Long Island Dealers Say Their Success Is Built on Trust
(Reprinted with permission from GE Retail Sales Finance)

Hard work. Perseverance. Personal service. Those are the words Chris Caethew and Jeff Brett use to describe how they grew their New York home improvement business, King Quality. They started the business, in their basements more than 15 years ago. For the first few years, they worked seven days a week serving as the company’s advertisers, canvassers, finance managers and laborers.

King Quality Siding & Windows, Inc. was formed in 1992. Today, with more than 160 employees, King Quality is recognized as Long island’s largest windows, siding and roofing company and generates more than $25 million in annual sales. Best of all, they agree, King Quality is known as a company built on trust.

A Good Deed Pays Off
“There‘s nothing more important than trust in this business,” said Chris, “Unfortunately, we’ve got lots of bad apples in this industry, and word spreads quickly when you don’t treat the customer right. At King Quality, we’ve worked hard from the very beginning to simply do the right thing, and that has paid off for us.”

To demonstrate how doing “the right thing” has made good business sense for the company, Jeff recalled a recent incident that occurred while his mother was at a long Island dinner party.

“A woman at this party was telling my mom that she needed a new roof, and of course, my mom told her she should consider using her son’s company,” he said. “But the woman said she planned to use a company whose workers had helped her fix a problem with her house trim during their lunch break and then refused to take money for it. She tried several times to pay them, but they insisted it wasn’t necessary. That Company, she said, was King Quality. Of course, my mom was proud to say, that was her son’s company.”

Such a small good deed paid off in couple of ways, said Jeff. It instilled trust in the customer, and it resulted in seven other jobs on her street, translating into more than $350,000 in business.