News & Press

Adam Quenneville in the News

June 27, 2008 (Springfield, MA) Adam Quenneville, of Adam Quenneville Roofing, was recently featured in a national publication for his unique environmentally-friendly recycling program. With the program, Quenneville recycling the thousands of pounds of debris created by every roof replacement his company performs.

“Your average home has about 10,000 pounds of roofing come off when you replace a roof,” Quenneville said. “I knew there had to be a better solution to get rid of that waste than just dumping it in a landfill.”

Quenneville found a “green” solution and his company has been gaining attention for it ever since. Recently, he was featured in The Compass, the official magazine of Success Group International, an organization of successful business owners across the United States and Canada of which Quenneville is a member.

With his unique recycling program, Quenneville purchased a dedicated dump truck that his team fills on each job. His dedicated recycling driver then hauls the thousands of pounds of waste to a recycling center in Connecticut.

“With my own truck, I figured I could take this trash anywhere I wanted, and with all the focus on the environment, I thought we could use it to make a difference. Last year alone, we recycled over three million pounds of roofing,” Quenneville said.

The materials that Quenneville recycles are used as a base for asphalt roads and as filling in sewer and pipe lines. “In the end, it costs a little more for the company to recycle all the waste, but I just felt like it was the right thing to do for my customers and for our environment,” Quenneville added.

Customers interested in recycling their existing roof and having a brand new roof installed with Adam Quenneville Roofing can contact Quenneville at 1-800 NEW ROOF or locally at 413-536-5955.

BusinessWest "Hit Shingle"

October 30, 2006

Hit Shingle
By Bednar, Joseph

Even if you've never been in the market for a roof, there's a good chance you know Adam Quenneville's phone number. And chances are, you can sing it.

"Give us a ring, we're on top of things," the ad jingle goes. "Adam Quenneville Roofing, 1-800-NEW-ROOF."

It's probably going to be in your head as you read the rest of this article. Sorry about that.

"People remember the jingle," Quenneville said. "Several years ago, I was doing radio commercials, and the station had a jingle company, and they wanted to get me a jingle. They threw two or three at me that didn't stick, but when I heard the next one, I knew right off the bat that would be it. It has that annoying quality that stays in your head."

However, he added, it would be completely worthless without a good reputation to back it up.

"You're only as good as the job you do," Quenneville said. "No matter how fancy your TV commercial is, or how easy your phone number is to remember, it won't do any good if you don't do quality work - and neat work."

Neatness, in fact, is a theme Quenneville stressed several times as he discussed his successes over the past decade-plus with BusinessWest. It may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about a roof job, he said - until you've actually had a roof repair done.

"Homeowners are concerned with the roof not leaking," he said, "but at the end of the day, what they remember most is how the bushes and lawn look after we take off five or six tons of roofing material. So we pay a lot of attention to cleanliness."

Being attentive to what customers really want - and continuing to be responsive even after the job is done - have been keys to Quenneville's remarkable success in the roofing business. Meanwhile, profits continue to climb.

Family Business

During his childhood, Quenneville's father and uncle were second- generation owners of the family business, and Adam, who had been walking on roofs from about age 10, developed a strong taste for it.

"I remember being on a job all day as a kid and getting paid a dollar an hour," he said. "That was 10 bucks by the end of the day, and I was really happy with that. My paper route only paid me $15 a week."

By age 15, Quenneville was working with his father full-time during the summer, and during his senior year at South Hadley High School, he got out of classes at noon to work until 5 or 6 - at somewhat more than $1 per hour.

"I was able to afford my car and have some pocket money, too," he said, adding that he knew by his junior year of high school that he wanted to work on roofs fulltime. "I actually liked the physical aspect of it, being outside, being up on the roof. But it took only a few years before I realized I didn't want to do it forever."

That realization led to him striking out on his own, with a much different business model than the one practiced by his father and uncle. At first, in his family business, he was just "the guy with the fancy ideas," like nail guns and ladder lifts to make work easier. But he saw something even bigger than that.

"I wanted to expand it beyond the three of us," he said. "Three sets of hands can only do so much work, and this job is pretty physical. I wanted to take it to the next level, hire employees, and get bigger. But they didn't want to add any workers." His family didn't think the potential benefits of expanding the business would outweigh the additional costs, such as insurance and workers' compensation.

So, in 1995, at age 23, he split amicably with his father and uncle and launched his own business. His first job was a 3,500- square-foot ranch house in Easthampton, a reference that his father tossed his way to get him started. The customer hired him partly based on his name.

"I had a mortgage and a baby on the way, so I explained to the guy that I'd do it at the same price as my father would, but I'm closer to your area."

It took him a week, working by himself for the most part. "I had help from my brother-in-law, a tennis pro who had no business being on a roof," Quenneville joked. "He came and ripped off shingles, and he told me, 'you've got to get some guys.' I said, 'I know I've got to get some guys. That's the whole idea."'

Building a Name

Slowly, as jobs picked up - some of them obtained by hanging flyers on random front doors when he saw a roof that looked in need of repair - Quenneville started to bring in those employees. One of them was Brian Cauley, who started out by picking up roofing debris at job sites and loading it onto trucks.

