When four childhood friends decided to go into business together as building contractors specializing in home-energy upgrades, little did they realize they would create a juggernaut that has become one of L.A.’s fastest growing companies.
Monrovia
BUSINESS: Building contractors
FOUNDED: 2012
TWO-YEAR REVENUE GROWTH: 1,228 percent
2015 REVENUE: $6.5 million
But that’s just what Ryan May, Roger Ruiz, and Aaron and Mark Gillen have managed to do. Four years after launching NuQuest Industries in Monrovia, they have taken their company from nothing to the second-largest home-energy upgrade contractor in Southern California. In the process, NuQuest’s revenues shot up 12-fold in three years, from $500,000 to nearly $6.5 million, placing it at No. 10 on the Business Journal’s list of fastest growing private companies. (See page 30.)
A combination of good timing, extensive background in the home-energy upgrade industry, and an inherent trust in each other’s abilities all played a role in the company’s rapid growth.
“We started very slowly, doing one job, taking that money, and plowing it back into the company so we could get the next job and so on,” May said. “What really helped us grow rapidly was our ability to tap into the networks each of us had formed in the industry.”
Central to NuQuest’s business model is California’s Home Energy Upgrade rebate program, run by the state’s three investor-owned utilities, including Southern California Edison. The aim is to come up with strategies for homeowners to save energy and then do the actual work to carry out those strategies, such as installing insulation or more efficient air-conditioning systems. Then the customer gets a rebate from the utility for the upgrades.
Building contractors have to meet certain qualifications for the program and then are on their own to sign up customers.
NuQuest came along shortly after the program launched in its current form in 2013.
What sets it apart from most of the 75 active contractors working in the program in SCE’s territory is its approach of keeping the program at the center of their business model, according to David Cohen, manager of programs and partnerships for the Center for Sustainable Energy, a San Diego nonprofit that manages the marketing and outreach for the statewide program.
“Many contractors try to squeeze in the rebates and elements of the program into their existing business model,” Cohen said. “But the really successful ones, like NuQuest, put the program front and center and build their business model around it. In NuQuest’s case, it helped that they formed right about the time the program really got started.”
Brothers Aaron Gillen, 39, and Mark Gillen, 37, were working at another contractor specializing in the fledgling program when they decided they could do just as well on their own. They reached out to May and Ruiz, both 37, who were working in the general building contracting industry.
They launched the company with just $4,000 in their collective pockets, running operations out of their homes, and still working their day jobs. NuQuest now employs 84 in-house and uses dozens of subcontractors.
