Toronto, ON (PRWEB) December 1, 2009 — Decoramould Inc., a supplier of exterior window trim for the construction and renovation industries has partnered with TorontoStuccoContractor.com – a website dedicated to referring EIFS / stucco contractors for free to home owners looking to have their home retrofitted with EIFS (energy efficient stucco), in a move that will bring free professional design services to the average home owner without an architect.
Both companies service residential renovation projects. Home owners looking to lower heating bills or update the look of their home, love the aesthetic aspect of Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems (EIFS) – or “synthetic stucco”. Design options are limitless – from colour selection, to wall texture, to decorative elements – Decoramould’s specialty.
“Customers would walk in or visit the online store and tell us ‘we love your products, can you design something for our home and refer us to a contractor?’,” says Decoramould Inc. owner Skylar Bowker “being that the majority of our clients are the actual stucco contractors, we gladly passed the contact information along. It made us look good to our contractors, to be able to refer work to them.”
Then last year one of his contractors tipped him off to a website they had recently registered for. “They were getting referrals for free from this website and I thought, how can a company provide such a valuable service for free?”
“I was making money on my personal back-end services” comments TorontoStuccoContractor.com founder Jim Schwarznoff. “Even though I interview and qualify all of my contractors, the contractors are installers first, and business men second. For $15,000, home owners want more than just a simple makeover and a headache – they want to have a good experience.
I provide value-added services like sitting down with them to go over EVERYTHING involved in the project and realistically set up their expectations so that they are not blindsided by anything. I ensure they get the maximum possible rebate from the government programs available to all home owners. Oh, a contract too,” he laughs “you would be dumbstruck at how many projects happen without a contract or invoices, and when there’s a disagreement about details they supposed agreed on? The contractor usually comes out on top – it’s like the nightmare situations you see on ‘Holmes on Homes’.”
Even home owners who don’t go for the extra services are attracted to the site because they don’t need to spend hour after hour checking multiple contractors’ backgrounds. “I have interviewed and worked with dozens upon dozens of stucco crews on commercial and residential projects over the years. You do learn how to tell the professional, honest contractors apart from the shysters, but it’s a learning curve that just can’t be scaled on a single project.
It’s sad, but the majority of contractors pay themselves the same. Where you get the $2,000 difference in price is from a contractor using unapproved materials, applying the material in thinner layers or flat out skipping some of the materials. The home owner never knows the difference until something goes very wrong 5 years down the road.”
Both companies are relatively new, having just been started in the last two years, and growing exponentially. Where most stucco contractors go through about 15 projects throughout the year, TorontoStuccoContractor.com has had over 50 requests for their services in 2009.
“That number is expected to jump to about 200 for the 2010 construction season” says founder Jim Schwarznoff. “The majority of projects have gone to the core 5-6 contractors I have been working with for years,” he adds “but due to the sheer volume of projects next season, we will be carefully interviewing and expanding our roster, then keeping an eye on each project to ensure it meets our quality standards.”
Decoramould saw opportunity and jumped on it. “Here are stucco contractors – our potential customers – flocking to get a piece of the action, and dozens of projects for our products to be used on. We were initially only looking to partner with TorontoStuccoContractor.com, but as we discussed the possibility it was obvious there was such a synergy between us that we decided to combine our efforts.”
Any home owner seriously looking to modernize the look of their home with anything from a window sill to corner quoins or a keystone to a full blown exterior makeover can take advantage of the free design consultation from Decoramould. Digital pictures and a description of what they would like done can be sent to design(at)decoramould(dot)com.
Press release from: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/12/prweb3273514.htm
