Serving as president the last six years, Nathan Pearson is steering Spring Mountain Air toward a focus on HVAC installations and maintenance programs, rather than new construction.
Nathan Pearson holds the title his dad maintained for three decades, but he’s more than comfortable in the post.
Paul Pearson founded Spring Mountain Air, a heating, ventilation and air conditioning business, in 1981 in Nixa, and his son began learning the trade before his teenage years.
“I started doing installs when I was 12,” says Nathan Pearson, Spring Mountain Air’s president the last six years.
When Paul Pearson died of a heart attack in November 2012, he already was semiretired, and today the family business rests on the shoulders of his widow, Mary, and their son.
“I’m the promoter,” says Mary Pearson, who for five years has talked about the business on live radio spots.
Currently, she’s on three shows a week: KWTO’s “Morning Line” on Tuesday and “Home Repairs and Solutions” on Friday, and on KTXR with Wayne Glenn on Saturday.
For $400 a week, Mary co-hosts the hour-long “Home Repairs and Solutions” show on 560 AM with Mark Withers of ReMax/DRC Properties and invited guests from home improvement companies such as Atlas Security, Kitchenland and Capstone Roofing.
“We’re so dependent on the weather conditions. Being live, if we have a cold snap I can talk about that,” she says of her radio work the last few years. “We can tune our message to what is pertinent in that time frame.”
Nathan put his stamp on the company shortly after taking the helm by shifting its focus to HVAC installations and maintenance programs.
“I’ve steered us away from new construction and more into the service market,” he says, noting his crew of three in the field change out three to five units per week and handle scheduled maintenance and service calls daily.
The move around 2008 was strategic, but it had larger implications than expected.
“We didn’t have a crystal ball. We didn’t know new construction was going to go down,” he says.
With its new niche, Mary says she doesn’t miss new construction jobs.
“You have to chase your money a lot. The collection side can be really difficult in new construction,” she says.
“We got stung really bad on three jobs when everything fell apart.”
Coming out of an economic rough patch and with homeowners examining efficiencies, Spring Mountain Air has bought in as exclusive distributor of AirConergy LLC’s HVAC Smart Chip that monitors air flow and results in estimated utility savings of 10-20 percent, according to California Energy Commission testing.
The chip, which can be applied to existing HVAC units, runs the fan a little while longer to push additional heated or cooled air through the vents.
“You’ve already paid for that air to be heated or cooled, and it just sits dormant in your ductwork. It will bring that heated or cooled air back into the home,” Nathan says.
Since rolling it out last summer, the company has sold more than 100 of the $250 chips to clients, he says, and he’s also created a separate company, HVAC Butler LLC, to serve as distributor to other HVAC companies. He has yet to sell any chips through HVAC Butler.
“I’ve not invested in that technology – probably should,” says Dick Grant, a residential client of Spring Mountain Air – one of nearly 900 the company has worked with the last two years.
Grant hired the company a few years ago to replace an aging and inefficient in-ground heating source at his 9,000-square-foot home in Highland Springs Country Club. Grant says Nathan’s bid for the more than $25,000 job was competitive, but it wasn’t the lowest.
“I just liked the way he went about his business and how he explained things. He made a very good business presentation from his company’s standpoint and personally,” says Grant, who is retired from Dairy Farmers of America and a decade ago merged his Stever Trucking company with O&S Trucking.
Since Spring Mountain Air installed his four Amana units, Grant says he’s not on a routine maintenance plan but has called from time to time for service on minor bugs.
Pearson says the company only sells Amana.
“It’s actually made in America and I’m big on that,” he says.
In a 5,500-square-foot office and warehouse at 452 S. Union Ave., Ste. C, Spring Mountain Air keeps on hand duct-cleaning equipment, some sheet metal for custom ducts and a collection of aluminum, copper and scrap metal to be recycled at Commercial Metals Co. Nathan says the company typically has grown at a 10 percent clip, but he declined to disclose revenues.
The Pearsons have worked with CU Community Credit Union to develop a loan program for HVAC jobs and created in-house financing, dubbed the Smile Plan, that puts customers on an interest-free payment schedule. Since inception in 2009, Mary says the Smile Plan has financed $300,000 in jobs.
“We’ve never been burned,” she says. “We’ve collected every penny.”[[In-content Ad]]
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