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Coconut Grove Construction Corp.

Location
Fort Myers, Florida

Business Profile

Our construction and roofing business is based in Lee County and is born out of our construction company which started in 1982 in Coconut Grove, Florida.  We started in Lee County in 2003 in Fort Myers and we now have expanded to our location in North Fort Myers.  We serve Southwest Florida and focus on Lee County, Florida.


We started Coconut Grove Construction Corp. because we found that quality, professional services with reliable, honest and competent personnel were very difficult to find.  We felt that if we made the commitment to provide reliable communications, professional service and quality work for a fair price that we would be rewarded with a successful and satisfying business. 

That philosophy has rewarded us a tremendous 80 - 90% of our business coming from referrals!  We will do our best to exceed your expectations with our quality, care for your interests and pride in doing a job well.   We do everything we can to provide our customers with professional services, and we thrive on building relationships of trust with our customers, employees, vendors and sub-contractors.

Coconut Grove Construction Corp. is a Certified State of Florida Licensed Class A General Contractor Roofing Contractor.  Our owner has over 35 years in the construction industry.  We maintain a database of over 9000 customers, vendors and related contacts who like you, contribute to our success.

Visit www.coconutgroveconstruction.com

Winning Contest Entry

Challenge:
Last year the sales in a construction / roofing company I own had fallen over 50% and my partner who managed the company decided to move back north to be near his family due to financial problems. I determined that although I have other business activities, the roofing component of this business had the best likelihood of maintaining demand in what was the third year of the local recession in SW Florida. I had to increase sales in an environment where many of my peers in business were off 50 - 75% from their prior years’ levels.

Solution:
We determined that 80% of our business was either referral or repeat.  We did direct mail to our customer base which resulted in an immediate sale.  We were determined to expand our advertising budget and went into multiple publications including a shopper, a weekly, and three yellow page publications.  We monitored all of these efforts, eliminated the shopper due to the low quality prospect, and eliminated the weekly due to the lack of calls.  We have since expanded our advertising on the web, and now are testing radio. Gross revenue is up 92% over last year, advertising is up 98% but remains less than 5% of our gross revenue!  We invest more in entertaining prospects and customers to direct market.  We have been more careful with cost controls and use multiple vendors where we used to use one. The bottom line?  Return on equity has gone from nearly nothing to a substantial sum, and the net income before taxes has increased 354%. The lesson has been that in addition to paying more attention to the details for cost control, in a down economy you must increase your advertising, even if it only brings in a few more customers who then join your existing customers and provide you with the referrals that become easier with whom you can build a quality, mutually beneficial and profitable relationship.

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