We’ve Been Everywhere!
We’re a bit like the Johnny Cash song “We’ve Been Everywhere Man”.
Our Baptism
Over twenty years ago, we started out in a Bronx apartment. We began by building houses in Rye, New York. True to form, we finished the punchlist as the bottom fell out of the housing market and we proceeded to lose our shirt, pants, underwear and socks. Naked, broke and suitably humbled by the experience− we weighed our options. After giving suicide serious consideration, we decided to aggressively push on. We got better at what we do and found a way to make some money to pay our debts. Now, we have offices in Curtis Bay, Maryland and Yonkers, New York.
We forayed into the grocery store business and signs that read “We will work for food”. We started with building refrigerated coolers, cases and shelving (or “setting gondola’s” as we later found out was the more technical name. We are very proud to be qualified gondola setters. That and $500.00 will get you a cup of coffee in Starbucks. Gondola setters, sounds like a breed of dogs eh?) . It was Edwards Grocery stores who gave us our start and for the next few years “we went everywhere man”− Martha’s Vineyard, to the mountains of West Virginia− going anywhere and going everywhere, doing anything and doing everything and enjoying every second of it.
Our Education
Some bright spark at Edwards then had the incredibly stupid idea of giving us the opportunity to remodel their New Milford, Connecticut store. To this day that is still the hardest job we have ever performed. It wasn’t a difficult construction project, we were just clueless. We believed everybody else was so smart. Thankfully, after decades of being in business, we’ve been enlightened by the fact that everybody else is just as clueless. What a relief! To this day we still remember the contract amount ($1,217,464.00), every sub that worked on the job, and could still drive blindfolded to the job. In our heads we can even picture the restaurant we ate lunch in every time, we do mean every time, our customer visited the job. It is safe to say it left a very lasting impression.
The message this job should have sent to us was to go find an exciting career in accounting. The actual message we received was that we can be really good at this, there are easier ways to perform this work, and there is a tremendous sense of achievement out of completing a difficult construction project. Ever since we have been wishing we choose the exciting career in accounting.
Mark Buckley at Staples provided us our next break. Hicksville, New York− a remodel− and we have currently remodeled that same store three times. Since Hicksville, we have worked in more than four hundred Staples Stores all over the country. Joe, our President, had the honor of being the only contractor in the country having had a Staples store dedicated to him. The store in White Marsh, Maryland is dedicated in his honor. Although he is still waiting for the royalty checks, there is a plaque commemorating his name in the most appropriate of locations− right beside the toilets.
What we learnt when we were not playing hookie
We have proceeded from there to now, in a time where our list of clients is one to envy in this line of work. However, the most important thing is that we still have the clients we started with. Our future will be no different than our past. We will continue to be a company of people who love what we do and who love who we do it for. We will continue to make long term friendships with those we work with every day. We will continue to celebrate our successes together, laugh at our blunders together, and be there for each other when times are tough. We will continue to grow together and we will continue to love what we do because we have been doing it this way for over 20 years and it works.
Now that we are out of our parents house
Our aspirations are lofty and we are confident, not cocky, that we will fulfill these aspirations. We aspire to be the very best in the construction business. We aspire to truly partner with our customers, co-workers and associates to perform our work. We aspire to improve the lives of each and every person that comes into contact with ARA Construction.
To achieve these lofty aspirations our future is going to resemble our past, the history we are going to make tomorrow will be no different than the history we made 10 years ago. We are going to continue to open our minds, broaden our smiles, be true to our word and prove that we are the very best, that this work we do is enjoyable and can be performed in a non adversarial way and show that construction can be simple.
So, again, as Johnny Cash said “We’ve been everywhere man” and we expect to be everywhere again man, learning new things, laughing at our many blunders, celebrating our many successes, and completely and totally enjoying every second of our ride. We commit to you today, as we did 20 years ago, that we will treat you fairly and we expect you to do the same in return.
These guys care about us, their responsibilities and the job they do. They care about our customers too, which is the most important thing of all.Mike Uremovic Walgreens