TEAM EFFORTS
“We make fun of him because he cried on national TV [during Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, a show Plaskoff built], but he really cares about employees and customers and does things a little different than others in the industry.” —Brian Kargari, OWB’s vice president of operations
After a detour through the neighborhood where he built his first custom home and later scored a series of projects, Plaskoff heads to a recent Plaskoff Construction project and to check on OWB projects. This is his usual daily routine. He chats with homeowners and asks questions. At one recently finished custom home he gets down on hands and knees to inspect a loose pool tile with the owner. At the OWB projects he greets members of each three-person crew by name. It is evident from their easy banter that they like him. He invests a lot of time and money — about $10,000 — in gathering a crew.
He starts with a pool of between six and nine people and winnows it down to three through a series of written, oral, and hands-on building interview steps that take about three weeks. At the Gardena, Calif., OWB office and warehouse, Plaskoff holds “One Week Bath University” classes in a 50-foot open-sided trailer — think cross section of a double-wide. Inside, crews show their stuff by building a bathroom. Each day they are given an “issue” to deal with, such as an owner making a change, and Plaskoff critiques the built room every day. When it’s finished, photos are taken for use on the website, then the room comes apart and the materials are reused.
When there is time, Plaskoff will also “put people through classes on how to communicate with customers or deal with co-workers,” says Kargari, who has been with Plaskoff for 15 years.
Among other things, such as making sure every project goes according to plan, Kargari oversees the warehouse, which is where the real secret lies to doing a bathroom in a five-day workweek: up-front preparation. With a backlog of eight to 12 weeks, purchasing manager Sara Hill has time to order every last selection choice (from a checklist with more than 100 variables) and pull permits before the crew begins. Warehouse manager Art Sencion opens every incoming box, checks every product for damage, and organizes palettes for each job.
Kargari also has developed one-week plus one day (or more) schedules for times when a project is larger or more complex and doesn’t fit the one week model. Clients know the rules up-front and understand that the process might take a day or two longer. Plaskoff will pay customers $200 per day for each day OWB runs over the promised schedule. But, even after 1,200 bathrooms, this is a rare occurrence. To further increase speed and efficiency, Sencion puts together various kits with incidentals such as plumbing or electrical parts. This has reduced Home Depot runs, for which Plaskoff estimates he was spending $20,000 per month in wasted product, wasted time, and wasted gas.
STILL LEARNING
“To me, the ultimate [business] success is something that doesn’t require all your attention but is replicable and sellable. I’m not there yet.” —Matt Plaskoff
On the wall in the entryway to the OWB office — before you stumble across the dozens of playfully painted yellow rubber bath duckies, the unofficial symbol of OWB — is a January 2008 article from Professional Remodeler in which Plaskoff is quoted as saying, “My dream is to be able to say ‘Your bathroom in a week or it’s free,’ but we’re not quite there yet.”
Now, a little more than two years and 1,200 bathrooms later, Plaskoff admits he has a ways to go: “That’s a bold statement. Our business model is not to be [in a home] any longer than we need to be. I’m not really ready for it to be free, but I would love to be able to say that.”
By the end of the day, still driving, Plaskoff is as full of energy as he was in the morning. Again, he’s back near the beach glancing over at the surf breaks during stop-and-go traffic. “It’s about balance,” he says, pointing to the water. “Waves break a certain way and you’ll go over face first if you’re too far forward. You want the back of the wave to catch you the right way. That’s the challenge, catching the wave and then getting to your feet. Actually surfing is the easiest part.”
—Stacey Freed, senior editor, REMODELING.
This is a longer version of an article that appeared in the September 2010 issue of REMODELING.