How to Know Where Your Striping Business Needs to Grow & Slow

Precision Striping gains competitive advantage by making investments in their equipment fleet and cutting down on services offered

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Dan Miller has been successfully navigating the New Jersey striping business for 30 years, and like most contractors, he fell into the industry working part time and eventually into owning his own company. 

Throughout his 30 years in business, Miller has learned when and where to invest in his company, but also that sometimes changes need to be made in order to ensure successful growth of the business, even if that means changing the way you do business or changing services offered. 

Miller started working for family friend on weekends and was eventually given the opportunity to buy the company in 1986. Miller accepted even though he already had a full time job. Once his business started to pick up, Miller was actually taking time off from his job at Hewlett Packard (HP) to complete striping work. 

After choosing a buyout from HP, Miller started to invest heavily in his business, eventually beginning to offer sealcoating and cracksealing in addition to striping in 1988.

Know Your Business

When Dan began to commit more fully to his business, he started to attend industry tradeshows to help him learn the industry. 

“I attended NPE and a lot of the people there are willing to share what works for them as long as you’re not in their back yard,” Dan says. “One of the business methods I learned is to have a small debt. Instead of going into hock for everything, keep your debt small when you buy new equipment.

“I also learned you need to modernize your equipment every few years. If you need something that is going to make your job easier and safer, go buy it. It’s worth the money.” 

Precision Striping spent $50,000 in 2014 updating their equipment and have seen the immediate reward to these upgrades. 

“The profit margins are higher in the cracksealing and line striping,” Steve Miller, Dan’s son and business partner says. “Especially once we updated our equipment. We have all Graco LineLazers and LineDrivers, Crafco SS125 and a flatbed truck for all the materials so it’s easier to load and unload on the job. The profit margins are higher because we have that speed now that this new equipment gives us.”

“It’s absolutely worthwhile to make these equipment investments,” Dan says. “Everything is easier, faster, more efficient and safer.”

Stephan says that NPE was also a determining factor in helping them make these equipment upgrades.

“We had never upgraded equipment because what we had always worked just fine,” Stephan says. “When we actually made comparisons to the newer equipment we saw at NPE, we realized there were better options out there.

“With this new piece of equipment, I was able to complete a job that would have normally taken me all day to do by noon. The next week we ordered two more.”

The following year, the company invested in a LineDriver for their striping units and continued to see productivity gains.

“The productivity was mind blowing compared to what we had,” Stephan says. “We wondered why we hadn’t done this years ago.”

“You just have to be willing to spend some money to make money,” Dan adds. “We did that. We were able to control our debt and still make these upgrades and that’s what companies need to do.”

Dan says their company was able to control their debt by ensuring their job cost for each bid was accurate.

“Job costing is everything,” Dan says. “You need to know how much everything costs, insurance, expenses, materials, labor, etc. You need to know those numbers going in if you’re going to make profits. You need to know what it’s going to cost you to do that job in order to make money.

“What a lot of guys don’t realize is that it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep, what you have at the end of the year,” Dan continues. “Newer guys go out and see that they’re making money every day, but then winter comes. You need to have enough money stored in your account to carry you the whole year.”

Challenge Presents Opportunity

No one ever wants to deal with an injury, but Dan’s broken ankle in 2000 ended up being a blessing in disguise for the company.

“When I first started doing this, I’d go out, I’d do the estimates, I’d run the job, everything,” Dan says. “Well what we learned is you can’t grow when you do both. You just can’t.

“After I broke my ankle, I couldn’t walk for almost a year and if Stephan hadn’t stepped in, the company would have been done.”

Stephan took over running the business on the outside and Dan was able to run everything inside. Stephan assumed his role in the field and took on the challenge of learning how to interact with the crew and handle the challenges of each job.

“Once I became mobile again though, we looked at the business and realized that this was working,” Dan says. “And that’s when we really grew.”

Dan and Stephan estimate the company grew almost 50% that first year with Dan handling the sales and Stephan handling all the fieldwork.

“When we were both out in the field, we’d be out on the jobsite completing work until 4 in the afternoon,” Stephan says. “We’d get back and he’d take a stack of estimates and I’d take a stack and we’d go in different directions.”

Using that method, the two weren’t able to supply estimates to customers until three to four days after the request. With that timeframe, many customers have already moved on.

“Now with Dan handling the sales capacity, most jobs are quoted within hours of the request,” Stephan says. “On residential jobs that means the difference between being hired or not.”

Focused Growth

While Precision Striping started out expanding their services to meet their customer demand, they have now started to focus on where they can truly make the most money. 

“We do a lot more cracksealing and striping now by our own design than we do sealcoating,” Steve says. “The problem we’ve seen with sealcoating around here is that the market is so flooded. We have guys around here that say they can do the work for 8-10 cents per square foot, which are prices we quoted 10 years ago. We tell customers who call us with those numbers to hire the other company. They probably don’t have the insurance or experience we do, but we just can’t compete with those prices.”

Today, Precision Striping has cut back on services offered, focusing on cracksealing and striping where they know they can make the most profit. 

“Most of those fly by night companies are not going to go out and spend $10,000 on a LineLazer and a LineDriver to go stripe parking lots. They’re going to do a job and be gone the next day.”

The owners also recognized that striping is not as labor intensive for their crew of six. “We try to keep things small,” Dan says. “A few years ago we were running two crews and we realized we weren’t actually making any more money. By the time you pay your insurance, gas, materials, salaries, we really weren’t making much on the end. We make more money when we keep it small.”

Today the company only completes about 40% sealcoating and the rest of their work focuses on crack filling and line striping.

They also limit their service area to Northern Jersey and do not travel unless the job is going to be profitable for them.

“We’re kind of in a holding pattern in the business right now,” Stephan says. “We need to sit down and come up with a three to five year plan for the business. We know we don’t want to invest anymore in sealcoating, but there is talk of getting in to patchwork as most pavers in our area don’t want to do that. We will.”

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