Rising utility costs, warmer weather brings solid growth

Missouri Insulation & Supply Co.

Address: 1580 W. Skyline Ave., Ozark, MO 65721

Top executive: John M. Lambert, president

Revenues: Would not disclose

2004 revenue growth: 99.9 percent

Employees: 65

There are several factors behind Missouri Insulation & Supply’s growth, but President John Lambert is quick to point out which one’s most important to him.

“I truly feel like I have the right people, or that we do,” Lambert said. “It’s a team effort.”

Lambert said that several key members of his approximately 65-member staff have been with the company for 10 years or more.

While Lambert opted to keep his company’s revenues for the past three years confidential, he did note that Missouri Insulation experienced 99.87 percent revenue growth in 2004 and 33.7 percent growth in 2005.

Increased home-building and construction activity and the mild winter weather also have contributed to growth for the company, which provides and installs insulation and wholesales building products such as insulation, vinyl siding, windows, doors and fireplaces.

Increased utility costs also have resulted in growth for the company.

“People are more conscious about the materials that they’re putting in their homes. They know that has a direct relationship with the utility bill,” Lambert said. “Insulation is one of the few things that you can put in your house that pays you back every month.”

For example, he said, “You can put in a new countertop that costs you 3,000 extra dollars, but it doesn’t pay you back every month. But if you spend a couple thousand dollars on insulation upgrading that can save you $20 a month, that can pay off over time.”

To accommodate growth, Missouri Insulation officials are in the midst of moving the company from its 12,000-square-foot location at 1580 W. Skyline Ave. to approximately 22,000 square feet at 1348 W. Liberty in Ozark.

The company’s on the move in other ways as well. In 2004, Missouri Insulation opened a location in Camdenton, and Lambert said he’s got crews now working from a mobile location in Columbia. Crews also are getting ready to start work in Arkansas.

Wyatt Larimer, director of operations for the company, joined Missouri Insulation in 1996. His job entails not only being in charge of employees, but also ordering products, ensuring correct pricing, coordinating with all locations on orders coming in and the vendors being used, and handling day-to-day operations for job sites. And he’s had an up-close view of the company’s growth.

“When I started, we had just three salesmen, and basically, we could just sit in the office for an entire day and have no walk-in customers, and the phone would ring a couple of times an hour, and the paper trails were small,” Larimer said. “In the last three years, we’ve added locations, doubled the size of our sales force (and) more than doubled the size of our work force that goes out to install.”

Paperwork has increased, too, Larimer said, with increased sales and additions to the company’s inventory.

Lambert, a Drury University graduate who bought Missouri Insulation in 1994, said his experience in the years since have taught him that it’s important that as a business owner, he stay active and hands-on with his company in order to offer guidance and meet challenges.

One of those challenges, he said, is managing his growing employee base.

“When you only have a handful of employees, it’s pretty easy to handle it all yourself,” Lambert said, “But when you grow, employees have different concerns or problems, or trucks breaking down, and it’s a challenge to get that all handled and to delegate those responsibilities to key people.”

Karen Cohen, who started out in 1996 as the sole member of the company’s office staff, now spends much of her time working on human resources issues such as employee benefits, as the company has recently begun to outsource payroll.

But the benefits portion of her work is important, as Lambert believes good benefits prevent turnover.

Lambert’s employees pay $1 a week for their health coverage, with Missouri Insulation picking up the rest of the tab. The company instituted a 401(k) program in 1999, matching employee contributions dollar-for-dollar up to 6 percent of each participant’s salary.

“My thinking is … there are (a lot) of construction companies in the area, and my guys might be able to go anywhere and make a dollar or two dollars more an hour,” Lambert said. “Maybe they can’t, I don’t know. But what are they going to have when they retire?” Lambert said.

Offering such a benefit package does cost the company a lot of money, but Lambert said, “It also costs the company a lot of money to retrain people time and time again.”