Mikey’s Coming Last March, an investment fund as well as an investor group became part owners of Regency, which then opened its first branch office, a 10,000-square-foot showroom in Columbus, three hours from Cleveland by interstate. The company launched its invasion with a billboard campaign. On the billboard was, who else, but Mikey, promising to “save you a lotttaaa money” over the tagline “Mikey’s Coming.” Major TV buys — 60-second spots that explained the company to Columbus-area homeowners — softened up the market.
The foray into Columbus has been successful enough that the talk at Regency now is about opening a third location, which could be in either Pittsburgh or Cincinnati. “Our plan is to open a new branch every year,” Mike says. For the moment, though, his ambition is to be generating sales of 15,000 to 20,000 window units out of the Columbus market three to five years down the road.
“We never run,” he says. “We walk.”
Bonus ‘Em
Regency’s two-man crews each install an average of about 50 windows a week. Volume like that leaves a lot of room for error. To hold service calls at bay and ramp up the efficiency of the operation, the company created an incentive system for installers.
Here’s how it works. An incentive of $200 per crew is given on a monthly basis to one of the company’s 26 window crews. In any particular month, crews could be ranked on their service call ratio, the number of customer surveys returned after jobs, or their attention to paperwork. “We mix it up,” explains vice president of operations Richard Kasunic.
If, for instance, the bonus is given on the basis of service call ratios and several crews have no service calls resulting from their work, then among these, the crew that gets the bonus is the one that installed the most windows that month.
The bonus system means management has to stay on top of production issues. “You’re automatically driven to review the crews and what they’re doing in terms of service ratios and paperwork,” Kasunic says.
In addition to monthly awards, Regency presents installers with Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards at the end of the year, based on the volume of windows installed and on the individual installer’s service call ratio. Awards come with cash (“They can get a couple of grand,” Kasunic says). Installers also receive, at Christmas, a check for an amount equivalent to a dollar per window for every window installed in a year’s time.
Kasunic says Regency has little trouble finding applicants for installation jobs. The company offers sick days, paid holidays, vacation time after a certain level of service, and a 401(k) program. The problem, he maintains, is finding good subcontractors to install the 20% of windows that are not put in by Regency employees. “That gets tougher and tougher every year.”
