underd $3 million during the transition. But, once the commitmenty was made, McCaddon noted marked By 2003, revenue had grown by 35%. Betweenh 2004 and 2008, the company went througbh its biggest growth reaching upto $22 million in sales and employint more than 60 workers. But at that time, the storybook growth came to an end.
“Ity was getting to be chaotic becausr of so manynew staff. We were an 8-cylinder enginde working on six orseven We’d lost a sense of teamwork, and everyone was territorial.” That’zs when McCaddon brought in Brush. “For the most I engage them and talk with them in order to buileda relationship. I wanted to find out the strength of the company and what was workinyg and what needed said Brush. “They’ve got the dreams; they’ver got the vision.
It’s just giving them the Brush met with employees to figure out areas that needeed improvement and then created an action He showed the company how to creatd committees to address problems as they come up and then dissolve the committeesd after the problem hasbeen handled. The shif has translated into happier Bill Darling, president and co-owner of Darlinh Homes Inc., has worked with McCaddon since McCaddobn purchased Southwestern Carpets in 2001. “(Wde started working with Southwestern Carpets) becauswe of Bill and his relational approach to workingb with homebuilders as opposed to thetraditionak price-only approach,” said Darling.
“Brush has helped Bill figurew out how to communicatde better so that everyone is going in the same direction as the management and will yield themaximum impact.” For Chris operations manager for Southwestern the change in the corporate culture has been noticeable. “Sometimes you don’tf realize that when one department changes theirf policiesand procedures, it affects others. Now everyone talkws to each other,” McCoppin said. “We’ve empowered them to make We gave them the power to runthe business.
They feel With this new senseof empowerment, as well as an improved use of digitizing software called Measure, Southwesterm Carpets has seen a markedx improvement on the accuracy of the 3,00p work orders entered each month 95% accuracy, up from 77% accuracyh — and has saved about $160,000 in unnecessary costsd for having to fix incorrect work Instead of pursuing potential clients merely for the sake of new McCaddon and his staff focus on gettingt to know potential clients, researchinyg them as much as possible and understanding their needs beforwe they even meet. “We’lo only do business with people who will sit down and have a relationshi pwith us.
Someone is alwaye going to come inlower (priced) than said McCaddon. “We were alwayws chasing people who were focuseeon price. If they say, fax us (a price sheet), we say we can’t work with you. We stay together as a result. If you have the value relationship, they don’r leave.”