Eco-King partners with Italian company

To celebrate its 14th anniversary, King Heating Products Inc. announces its partnership with Immerfin Group. Located in Brescello, Italy, the Immerfin group will become a minority shareholder in King Heating. Immerfin Group is prevalent in the domestic heating and hot water industry with its Immegras brand. Immerfin Group focuses on highefficient and sustainable products to help decrease carbon emissions. into business, you took a leap of faith — there were no guarantees that you would succeed. At some stage, you reach your complacency plateau. We reached our goals and are too afraid of going back, so we plateau. Having gone through the pandemic, I hope you are now more risk tolerant and less risk-averse.

From left to right, Alessandro Bianchi, Immerfin business development, Romano Amadei, Immerfin founder, and Chad Euverman, president of King Heating Products, celebrate the new partnership.

Eco-King will continue to produce gas boilers, but this partnership will see both companies collaborate to help move the heating and hot water industry away from gasfired products to renewable energy sources, reports King Heating. New products, such as hybrid and all-electric heat pumps, boilers using hydrogen gas, and solar appliances, are expected to be introduced to the market through this partnership.

The Canadian Wood Council announces Kevin Pankratz’s appointment as the board chair. Pankratz previously held the role of board vice chair with the council and also served as the senior vice president of sales and marketing at Canfor.

Cyril Koval will now serve as Weil-McLain Canada’s new regional sales manager of Ontario. Koval has 18 years of experience in HVAC sales, with a substantial background in the boiler industry.

Cooper Equipment Rentals Limited appoints Brian Spilak as its new chief operating officer. Spilak has been with the company since 2016 and has 30 years of experience in the equipment rental industry.

Dan Quinonez joins the PlumbingHeating-Cooling Contractors National Association (PHCC) Educational Foundation as its new executive director. Quinonez has experience in association management and public affairs, formerly serving as a senior account executive for the Kellen Company.

Oatey Canada welcomes Gurjot Sahni to the organization as its wholesale territory manager of Eastern Canada. Gurjot will oversee wholesale sales for Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada in this newly created position.

NTI Boilers Inc. announces that Rohit Nair will now serve as a technical trainer. He will support contractors across Ontario. Nair has been with NTI since 2020, working with the company’s technical support team.

Equipco Ltd announces its corporate head office will now be in Maple Ridge, B.C. The 15,000 sq. ft. office and warehouse space was designed to maximize pallet positions and efficiencies, allowing for faster order processing and delivery times. An official grand opening will be announced at a later date.

Sonnhalter partners with Habitat for Humanity for its 14th annual Sonhalter Tool Drive. From Aug. 1 to 31, organizations, businesses, and manufacturers are encouraged to donate extra inventory, demo models, tools and building materials. Since the tool drive’s inception, Sonnhalter has raised more than $415,000 in donations for the organization.

Johnson Controls broadens its sustainable solutions portfolio by acquiring M&M Carnot, a provider of natural refrigeration solutions. Based in Annapolis, Maryland, and Trois Rivières, Que, M&M Carnot designs and manufactures industrial refrigeration equipment and carbon dioxide controls.

Ruskin celebrates the 65th anniversary of the opening of its original headquarters located in namesake Ruskin Heights, Missouri. In 1967, Ruskin patented its control damper linkage system. Since its inception, Ruskin has continued to help contribute to the innovation of the air control industry, producing commercial HVAC dampers, louvers, energy recovery ventilators (ERV) and air measurement devices. As of 2023, Ruskin has 29 production and office locations worldwide.

Aliaxis acquires Valencia Pipe Company’s manufacturing division. Based in the United States, Valencia will join Aliaxis’ North American IPEX business, further strengthening Aliaxis’ position in the United States.

Emerson Climate Technologies will be rebranding to Copeland, a new standalone business, following its acquisition by Blackstone. The transaction is valued at $14 billion. Copeland will continue to serve the HVAC/R market with its product portfolios. Copeland will continue to operate from St. Louis.

Bradford White is expanding its product line across Western Canada thanks to a new regional partnership with Bartle & Gibson. This partnership will see Bradford White’s full line of industrial products for water heating, space heating, combination heating and storage applications distributed across Bartle and Gibson’s 31 branches in Western Canada.

I recently helped one of my Ontario-based HVAC clients sell their business. The company was making $1 million per year, and the owner was working 20 hours per week. He did that for many years and then decided it was time to move on.

