Arnie?s Plumbing experiences increase in customer volume

Arnie Ross founded Arnie's Plumbing Service Inc. in 1988, 10 years after he moved here from California's Bay Area in 1978. He said he saw "an opportunity and need for a reliable plumbing service company," so he started his own.

Looking back on the company's founding, Ross said, "We have been extremely fortunate here at Arnie's Plumbing. I can't say that I would change anything since the beginning."

The original location for Arnie's Plumbing was on South Glenstone and there was one employee. Then, Ross said, business took off. The company added two employees and built a new facility on Chase Street in 1992.

Since 2001, Arnie's Plumbing Service has been located in what Ross calls "a beautiful facility at 1725 N. Packer Road."

The company's staff has grown to 22 employees and the business now services homes and commercial needs in about a 100-mile radius.

"We have evolved to a full-service heat and air conditioning, plumbing and drain-cleaning contractor, as well as new construction, with 60 percent of our business being commercial and 40 percent being residential," Ross said.

Some of Arnie's Plumbing Service's noteworthy undertakings are Noble & Associates' office building in Chester-field Village, the Diesel Exchange and the Springfield Care Center.

The job for Noble & Associates was one Ross found most unusual.

"Noble & Associates' new office building was a challenge, with four stories and exposed spiral ductwork for their heating and air conditioning system," Ross said.

While Arnie's Plumbing has changed over the years, so, too, has the industry. Ross said it is "always changing" and that "innovative materials are more user friendly," also "standards have risen across the board, enhanced by newer technologies."

Holly Green, office manager for Arnie's Plumbing, gave specific examples of materials that have evolved. Among those, she mentioned new plastic piping for waste and vent, new types of plastic piping for water systems, higher efficiency-rated equipment, and innovations in fixtures.

"Say if the shower head and handles are brass, you can change them out to porcelain or something else without having to go in and remove what's in the wall; they are interchangeable. Designs are outstanding," Green said.

According to Green, "It's very comforting to be in this industry and work for someone who really values good things. Arnie has always been fair, friendly and more than one time I've seen him give a credit whether the credit was really deserved or not. I truly feel he has a lot of respect for the people he works with and the customers he works for."

Perhaps because of this attitude, Arnie's Plumbing is doing fine despite the economic woes felt elsewhere in the nation. "We've just completed our fiscal year and show an increase in volume of 15 percent over last year," Ross said.

And, he noted, the future looks good, too.

"It gets better all the time. We have expanded to some design and value engineering work, and I've invested in related business ventures such as Environ-mental Concerns and Economy Fire Pro-tection," Ross said.

With his expansion into design and value engineering, Ross is filling another need for customers.

"Usually when we bid a job, someone has provided us with the information to bid from; where if we are designing, we go out, take a look and design a system to fulfill the needs of the customer. It's something we may have always been capable of doing, but we are doing it more now. It seems to be required more often," Ross said.

The value engineering, explained Green, is when they have equipment specified prior to bidding a job, and they know of an equally good product that can be used. This saves the customer money.

Ross' ventures into Environmental Concerns and into Economy Fire Pro-tection developed from his work at Arnie's Plumbing. At Environmental Concerns, Green said, "they put in analyzer systems on the big manufacturing and utility company stacks to analyze emissions."

Economy Fire Protection is another place where Ross saw a need and opportunity, much like when he began Arnie's Plumbing. Green said it is designing, en-gineering, installing and testing fire sprinkler systems.

To Ross, the best part of being in business is "the people, those we work for, and those, more importantly, that work for Arnie's Plumbing Service Inc."