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Best Intentions—Unintended Consequences
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Being a plumbing contractor would be a great business, except for two things: customers and employees. Yes, that’s an old joke, but you have to remember I was chief editor of CONTRACTOR from 1994 to 2007.
During my time with CONTRACTOR, I wrote an opinion column every month. Editor-in-Chief Steve Spaulding must think that enough time has passed between my 162nd editorial and my 163rd. Steve, whom I hired as Production Editor in 1996, asked me to look back at industry topics we covered in my day.
Along with reporting on industry news, CONTRACTOR always has shared expert advice on how you can run your business better. As any business owner or manager, you have to focus on your customers and employees.
Women customers stepped into the forefront of making buying decisions when I was with CONTRACTOR. A quaint infographic showed home-improvement projects had surpassed shopping and cooking as a woman’s favorite activity. Customers overall became better educated about plumbing technology and pricing through the World Wide Web and the marketing of big-box stores like The Home Depot.
As for your employees, we devoted substantial space to the importance of training them. Then, as now, you needed to compete with other industries to attract good people. We published an Annual Salary & Benefits Survey based on data we collected from our readers.
CONTRACTOR always has promoted the plumbing contractor as protecting our nation’s health and safety. This came to include the Green Building Movement with its emphasis on using water and energy more efficiently. Another important issue was safeguarding your customers—particularly children and seniors—from scalding water. And before the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS was a health scare that the plumbing industry helped to identify and remedy.
We encouraged our readers to get involved in politics. Being a member of PHCC or MCAA is critical, but contractors need to contact their elected representatives directly to educate them about industry issues.
A few topics were more personal. I wrote about Brad Sell, a manufacturers rep who made it his life work to educate the men in our industry about the importance of testing for prostate cancer. And I would be remiss if I did not mention Bob Mader, who worked with me as CONTRACTOR’s managing editor for 13 years and who died in 2021.
In my farewell column in 2007, I asked readers to continue to use CONTRACTOR as a trusted resource for industry news and business education. On its 70th Anniversary, I am happy to see you have done just that.