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DAVID SINGER & ROBISON
DAVID SINGER
THE FACE OF& ROBISON: THE HOUSE THAT SERVICE BUILT A FAMILY BUSINESS FOR THE FUTURE
As it starts its 100th year in business, Robison has earned the reputation of being Westchester and Putnam counties’
premier full-service home comfort company. Robison, a family-run company, has stayed committed to evolving in order David’s grandfather, Harry Singer, started in the to meet the changing needs of their customers and times by embracing the latest technology and becoming a “one-stop home heating business one hundred years ago. shop” for all energy needs. As an A+ rated BBB, Energy Services Company (ESCO), Robison supplies natural gas and David’s father and mother, Saul and Fran Singer, continued and grew the business, including by 100% green electricity at budget-friendly rates. It also delivers competitively priced home heating acquiring Robison. David joined in 1987, took over oil and clean-burning biofuel. Robison services and installs all types of heating and air conditioning when his folks retired in 2010, and comfortably systems, provides trustworthy plumbing services 24/7, and works to solve indoor air quality shares the reins with younger brother and CEO, Dan. For the Singers, in the very old-fashioned issues, like mold, humidity, duct and carpet cleaning, and more. Now more than ever, sense of the phrase, Robison is a ‘family business’.
You’ve Got A Friend In Robison!
Family business has to do with the way a company treats its customers and its employees. It has to do with familiarity and reliability, courtesy and respect, convenience and service. And for David, and Robison, it also has to do with social responsibility: Robison’s environmental initiatives make it a substantial ‘GREEN’ leader in Westchester.
ROBISON OIL
David grew up in Ardsley, graduated from Syracuse in ‘84, and from Yeshiva University Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in 1987. When he came ‘home’ to Robison after a stint as a commercial litigator and pursuing a film venture, he moved to Bedford Hills with his wife, Holly. He says, “I really liked it up here. I was attracted by the little league, and the schools, and the nearby parks and Ward Pound Reservation, and the villages, and knew this would be a great area to raise our family. We had just had our daughter, Olivia, and our twin boys, Wyatt and Benjamin, the commute to Robison in lower Westchester is easy, so living in Bedford seemed like it would be - and has proven to be - pretty perfect. Our kids each went to public school, went on to great colleges, and each says they loved growing up here - and that’s what’s really important. I coached the kids in the recreational league - way too early on Saturday mornings - and I still play rec league softball. And we’ve always tried to give back in the community, including our involvement in The Boys & Girls Club. We’re empty nesters now, so we’re gonna downsize, but we’re gonna stay in the Bedford area.”
But make no mistake, Robison is no ‘ma and pa shop’! They have about 200 remarkably diverse, mature and professional employees. David explains, “We work really hard to live and breathe a true service culture in everything Robison does. Frankly, it’s so pervasive that new employees who don’t get the ‘fireman’ ethos - like the work ethic and compassion volunteer firemen and firewomen have - seem to leave on their own in the first six months and after that, well, our average employee tenure is probably better than twenty years. We have lots of folks who’ve spent their entire career with us, and now Robison has people working with us whose parents and grandparents worked at Robison too!” Robison provides oil to more than 15,000 households in Westchester, involving sixteen crews. They are the alternative electric provider to more than 5,000 ConEd households in Westchester and the Bronx. And beyond supplying energy, Robison, through acquisition and integration of many independent service companies, now also provides comprehensive heating, ventilation and air conditioning, electric, plumbing and insulation contracting and services. As David puts it, “We’re in the home comfort business. We provide people with one of the most critical services. I make sure everyone at Robison treats every customer like it was my home, or their own home, that they were coming inside to work on. Imagine it’s their kids in the house when we get the call in the middle of the night. I want everyone to be accountable to the customer.”
And David has seen to it that Robison is on as GREEN a path as possible.
OIL-TO-ELECTRIC
Although the oil business obviously involves the sale of a carbon-based fuel, oil has historically been the only available home heating energy source for most of the Northern Westchester households Robison serves (as a natural gas alternative is not or has not been available). Now, every oil-powered home can be economically converted to electric! Technologically advanced heat pumps make it possible to run a house on electric power, making oil and the oil burner a vestige of the past. And there are Federal and State tax credits and utility incentives available that reduce the cost of installing the heat pumps, so the total expense of converting works from a cost and an environmental perspective.
BIOFUEL
For oil customers, Robison is now one of the only companies in the region to offer, and starting in 2020 to exclusively sell B10 biofuel, heating oil blended with 10% biodiesel that’s made with vegetable oil. Biofuel burns cleaner than regular heating oil and reduces dependence on oil, and U.S. dependence on foreign sources for that oil, in favor of U.S.A.-grown soybean for the biodiesel. And because of available New York State tax credits, all Robison oil customers receive a 10 cent per gallon direct tax credit for every gallon of fuel delivered.
100% GREEN ELECTRICITY FOR CON ED CUSTOMERS
Robison is an energy service company (ESCO) licensed to sell electricity direct to ConEd customers. Robison utilizes only 100% ‘GREEN’ energy to supply all customers! Robison purchases Renewable energy Credits from hydro-electric plants located in upstate New York. These Credits cover all the electricity used by all Robison customers. What that means is when buying power from Robison you offset the carbon you produced by supporting green power production elsewhere. The cost of the program is minimal, and more and more municipalities are looking at this type of purchasing.
HOME ENERGY AUDITS / CLEAN AIR
Home energy efficiency is basic to using less energy and can be the most cost-effective ‘green’ investment any homeowner can make. Robison conducts energy audits and provides comprehensive solutions, including critical insulation addition/replacements. Clean air is another critical component of making each home ‘green’. Robison installs ventilation, humidity, filtration and UV-light air purifier systems, reducing allergens and viruses and improving health.
“For us,” David expressed with apparent passion,
In terms of who does what between David and Dan, David says, “It’s really cool between me and Dan. We’ve always each done the things we wanted to, and probably avoided the things we didn’t want to do, and it just works out. I guess if there’s any distinction, I probably do more of the company’s outwardly facing stuff, and Dan tends more to the operational side of things. Dan went to ‘Cuse and graduated in ‘89, five years after I did. He worked at Pepsi for about seven years learning all about logistics and labor relations, before joining me at Robison in 1996. He and his wife, Jill, like Holly and me, have three great kids: Harrison, Zara and Jared. I feel really lucky to be running the century-old family business with my bro...and proud that we’re running it in a way that would make our parents and our grandparents proud.” And when pressed on how he got the most desirable dsinger@robisonoil.com email address, David laughed, “That’s hilarious that you bring that up! It’s probably the only time I ever pulled older-brother rank!”
Harmonious at the office, their tastes in some other things can vary: David’s all-time favorite is Led Zeppelin, with Crosby Still Nash & Young as a close and notably very different second; Dan likes Nirvana and a variety of 90’s grunge. David is a foodie who loves to travel; Dan is a Trekkie who likes the beach. And as for the four people, dead or alive, each would invite to come over for dinner, David says, “Definitely Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, because I’d like to hear what those two would tell us today, and then Einstein and King Solomon.”; while Dan picked John Lennon, Terry Bradshaw, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett - with William Shatner as a stand-by.