Testing it out

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Around 25 per cent of HVAC contractors net at least 10 per cent to 20 per cent pre-tax profit on sales every year. Those are the people I tell to continue doing what they have always done. What about the other 75 per cent? I have compiled an annual financial study of HVAC contractors for the Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Institute of Canada (HRAI) for more than 20 years. Eventually, we decided enough was enough. We saw many repeat issues from the same contractors that it became obvious they just wouldn’t change. Why do some of these contractors settle for mediocrity? When you first went

There are many different ways that a business can make microadjustments that can aid in their long-term profit. The simplest approach would be to increase your prices. This is particularly true for service contractors. You may lose some of your high-maintenance customers, but you will be able to better serve those who stay. Nobody has ever told me it was a mistake when they increased their hourly rate by $10 — that could be $1,600 profit per technician per month. With five technicians working 11 months a year, that’s $88,000 profit in one year. In 12 years, you will have an extra $1 million in the bank. Roll on retirement.

Categorizing your customers into different groups can help you determine which should be prioritized and which should be dropped. “A” customers provide lots of work, appreciate the relationship, and pay their bills on time. “D” customers complain, challenge the bill, and are slow to pay. Get rid of these. Instead, your effort should be on levelling-up your “C” customers to the “B” level, or getting new “A” and “B” customers and losing some of the “C” customers.

We have touched base on this suggestion many times, but I cannot stress enough the benefits of building a planned maintenance program into your business. This allows you to do more work in the shoulder seasons and frees up technicians for the busy seasons.

The biggest asset in your arsenal is your team members. Provide them with all the support they need, and you will have loyal employees for years to come. Train them in sales and in customer communications. Your employees likely fall into one of three categories. I call it the 20/60/20 rule. Twenty per cent of your employees are stars — they are passionate about the business and are reliable. Sixty per cent are the drones — they turn up regularly, do their work, and go home.

The remaining 20 per cent can be replaced — they are unreliable, do poor quality work, and they have a lot of callbacks. It can be difficult to get technicians in this market, but if they can’t be upgraded, they have to go. Replace them one at a time. Make sure you support your top 20 per cent employees, otherwise, they will become your competitors. Spend less time on the bottom 20 per cent and more on the top 20 per cent.

Does size matter?

Looking at the age-old question that everyone in business asks themselves, does size matter? Yes, it does, and bigger is not better. Growing your business too big, too quickly usually means a loss of control. Many contractors have told me that when they grew too quickly, they made less money.

Look at your overhead structure. Could it support another technician? If so, then do that. If not, then increase your prices so that you don’t need more hours to make more money. Historically, I have found that HVAC contractors with sales under $1 million rarely make money unless they are in a very additional overhead of generating those sales. If you can get to $1 million in sales, then the investment in the overhead will pay off. Try to increase your overhead in small steps. For example, if you see that one of your techs would be good at sales, put them on sales for one day a week. That way, you can support the overhead and gradually grow it as the sales grow.

Productivity

How many hours do you pay your technicians per payroll, and how many hours get charged out? You need to reach at least a 90 per cent rate. A very successful contractor will get to 110 per cent. If you have a minimum of two hours per call and the tech can do five per day, that’s 10 hours of billing.

Remember to reward your technicians. If they bill out 10 hours, pay them for the 10 hours. Share the wealth! Also, reward them for signing up planned maintenance and other revenue generating results.

It is possible to work on a straight time and material basis. It is also possible to work on a flat rate pricing program or on a hybrid program.

Using a hybrid program would mean that you must prepare a list of the most common repairs that you do and have a price list for them. This might include replacing fans, motors, thermocouples, belts, faucets, or toilets. Make your own list. Also, review your travel time, consumable pricing and other add-on costs that don’t get billed. Do you bill for using a vacuum pump?

specialized area. Growing to around $2.5 million is good, as any owner or manager can typically control that amount of work. Growing from $2.5 million to $4 million is a danger zone as you have to add more technicians, management and overhead.

Speaking of overhead, we all need it, but we must ensure that every overhead activity is adding value. It is easy to add overhead, but it is difficult to reduce it. If your gross profit percentage is 40 per cent, then $500,000 in additional sales will generate $200,000 in gross profit. That will be needed to pay for the

Don’t put this article away without committing to implementing some changes. Appoint someone within the company to champion each change. Give them the authority and the budget and, hold them accountable. :