CHAMBER BUSINESS AWARDS
Solid Rock Fencing builds on innovation
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NEWS PHOTO IAN SORENSEN Solid Rock Fencing president Robin Kurpjuweit poses for a photo in front of some of his work outside of the city.
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NEWS PHOTO EMMA BENNETT Murray Prokosch, president and C.E.O of Classic Communities, looks over plans at his desk.
Andrea Klassen Medicine Hat News
Solid Rock Fencing president Robin Kurpjuweit is expecting good things for his business in 2010. Not surprising, when the concrete fencing company managed to exceed last year’s sales targets before the end of January.
Kurpjuweit says Solid Rock will install at least two miles of fencing in 2010, “and we want to sell another mile this year, but we could definitely manage selling two."
By comparison, the company installed about one and half miles of fence in 2009.
Solid Rock got its start in 2007, when the concrete business Kurpjuweit owned was hired by the city to pour cement for a vinyl fence being built along 13th Avenue. When he suggested a solid concrete fence would be more effective, he was told no one in the city offered that kind of product.
Kurpjuweit, who was already looking for a unique business opportunity, saw his chance to offer Medicine Hat something new.
"Quite literally,” he says, “it just took off from there."
Unlike traditional concrete fences, which are generally less than two inches thick and hollow, Solid Rock uses a fencing system where solid, five-inch thick concrete slabs are connected together using tongue and groove technology similar to that used for laminate flooring.
Kurpjuweit says this interlocking system has two benefits. First, the end product is more stable than the average fence, and second, it's far faster to install.
“With four people we can install a mile of fence in seven days,” he says. “There's nothing else in the industry that's even remotely close to that for speed."
Solid Rock is the only company in southern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan or B.C. that owns the rights to the patented fence technology, which has allowed it to tap into markets outside of Medicine Hat.
"We've done projects all over western Canada,” Kurpjuweit says, “ranging from a $12,000 backyard... to a job out in B.C. that was $180,000 for a huge acreage in the mountains, going through trees."
In 2010, the company hopes to break into the Regina construction market, and already has jobs planned as far away as Vancouver.
Classic's pride in achievements well earned
Andrea Klassen Medicine Hat News
It took less than a week for Classic Communities Ltd. to garner its first praise of 2010.
For the fourth year in a row, the company has made the top 20 in Alberta Venture's “Fast 50 Over $20 Million,” a list of the province's fastest growing businesses published each January. Classic Communities was number 15 on the list.
"We made a bit of a dip from last year, but that's OK,” says CEO Murray Prokosch. Since 2007, the company had placed 12th on the list.
Prokosch attributes the slight slowdown in growth to the company's decision to tap into new markets outside of Medicine Hat and Alberta, rather than the economic woes often cited by businesses in the construction industry. He expects 2010 to be similar — a “planning and re-staging year” — with a speed-up in growth in 2011.
“They talk about a bad economy and all that, but it really hasn't affected us much at all," says Prokosch.
Ineed, when the company decided to build one of its multi-unit communities in Canmore, it sold 89 of the planned 97 units in the course of one evening.
Prokosch says the company's attainable housing and mortgage and down payment assistance programs were a good fit in the city, where housing price points are generally high.
2009 also saw the company construct its first single family dwellings. Traditionally, all their construction projects have been multi-family, but Prokosch says there's been a rising demand from customers for detached houses.
“That makes a lot of sense,” he says, “especially if they have older kids. A lot of our multi (unit) sites really don't have a lot of yard space."
The new single family units, like all of Classic Communities' projects, are built with affordability in mind. The company's Builder Mortgage
Assistance Plan is also being used here, with Classic Communities paying a portion of homeowners' monthly mortgage payments for the first nine years.
The new houses will also feature energy-efficient and eco-friendly construction, which the company utilized when it built the city's first “green condos” in Southlands in 2009.
Prokosch says green construction—which lowers utility rates by as much as half and increase the resale value of a home—fit well with the company's existing goal of “helping people buy houses.”
52 — REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA 2010 ■ Celebrating our Community
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