B U I L D E R P R O F I L E
Green Bay Press Gazette
Thursday, January 16, 1997 GALLERY OF NEW HOMES
Special to Gallery of New Homes
Andrew Homes, Inc. is new to the Brown County area but certainly not new to building high quality, larger homes. Andrew Homes has been building single family homes in the Fox Cities/Oshkosh market since the early 1980’s.
"Several of our best suppliers and subcontractors are from the Brown County area and for years have been suggesting we start building here," says Len Backus, owner of Andrew Homes. "We always saw it as a fine opportunity but wanted to wait until our management team was fully prepared."
Andrew Homes builds homes in size of approximately 2,000 square feet and more. The company is the leader by sales volume in the Fox Cities/Oshkosh market by quite a margin over its second place competitor. According to municipal building permit records for 1996, Andrew Homes’ total square footage of homes built there was more than double that of the second place builder of homes 2,000 square feet or more.
"Our management team is thrilled to be taking on this new challenge," says Backus. Headed up by Jim Armstrong, construction manager, the team includes Dana Gross and Kris Boeck, expediters; Jock Holsworth, service manager; Nancy Thurner, sales and marketing; and Kathy Ertmer, construction administrator, who supports these functions from the office but loves to get out onto the construction sites as well.
Two years ago construction manager Jim Armstrong moved from the northeast side of Appleton to the east side of Freedom, putting his new home only 15 minutes from Lambeau Field. Jim’s father has Packer season tickets and Jim has been able to attend some of the games ever since he was a little boy.
"I think I know how the Packer players feel about giving all for their careers," says Jim. "Like them, we just want to be the best we can be." Jim has worked in most phases of house construction and has been with Andrew Homes almost since its beginning.
Len Backus’s son Andy, (Andrew), is a construction management major at UW - Madison. Andy worked four summers for several different framing subcontractors who framed for many different homebuilders. This gave him a chance to see that not all builders do things the same. When writing the new copy for a recent edition of the Andrew Homes newsletter, Len asked Andy if he could think of any things to mention regarding quality. Andy came up with several topics which were used in the newsletter, pointing out the higher quality techniques used by Andrew Homes.
This past summer Andy filled a construction management college curriculum requirement when he spent the summer interning with Andrew Homes as assistant to construction manager Jim Armstrong. Jim said he appreciated having such an eager assistant during the busy summer. Andy’s professor gave him an "A" for the report he filed on the internship at the end of summer.
Andy’s younger sister, Barbara, also played a role in the company recently. As a member of a high school national marketing club, Barbara chose Andrew Homes’ customer service operation as her project in a state competition. She wrote a 29 page report for the competition analyzing the customer service of Andrew Homes and ways to improve it. It turned out to be a collaborative effort with her father and the construction management team.
Barbara qualified at the state level to go on to the nationals where her report and interview in which she presented and defended it was ranked 4th out of 140 entries in the competition. "My wife, Kathy, and I were very proud of her achievement but a big bonus to Andrew Homes was in learning the actual results of the survey itself," said Len Backus. "We found out that a very high percentage of our customers would build with us again. We also learned of areas we could improve in and we are working hard to do so. Customer service is one of the keys to our success and we will always be striving to be better."
Barbara started college this past fall in Madison, majoring in marketing.
Andrew Homes is currently building two "for sale" model homes in Brown County. One is at 2754 Chaska Court in Howard. It has 3,260 square feet with a two story family room and foyer. Located on a large, partially wooded lot, it has 4 bedrooms and a den and living room.
The second model is at 3120 Essen Road in the new Acres Subdivision in Bellevue. This model has 2,250 square feet with the living room and dining room having a 10 foot high ceiling. These rooms are separated by an arched partition supported by flanking columns. This home also has four bedrooms, family room, two and one half baths and a three car garage.
Len Backus says, "Our model homes are open most Sundays for viewing if they haven’t sold before completion. Eleven of our 1996 homes sold before completion. It is a huge advantage that we were able to show a prospect a completed example elsewhere of the "spec" or for sale home they saw under construction. During the peak of the building year, we have as many as 10 or 12 different, completed houseplans for viewing at one time around the Fox Cities/Oshkosh area ranging in size from 2,000 to well over 3,000 square feet."
"About half of the homes we build are contract, custom built homes for a customer on their lot," says Backus. "Sunday afternoon browsers are able to get excellent ideas for themselves by visiting our widely located model homes. I often see them come into a model with the Andrew Homes’ Sunday paper picture ad in hand, obviously making the model tour."
Len Backus takes a very flexible approach to filling the houseplan needs of his contract customers. "Most of our customers end up building a variation of one of our dozen or so actively shown model houseplans. Sometimes their choice is to exactly duplicate the model right down to the choice of floor coverings, light fixtures, cabinets and landscaping we provide. More often, however, we tweak the plan for them, adding a room, making the house larger or smaller, changing the outside look, adding a first floor master suite ... in short, making it their own home."
"Also, every year we build a few homes for people that are their own plan that they bring to us. Even in these cases the use of our models is a big advantage because we usually hold our design/budgeting meetings in whichever one of our models is closest to their choice of plan. In this way there are no surprises when they move into their new home ... not in costs and not in being surprised that the completed houseplan doesn’t fit their mental image of it."
Many times contract house customers tell Backus, after completion, that they, and their friends, never believed their house could be built with so little stress for themselves as owners. "We are very good at managing the entire process in a professional, fun way. Fun, ... that’s a word our customers use quite often to describe the way we took them through the building management process."
Len Backus enjoys traveling to other parts of the country on design research trips and will also again be attending the National Association of Home Builders convention in Houston on January 25 and 26. Unfortunately he will be on an airplane coming home from there during the Super Bowl. Maybe he’s not such a good manager and planner after all!
For the record: Len covered the 267 miles of exhibits in record time and returned to watch the Packer victory. Good managers and planners adapt.