Tom French recalls his frank assessment of the family business after he mingled with some award-winning home builders at the Benchmark Conference in Las Vegas on Jan. 21, the day before the 2013 International Builders' Show.
French Brothers
Quality Best Practices
Desert Origins
Tom and Jim founded French Brothers in 1996 and emphasized the firm's land development business until 2003, when they decided to focus on building custom and semi-custom homes. French Brothers erected on average 22 to 25 houses a year prior to 2008, Tom says, but the economic downturn hit especially hard, and the builder had to absorb losses on a number of high-end specs. The market in Alamogordo for new homes priced above $300,000 dried up, forcing French Brothers to reconsider its business strategy or join the 65 percent of builders in the area who had to close shop, Bachman says.
Consumer Context
For years, French Brothers employed a Web-based customer satisfaction survey for small-to-midsize home builders and remodelers to measure how clients regarded the company's products and services. French Brothers submitted its buyer data to a third-party firm, which then reached out to the builder's patrons through email, phone, and direct mail to gather feedback. After customers completed the survey, the firm stored the results in a software-as-a-service application that the builder could access anytime from anywhere.
Future Opportunities
When NHQ judges visited French Brothers in late May, the builder had just instituted a global management system for overseeing and coordinating activities among its people. The company—which is already seeing the benefits of that structure—developed strategic plans for one, three, and 10 years down the road as demand increases and business grows, says Jim French, who leads the planning and purchasing team. "Now everybody inside our company understands where we're headed and what our focus areas are," he adds.