Building a Better Way: Shelley Armato of Marathon Reprographics Inc.
Saturday, 01 August 2009 00:00
Innovation and tenacity are the keys to renovating the construction management process.By Kate Leibsle, managing editor, KC Small Business magazine
Entrepreneur: Shelley Armato
Company Information:
Marathon Reprographics Inc.
716 W Pennway
Kansas City, MO 64108
Phone: 816 221 7881
www.m-repro.com
Type of business: Reprographics and digital imaging service
Year founded: 2006
Employees: 12 full time, 25-30 during peak times
Keys to Success: “‘Try’ is a word a loser made up. You either do it or you don’t.”
Things to know about Shelley Armato, owner of Marathon Reprographics: she believes her faith will get her where she needs to be; she rarely takes “no” for an answer; and, “try” isn’t a word she uses—or let’s anyone around her use.
“Try is a word a loser made up,” she said. “You either do it or you don’t.”
Her faith and tenacity have propelled Armato and her company to places she didn’t think were possible a few years ago. When she and her husband, Dominick, owner of Northeast Painting Co., married, she was a single mom and a successful real estate agent. She lived a contented life, except for one thing: Saturday mornings.
Driveway Dates
Saturday mornings were date time for the Armatos. They’d head out for breakfast and some quality time together—checking on his job sites. He wanted to ensure that things were on track and on budget, and that his guys had done their jobs or that things were ready for them to come in and work the next week. Sounds romantic, right? Shelley didn’t think so.
“He had a two-year-old car that had 100,000 miles on it from him driving to job sites,” she said. “Then one day I saw one of the project managers, in the job trailer, literally cutting apart paper and pasting information from document to document for a project. I started talking about how it could be done online in a shared plan room."
Shelley envisioned a way for all of the documents necessary to complete a construction project to be available online to everyone involved – from the owner of the project to the general contractor to the architects, engineers, subcontractors and everyone in between. Such a system would ensure that at any given time, anyone could check in and monitor the project’s progress without having to be onsite. While it sounded logical and simple to her, it wasn’t the way construction projects were traditionally managed.
Usually, everyone kept their own books, their own plans and their own schedules. The general contractor had a pretty good idea of where everyone was, but accountability, clarity and transparency were moving targets.
Career Change
So, Armato had this great idea to revolutionize the construction industry, but no way to implement it. Then fate or, she says, God, stepped in with an answer.
She was offered the opportunity to buy the assets of a reprographics company that was going out of business. What did Armato know about printing, printing presses or blueprints? At that moment, nothing, but something spoke to her soul and told her to make the move.
“God took my passion for real estate and shut it down,” she said. “I put my license in referral and we opened in 700 square feet of space.”
Marathon Reprographics started out providing documents for construction companies as they were bidding for projects, which only further proved its chaotic nature to Armato. A company would call needing to print and bind a proposal and send it off to meet an overnight request for proposal (RFP) deadline.
“We were sending $2 worth of paper in a $25 FedEx envelope,” she said.
Armato also knew that her company couldn’t compete just in the reprographics business with competition such as Western Blue, a longtime, local company around. She knew her company needed to diversify. In 2006, she hired Kevin Rowe, who had been an owner at Western. With his expertise in reprographics and software development, Dominick’s in construction and hers in sales, it was time to launch her idea for a desktop application, with project managers that manage the documents, pushing information to everyone on the project. MySmart Plans became a reality.
Brick Walls All Around
But launching a new product to the construction industry, which, in many ways, doesn’t operate much differently today than it did 25, 30 or even 50 years ago, hasn’t been easy.
First, paper, reams and reams of it, is as much a part of the business as hammers and nails.
Transparency, which the online system would provide, isn’t a hallmark of most projects. Project owners had long been accustomed to having a budget set at the beginning of a project, but knowing that throughout, there would be an open checkbook without much oversight into why or how there were overruns, delays or where the extra costs originated. Architects, engineers and others were used to being able to do things their own way without much oversight from anyone or accountability. There were exceptions to be sure, but MySmart Plans would change everything.
“Typically, the general contractors had a system that they made everyone learn,” she said. “This way everyone had everything all in one place.”
The system has extensive security built in. And at the end of the project, all of the documents—specs, architectural plans, what parts were purchased, when and from what manufacturer, who worked on the project, minutes from meetings, etc.—are all in one place and can be archived for 50 years as PDFs.
Armato began cold calling architects. She figured they were her best way into a project as they were usually the first outsiders an owner hired. Plus, they could sell general contractors on the idea.
As she sat on the phone, she did two things: one, she read and reread her Bible, and two, she carefully tracked the calls she was making. The first helped her work through the countless rejections and made her stronger not just in her faith, but in her resolve to make the business work and to help others. (Marathon employees go every other month to City Union Mission and work at the men’s shelter. And, Armato preaches there as often as she can.)
The second was important as Marathon began applying for WBE certifications and had to prove that she was the primary decision-maker in the business. She was the one calling the shots, and she had the call sheet to prove it.
“No” Isn’t the Right Answer
The countless rejections Armato heard to her pitches eventually started turning to sales; some, undoubtedly, because of her sheer tenacity. “No,” wasn’t an acceptable answer from a prospect – not to a request for a phone call, a sales meeting or a proposal. And Armato has gone to great lengths to meet or attempt to meet with potential clients. She even was ready to buy a plane ticket just to have the opportunity to meet with one local architect who’d repeatedly refused her meeting requests. Today, he markets her on his jobs in seven states.
When the architects won’t take a meeting, she does an end-run and goes to the general contractors or the project owners. JE Dunn, one of the largest general building companies in the United States, is a client.
“They gave us a prison project they were doing in Arizona. It was a flash track project, which means it needed to be faster than fast track. We saved them $1.25 million and opened it four months early, she said.”
Today, JE Dunn uses MySmart Plans for all of its projects worldwide.
Going Green
Meanwhile, Armato also was looking at ways to revolutionize the reprographics end of her business. The number of pieces of paper wasted every time a project is put out for bid becomes astronomical when you multiply it by the number of projects Marathon prints yearly.
To combat that, Marathon developed a system in which when an RFP is issued, bidders can log on to a secure dashboard to view information about the project. If they want a paper copy, they can still order one and Marathon will print it; but otherwise, they can use the greener, secure option. When the RFP process is over, the dashboard is shut down. A new one is then started, accessible only to those companies actually working on the project.
Armato thinks there will always be a place for paper plans, but there is a need for more greening of the industry through all phases of a project involving paper.
Fly With the Eagles
Armato says that being in business with Dominick has enabled the two of them to build a different relationship for the business and their marriage. Their Saturday mornings are now spent at the Bluebird Café, picking up checks at the Post Office and meeting the cleaning service at the office. While they try to separate home and work, that’s hard to do, so most of the time they don’t.
Armato has come to rely on a group of close friends, confidantes and associates to keep her pointed in the direction she and they know she wants to go. These are the people willing to have the tough talks with her when necessary and keep her on the path they know she wants to be on.
Some of those people are Gina Danner, Mail Print Inc. and Dr. Michelle Robin at Your Wellness Connection, they remind her, “You can fly with the eagles or you can hang out with the chickens, which do you want?”
Kate Leibsle is managing editor of KC Small Business. (913) 432-6690// This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
