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From the March 22, 2002 print edition of the Austin Business Journal

Intertech Flooring prides itself on employee training,
offering `consistent' work

Marshall A. Jones Jr. Special To The Austin Business Journal

One Austin-based company got in on the ground level with some of the biggest names in business. In fact, Intertech Flooring's success is tied largely to its long-term relationships with industry heavyweights.

Intertech sells flooring products, installation and maintenance services. Its products include carpet; resilient flooring, such as vinyl and linoleum; raised flooring; and a combination of access flooring and subfloor air distribution and control systems known as the Building Technology Platform.

Unlike most flooring suppliers, Intertech handles sales and installation, using its own in-house labor force. The unique approach was developed as a way to circumvent the problems that can arise when different contractors work together on the same job.

"The kind of business we wanted to go after was more skilled and controlled, so we decided we had to do it in-house," says founder and President Bill Imhoff, whose company formally is known as W.E. Imhoff & Co. Inc.

That represented a major shift in the way people were doing business at the time, when subcontracting various jobs to other companies was the norm.

Doing everything yourself means making sure you have the ability to do everything right. To ensure its employees are up to par on every aspect of a job, Intertech trains them through a U.S. Department of Labor-approved apprenticeship program administered by area colleges.

The 4,000-hour course involves 133 classroom hours annually for three years at Austin Community College or St. Phillips College in San Antonio. The remainder of the time is spent in on-the-job training.

"The purpose is to train your people to have a consistent level of job performance," Imhoff says.

Intertech began the program in 1990 to teach employees about the various aspects of flooring installation and the flooring industry. Imhoff says internal training and hiring from within makes layoffs easier to avoid, even when the market is tight.

"In challenged times, whereas a lot of companies have had to cut their workforce back, we've been able to adjust our workforce, repositioning them into other jobs," he says.

Imhoff says a plan to make the apprenticeship program a part of an associate degree curriculum is in the works. Making it the core of a two-year degree program would be a first in the flooring industry. It would allow Intertech to recruit high school students directly through the participating Austin and San Antonio colleges.

Lori Dowling is president and CEO of the Starnet Independent Flooring Cooperative, of which Intertech is a founding member. She calls Intertech a "guiding resource" for Starnet.

Dowling says the company has a reputation for well-trained employees who understand the latest products and methods. The company's use of in-house labor and intensive training is a model that other flooring companies have begun to follow, she says.

"There's no question that it's going to give you a superior product in flooring," Dowling says.

Environment-friendly practices and specific industries' needs demand that workers be kept in the know, she says.

The Building Technology Platform, for example, is proving to be one of the biggest innovations in commercial flooring in years. It allows companies to house power, voice, data, heating, ventilation and cooling systems in a small space under floors. This makes it simpler to shuffle employees -- and all their related wiring -- from one part of a space to another.

Tim Hendricks, senior vice president of Atlanta-based Cousins Properties Inc., has worked with Intertech since the company was founded. Together, Cousins and Intertech have collaborated on projects ranging from 1,000-square-foot office buildings to a 1 million-square-foot, multibuilding project for Motorola Inc.

Right now, Cousins is putting up an office tower at Fourth Street and Congress Avenue.

"The philosophy of the company [Intertech] is reflected in the guy who's on his hands and knees, actually laying the flooring," Hendricks says.

Imhoff didn't start out laying floors. He studied marketing and business at the University of Texas, then worked as a sales manager for a flooring distributor in the heyday of the 1980s real estate market. When the Austin economy went south in the late 1980s, the flooring business was grounded.

Amid that sour business climate, Intertech was founded in 1988. But there was hope on the horizon: The local semiconductor and high tech industries -- which eventually turned into some of Intertech's best sources of business -- were in their infancy.

"As our [clients'] companies grew, we did too," Imhoff says.

That list of clients has grown to include Motorola, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., 3M Co., Dell Computer Corp., UT, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Seton Healthcare Network and St. David's HealthCare Partnership.

In 1988, Intertech employed 12 people, including the laborers. The workforce grew to 100 in 1997 and stands at more than 150 today. About 40 percent of them work in San Antonio, where Intertech opened an office 10 years ago.

Lack of funding proved to be Intertech's greatest obstacle in the early days. The company functioned for about eight months before securing a business loan. Imhoff says he didn't pay himself the first six months, and personal savings and loans from friends and family kept the new business going for a while.

What advice does Imhoff offer startups? He says knowledge, honesty and integrity are the "basis of growing a business."

It also helps to have a good cost accounting system in place from the start, Imhof says, and to develop a strong relationship with a bank.

Furthermore, knowing how to delegate tasks to the right people is essential for growth, he says. In fact, some of the core employees who started with him in 1988 remain with the company.

Intertech has grown an average of 35 percent a year since it started. Imhoff says two big hiccups in that growth were in the mid-1990s, when "the semiconductor industry took a dive," and in 2001, when the high tech boom fizzled.

"The commercial flooring business is a subset of the overall commercial construction business," Dowling says. "And the last five years have been very strong years."

The sluggish economy hasn't affected commercial flooring providers such as Intertech as much as it has those that provide only residential flooring, she says. Industry growth has been driven primarily by construction of health care facilities, schools and corporate offices.

Until the economy warms up, Dowling expects less flooring business in the corporate sector. Still, that doesn't mean Intertech hasn't been busy.

Last fall, Intertech was chosen to provide commercial flooring services for the new National Instruments Corp. building on North MoPac Expressway. Imhoff has called the contract with the high tech company a "marquee project" for his company. Intertech installed about 370,000 square feet of carpet and vinyl tile in the eight-story building, plus did foyer and elevator work in the 442,000-square-foot parking garage.

But the biggest current Intertech project is the installation of nearly 1 million square feet of carpet and flooring at USAA's corporate campus in San Antonio. The Fortune 500 company, an insurance and financial services conglomerate, selected Intertech from among seven bidders. The renovation project involves replacing outdated flooring, carpet and tile.

Intertech has gone through a little corporate makeover of its own.

Ariana Hajibashi, who works with Intertech's public relations firm, Pierpont Communications Inc., says the company just updated its image with a new logo. Also, outreach to architects and designers is planned through advertisements in trade publications.

"Intertech is well-known in Austin, but in San Antonio they still need to promote themselves," Hajibashi says. "I would say that their best marketing so far has been word of mouth."

It's this word of mouth -- the result of developing relationships with customers and suppliers over many years -- that brings Intertech more business these days than bidding on contracts.

Cousins' Hendricks says Intertech invariably offers customers a level of service that's common when business is slow, but rare when business is strong.

"If you talk to the people consistently using Intertech ... what will consistently be said is that they trust them," Hendricks says. "Bill set out to achieve a high standard and it's paid off for him, as well as for his customers."

MARSHALL A. JONES JR. is an Austin-based freelance writer.