"I didn't think he'd be around long, so he got some thankless jobs," Quenneville said. "But after six months, he hadn't left, so I brought him up on the roof, ripping shingles. The year after, he was working with me putting shingles on. A couple of years later, he was a foreman, running jobs and doing a little estimating."

Today, Cauley works at Quenneville's South Hadley headquarters as operations director, which involves ordering materials, scheduling jobs, filling out permits, and dealing with both employees and customers. "We have 10 residential jobs started and completed per week," Quenneville said. "He makes the residential company go."

That frees Quenneville up to focus on commercial work. Two years ago, he launched a commercial arm, Adam Quenneville Roofing, separate from the existing Adam Quenneville Roofing & Siding. Recently, he has finished work on the Northampton YMCA, Goodwill Industries, Curry Honda, Longview RV, and a number of flat-roofed condominiums and apartment complexes, among many other projects.

"I'm more involved in the commercial side now," he said, noting that one of those projects might bill at $100,000 to $200,000, as opposed to $5,000 to $10,000 for a singlefamily house. Customer loyalty pays off in the commercial arena as well; a homeowner with a new roof usually won't call again for 15 to 20 years, while many large companies set aside money in the budget every year to work on a different section of flat root

"There are million-dollar roofs out there," he said. "There are companies that measure their roof space not in square feet, but in acres."

Quenneville didn't grow up around commercial roofs, so he had to learn that aspect of his trade on the fly - and he's still learning. "I found guys who knew how to do it, and they do it with me."

It's Not Easy Being Clean

Quenneville is always looking to improve the way his workers perform their jobs, and one recent upgrade cuts directly to the cleanliness that so many customers value. It's a vehicle called the Roofer's Buggy that lifts shingles to the roofline and also collects the debris that's ripped off. The truck then lowers the filled container and can deposit it directly into a Dumpster.

He quickly did some math, figuring out that a 2,000-square-foot, double-layered roof includes some 3,200 shingles and almost 13,000 nails. "We're really good about getting 99% of them off the lawn, but 1% is still a lot of nails," he said. The Roofer's Buggy, of which Quenneville owns three, not only gets every single one, but it cuts down on labor, allowing about 90% of roof replacements to be done in one day.

"It's a safer environment, and also a real labor saver," he said. "We don't have as many guys needing days off because their backs are sore. They're getting bellies on them now because their jobs aren't as hard."

A record of customer satisfaction recently drew the attention of Elk Building Products, which designated Quenneville a "peak performance contractor." That title is a sort of trust between the roofer and Elk, as it allows Quenneville to offer extended manufacturer warranties without needing each individual job checked out by Elk.

"Every job we do, we pay for an extended warranty from the company, so not only are we behind the job, but Elk is behind it, providing the homeowner with the 100% coverage for the first 15 years. Even if I was out of business, they still stand behind it."

Quenneville learned early on the importance of earning a reputation for reliability, going so far as to characterize some roofers as "shady," offering cut-rate prices for cutrate work.

"We get at least one call a month from a homeowner who went with a cheaper price, gave the guy a deposit, and never heard from him again," he said. "Or the job was finished, but the roof started leaking, and now the contractor won't call back.

"From day 1, we've given every customer a certain respect level, no matter what the size of the job" - and that includes returning to a site if a problem does arise. "Water is a funny thing," Quenneville said. "If you have a wind-driven rain, people may spot a little leak around the chimney. We'll go back. If may be nothing, but if you address the problem and don't ignore the customer, he'll give you a good recommendation to someone else."

He told of one customer who was more obsessive than most about the health of his roof, going up himself once a year to clean the gutters and check for leaks. Eventually, his health didn't allow him to make the climb, so he called Quenneville, who sent a worker over to clean the gutters and examine the roof, even taking multiple photos to give to the homeowner.

"We charged him 100 bucks. That's a losing proposition, but because the guy's a customer, we went to his house and took care of it."

That customer-service mindset makes sense in an industry where so many customers are ripped off, Quenneville added. "Believe me, if you do one bad job, that word travels 10 times as fast as one good job. So if a customer wants to talk to me, I don't avoid the call."

Scaling New Heights

Quenneville has, however, largely avoided roofs for the past six years, climbing up when he feels like getting some exercise, but otherwise running his business from below exactly what he wanted to do in 1995 when he left his father, who is still climbing roofs at age 59.

"There are a lot of guys working for me now who have never seen me up there," he said with a laugh. "Sometimes, when I miss it, I'll go up and rip shingles with the guys.

It's good that they see me doing it."

Quenneville has no intention of dropping his business any time soon, however. It took him several years to bill his first million- dollar year, but last year he billed around $8 million in projects. With about 3,000 jobs complete, he said, it's no time to slow down. And he credits his wife of two years, Rebecca, for helping to keep him grounded and clear-headed as he faces the next phase of growth.

"The business is starting to pay off," he said. "And I'm only 35. I think I've got 20 or 30 good years left in me."

Good luck getting that jingle out of your head.