Contractor Stories

Before (small) and after cleaning, restoring, sand stabilizing and sealing.

Thriving on premium paver maintenance

Highly specialized crews restore, clean, sand and seal very high-end homes for a 100% paver and deck maintenance company.

By Tom Hatlen

Nathan Rothlisberger's business is narrowly focused. Nu-Again hardscape crews don't install. They restore, clean, sand and seal. They don't clean houses, vehicles or anything else on the side. They spend 100% of their time on hardscape maintenance.

His crews are further specialized. With three 2-man hardscape crews, he has 1 cargo van outfitted for cleaning, 1 outfitted for restoration and sand stabilization, and 1 setup for sealing. One crew does all the finishing/sealing work for every job. The other 2 crews share cleaning, restoration and sanding duties.

They use a 3-day hardscape maintenance process because Nathan likes the results he gets from applying polymeric joint stabilization sand and solvent-based sealers, both of which require a dry surface before they're applied. They clean on day 1; repair, sand and compact on day 2; and seal on day 3.

Since they do different services on different days, it works out to have the vans specialized for each service. Nathan says, "Of course when we have 3 trips into it, we price accordingly. Our clients are more than able and willing to pay for a higher level of service. The caliber of home affixed to these hardscape projects often runs in the millions."

Staying focused

Nathan does have a separate wood care division that restores, cleans and seals decks. That's how his company started in 1996. The deck division is equally as focused as the hardscape division. From the beginning people asked if he could clean their pavers in addition to their deck, just as they asked if he could also wash their houses, etc. Like most startups he took whatever work he could get.

He says he got out of washing houses because he couldn't price competitively and clean them to his standards. "It's a slow, tedious task if you do it right. You have to scrub them with an extension pole and a soft brush. Everyone in that industry just uses a sprayer. It's like when you wash your car. If you go thru the 'touchless' carwash without the brushes you still have a film on the car. It doesn't produce the results I want to put my name to."

Nu-Again cleans and seals all of the vertical surfaces in an outdoor room as a standard part of their service to make everything look good. This includes retaining walls, seat walls, fire pits, fireplaces and outdoor kitchens. They also clean and seal some stamped concrete and other concrete flatwork in addition to pavers.

Profile

Nu-Again, Inc.

St. Charles, IL
Founded 1996
Nathan Rothlisberger, President
NuAgainPavers.com

Customer base

100% residential

Services as a % of sales

50% hardscape
50% wood care

Largest project

$32,000

Annual sales

$1.2 million

Growth rate

6-9% annually

Continual residential growth

Nathan did find a good market for high-end residential hardscape maintenance, so they began actively pursuing it. He says they no longer spend any time on work outside of their hardscape and deck niches because they're busy enough trying to keep up with the growth in those 2 divisions.

"The paver market has been growing for us since we started the company. We've grown the business every year. In mid-September we passed up last year's sales which was a record year. So we're on to another record year. In a down economy people may not buy new pavers, but they want to maintain what they already have."

Nathan left commercial work years ago due to the stress of having huge chunks of his business tied to individual accounts.

Narrow focus creates experts

Focusing on narrow niches also allows Nu-Again to be extremely good at what they do and win more work. Nathan says clients perceive value in the fact that they're specialists, believing they will provide superior quality.

He believes contractors who only occasionally do paver maintenance work often have problems. "A lot of contractors will do a sealing job every now and then. And we see quite a few projects that have over-application of product to where it's peeling. It's discolored. You have to be an expert in the products you use and this requires experience."

"When you're cleaning, sanding and sealing a high volume of paver driveways, you are going to be highly attuned to that niche. When my guys come across an issue in the field, they've seen it over and over before and they know how to address it. We can come across virtually any scenario and fix it. There are no surprises."

Staying within the confines of a narrow niche also allows them to operate a very efficient business. "We have great systems in place to move thru a huge workload and projects scheduled out 6 weeks. We focus on how to efficiently get thru our projects and to provide great customer service. We couldn't do this if we were in there trying to up-sell at every small opportunity."

Getting work

So, how do they get enough work to make a business out of paver maintenance? "We do a lot of marketing. We run several ads in local service-oriented magazines throughout our season. We do mailers to our existing clientele. We have nice incentives for referrals. If they refer us to a neighbor, we give them a credit of $50 to $100 towards future work, depending on the size of the job. It makes them happy and entices them to have future work done with us."

Nathan says they also get a lot of work thru referrals from hardscape installers. And they reciprocate by sending installation work back.

Return work for past customers is another important revenue stream. "Everything we do has to be done again. During the initial sales process we'll say, 'To keep this looking like new you'll want it done about every 3 years to stay ahead of the weathering curve rather than having to turn this into a larger more costly project.' We go back to do a light cleaning, just a light touchup of sand, and a maintenance coat of sealer. We've got clients that will call us when it's snowing out to get on the schedule."

For other past clients, they have an automated phone system that leaves a recorded message saying it's been nearly 3 years since the client's last service and that it's time for another visit. Nathan says the phone system isn't as effective as it has been because old phone numbers no longer work as people transition away from landlines. So they're doing more mailers.

Nathan is a firm believer in a soft sell approach. When it comes to return visits, they always suggest the client use their discretion based on how often they use their hardscape area, and on how it looks. For new paver clients that also have decks, they only mention that they do decks after the hardscape is done, looks great and establishes their credibility.

Even in a city the size of Chicago, Nathan says there's not much competition offering the same level of service as Nu-Again. "Our hardscape division is growing a lot faster than our wood care division. The wood care market is pretty well saturated. But the market for hardscape maintenance is just exploding because the industry is still in its infancy."

Nu-Again's paver maintenance process

Day 1 – Maintenance visits always start with cleaning. They spray any weeds. They arrive with about 5 different cleaners so they're prepared for any type of stain they might come across. Then they use their surface washers and wands to clean the surface.

In addition to cleaning, the power washing process removes the sand from the joints without weakening the sand bed.

Day 2 – They repair, sand and compact. With the joint sand already removed during the cleaning, it's easy to pull and reset any pavers they need to. Plus, there's no moss or anything else to scrape off pavers they are resetting. Nathan says by cleaning 1st, any underlying issues hidden by moss, etc. are revealed.

He adds that an installation problem has to be pretty serious for them to defer the work to an installer. "If there's an overall issue with the way the patio was installed, such as pitching, or they didn't install proper flashing in building steps against a house, or if the vast majority of the paver surface is dilapidated – then I'll refer that out to guys who just install."

Day 3 – They seal the project after inspecting it and doing a little touch-up cleaning of anything that may have gotten on the surface overnight. They use blowers for debris, and quick dry solvent-based cleaners to remove bird droppings, etc.