Umpire Mitigation Doesn’t Mess Around
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By Sebastian Langenberg
mpire Mitigation based near Marshall is bringing a new model to an old business. Mitigation is the process of assessing, containing, and preventing further damage immediately after an initial event occurs. Serving clients in Virginia and Maryland, Umpire is an instant booking, flat-priced mitigation platform for water, fire, and mold damage services. Stephen Simmons started the company in 2017, but has a lifetime of experience in the mitigation business. His father bought and ran a mitigation franchise in 1962, and Stephen worked in that business on the weekends during high school and college before eventually taking it over. But the franchise model was the old way of doing things. It involved heavy administration work, lineitem reports, haggling prices back and forth with customers and insurance agents. “It’s about negotiating. If you have a good relationship with an adjuster, they’re going to approve fair things,” Simmons said. “But, if you don’t have those relationships, it becomes an argument match, and you need administration on both sides, which adds to the overall cost of everything.” He knew there was a better way that would be a win-win for both the company and the customer. Using decades of data, and thousands of estimates, Simmons developed a new, haggle-free pricing
Stephen Simmons model based solely on the type of damage and the size of the room. He said his new pricing model comes in on average 35 percent less than the old way of doing things, while still making a profit. “I took the average line items you would use on a type of damage,” Simmons said. “Then, I took the average room sizes in a square foot range like extrasmall, medium; 0 to 50 square feet. I put all that together and we used some calculations to come up with the per room cost at flat price. “If we come in and do a medium-sized room, it
doesn’t matter if I need one or six fans to dry that space, the price is the same. The client gets a fair price up front, and there is no incentive for Umpire to charge for extra services or materials that are not really needed. Instead of having a permanent full time staff, he works with trusted subcontractors, called teams, under his brand. “I call them teams, but they own their own business,” he said. “The way we have it set up is better. We can pay them more and we can still charge less.” All subcontractors have been fully trained and certified by Simmons, and he has worked with many of them for many years. These subs are able to take jobs from other remediation companies as well as any other work they might specialize in, increasing their own bottom line. Why the name Umpire? “Because we love baseball? Nope, soccer is our game,” Simmons said. “Two reasons. “First, baseball reminds us of the phrase as American as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie. The feeling of opportunity for all. We even had a catchy slogan at one point, ‘making mitigation fair.’ Unlike traditional companies that pay lower hourly rates, our teams earn a middle class income. “Second, if you look up the definition, you will find: umpire—an official who watches a game or match closely to enforce the rules. Making sure everything is done right is a big part of what we do.”
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