Insured Property Owner Guides

RESTORATION GENERAL CONTRACTORS – CONSIDERING YOUR VALUE

By the numbers

ESTIMATED ANNUAL USA STORM DAMAGE REPAIR SPEND

= $132,000,000,000 BILLION dollars

ESTIMATED ANNUAL RESTORATION GC BUILDING PRODUCT ORDER SPEND

= $41,580,000,000 BILLION dollars

NET WORTH OF THE #1 USA BUILDING PRODUCTS DISTRIBUTION COMPANY OWNER

= $22,300,000,000 BILLION dollars

NET WORTH OF THE NEXT FOUR LEADING BUILDING PRODUCTS DISTRIBUTION COMPANY CEO’S

= $17 BILLION / $90 MILLION / $58 MILLION / $39 MILLION

NET WORTH OF 99% OF USA RESTORATION CONTRACTORS

= SUBSTANTIALLY LESS…

To be clear, I don’t, in any way, begrudge the good fortunes of the building product distribution company owner or CEO’s mentioned above. Whether in the private company of members of the Cargill-Macmillan family sharing dinner at Minnesota’s historic Lafayette Club, or offering assistance to a broke property owner who can’t afford to repair their storm damaged property because their P&C insurance company refused to pay their claim, I give little regard to the financial status of either party. What I do however, give great regard to, is the apparent lack of concern and disregard on the part of those building product distribution company leaders who seem to forget that, without the many thousands of hard working USA restoration general contractors who spend billions of dollars every year on purchasing the needed roofing and related building products from those building product distributors, none of them would have been able to acquire their quite substantial fortunes.

General Contractors’ – As institutional and individual investors in building product distribution companies are beginning to figure out – as their ROI’s continue to miss the mark, you are not just building product distribution company customers, you are, in fact and in reality, their “sales force” who, without, they would have no business and therefore, no profits!

Many years ago, former President Ronald Reagan said the following; “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” The point of his quote was the reality that the people really being helped were usually the people that were offering it rather than the people who needed it. While not “terrifying”, I believe the same applies to the promises made by several building product distribution companies who have, relatively recently, offered help to restoration contractors by instituting programs that, as one company who contributed to the investment of $23.5M into their program put it; “will help accelerate the development and launch of groundbreaking roofing solutions, including our newly launched CRM, and soon to be launched Payment Processing, Material Purchasing, and more.”

The EFP and CFO of another top building products distribution company recently called his company’s supply chain a “strategic weapon – a $200+ billion e-commerce operation backed by hundreds of distribution facilities, same-day delivery capability, and a contractor-focused network spanning thousands of delivery branches. For contractors, this matters directly: the infrastructure being built is explicitly designed around your workflow — scheduled deliveries to jobsites, bulk material staging, and specialty trade supply — not just consumer convenience.”

The reality of those programs, similar to what Reagan alluded to in his quote, the people most likely to be helped are the ones making the offers – the distribution companies, rather than the people who really need substantive and meaningful help – their contractor customers.

While both programs will undoubtedly help roofing contractors to increase their work efficiencies such as material purchasing and delivery scheduling, neither of those or similar programs can or will ever help their valued contractor customers who are, in reality, their “sales force”, solve the problems that, at a tiny fraction of the investment cost of the above mentioned programs, would help restoration GC’s to move their insured customers property damage repair insurance claims to real, true, and accurate free market maximum pricing and do so within a reasonable time frame.

Building product distributors may now be able to move needed building products from their warehouses to job sites with more efficiency, but, if the building products needed to complete the repairs cannot be installed until the property owners insurance claims are fully settled, the contractor is stuck and can move no further. Therein lies the problem that will only be solved when the building products distribution industry truly and finally decides to invest in putting the interests of their valuable and indispensable contractor “sales force” ahead of their own (which, logically, will also help the building products distribution company that does so to sell more of their products than ever). To learn the truth, click on the high lighted “The Solution” link below.

The Solution