STAUNTON—Rick Landes loves to smooth. When he turned into preschool, he said he skipped out to go to his aunt’s home nearby. The first question he asked her was, “Where is your Comet?”
He wanted to smooth her bathroom. “I’ve usually been a neat freak,” he stated.
He laughs while he tells this tale, but it suggests that he unearths pleasure in his actions. So, an awful lot, he determined to make an enterprise out of it. 1978 he and his father, Harold, started H&R Contractors, a cleaning service.
“I noticed there has been a need in the region for humans to want stuff achieved,” Landes said.
The business offers various services, including office cleaning, rugs, window washing, groundwork, building renovation, and document shredding. It has grown from an employer of just three people to 89 personnel.
Now, 40 years later, the business enterprise has a 30,000 rectangular-foot facility off Commerce Avenue – a specific growth from a small workplace area on New Street. Landes credits Gordon Barlow for giving him his first contract working at the Staunton Medical Center. It then snowballed into serving as many as 500 clients — mainly through word of mouth.
The corporation has clients spanning from Rocky Mount to Winchester.
The commercial enterprise began out with just cleansing offerings. Then it morphed into one-of-a-kind odds and ends. Landes got his Class A preferred contractor license, which brought about extra job possibilities. Solving a door right here or refinishing floors there essentially supported its customers in other things besides cleaning. Think of a whole fleet of available human beings focusing on industrial, commercial enterprise desires.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all enterprise either. Every provider is customizable.
“It’s no longer when you have a hassle; it’s when you have a problem,” Landes said. We tailor what we do for customers.”
However, Landes credits his employees, who aren’t simply his team of workers but have turned out to be like a circle of relatives.
Juanita Funk has been running for the business enterprise for 25 years. She started when her parents were having health issues; Landes and others had been highly cooperative in attending to her own family.
H&R has some personnel who have been there for more than two decades.
“I nonetheless enjoy coming into paintings after 28 years,” said Brian Beverly. “I bear in mind this is my own family, which is far from mine.”
It additionally helps that Landes will do something he asks his personnel to do. He’s palms-on and could be out in the area running with clients.
“I nevertheless get out there,” he stated. “I do not ask them to do something I wouldn’t do.”
“There are no longer many employers at the moment and time who might be available sweeping flooring or cleaning toilets in conjunction with their co-employees,” Armstrong delivered. He’d rather be accessible on the process website online than right here in the office doing paperwork.”
Landes took over the agency, which he co-owned with his father once he retired over a decade ago. Now, Landes is starting on the subsequent era to take the reigns of the legacy he’s established at H&R. His son Scott Newman heads the shredding department, and the next set to take over the own family employer as soon as Landes retires. Newman has worked with the company for more than ten years.
