Page 22 - BusinessWest August 17, 2020

Safe at Home
Home-improvement Businesses Thrive During Pandemic
By Mark Morris
When COVID-19 began spreading earlier this year, it forced everyone to make adjustments. Or, as Brian Rudd put it, “The pandemic lets you know how prepared you are for change.”
Rudd, owner of Vista Home Improvement, said his company handles around 700 projects
“Because they are spending so much time on their property,
I think people are reinvesting in their homes for their own enjoyment.”
every year, and keeps everything straight by fol- lowing an organized process. Once the pandemic hit, those processes had to change on the fly.
“Thanks to our staff and our company culture, we were able to adapt quickly, especially in the way we interact with our customers,” Rudd said, adding that some of the changes, such as heavier
reliance on technology to interact with custom- ers and employees, will benefit the business long after coranavirus is under control.
Amid such changes, though, several home- improvement contractors who spoke with Busi- nessWest tell a similar story about 2020.
Specifically, they all experienced downtime in March and April; even though they were included among ‘essential’ workers, the home-improve- ment business suffered a severe slowdown, as
This before-and-after view of Keiter Homes’ ‘project of the month’ is just one of many jobs keeping crews busy recently.
most people were not comfortable with any out- siders in their home during the early months of the pandemic.
But as more precautions have been put in place, business has returned to most companies
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22 AUGUST 17, 2020
COVID-19
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