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Southpointe’s CentiMark has North America covered
By Michael Bradwell, Business editor, Observer-Reporter
As chief operating officer of CentiMark Corp., Tim Dunlap can point to a date in the company’s history when it crossed a major threshold.
It was 1978, America was about to enter its second oil crisis of the decade and CentiMark, the company Dunlap’s father, Ed Dunlap, had founded a decade earlier as a janitorial service company, had just introduced a rubber roof system as it moved into roofing repair products.
For CentiMark, rubber roofs were the right product for the time.
“That really propelled the growth of the company to where we are today,” said Tim Dunlap. “It was new to the U.S., and we were one of the first companies aboard with the new technology and kind of ran with it and it really exploded. The oil crisis was going on, the cost of raw materials for built-up products was escalating and it was an economical alternative to hot, built-up roof systems.”
Three decades later, the original rubber roof system still accounts for about 40 percent of CentiMark’s roof installations, with the other major product being thermoplastic roof systems.
Today, CentiMark, which does $400 million in annual sales, is the country’s second-largest roofing contractor, focused on commercial and industrial roofing customers throughout North America. Headqurtered in Southpointe, the company services customers from 65 offices coast to coast, four offices in Canada and a small office in Puerto Rico. It employs about 180 in Southpointe, and about 2,500 nationally. The company doesn’t hire subcontractors, so everyone is a CentiMark employee.
While Ed Dunlap remains chief executive officer of CentiMark, Tim, 42, is in charge of the company’s roofing business while his father handles the non-roofing businesses, which include 13 restaurants and real estate investments.
“He is still very active in CentiMark,” Dunlap said of his father. “We talk on a daily basis, and he still likes to keep on top of the game in terms of what’s going on.”
And where roofing is concerned, CentiMark definitely has a view from the top.
“We cover North America,” Dunlap said. “We do work for a lot of Fortune 50, 100, 200 companies. We have the ability to go out and manage their portfolio of facilities as if we’re a local contractor. We have history of their properties, and we can manage a facility just like we’re a local contractor.
At the same time, it doesn’t turn away smaller, one-time jobs.
“We aren’t picky,” Dunlap said. “We have a full-service division that does about $60 million a year in service work – from a $50 repair up to a $15,000 repair. We’ll do a $5,000 one-off gas station to a multimillion-dollar facility. Maintenance is a big part of what we do.”
While CentiMark counts some of America’s bigger companies among its customers, Dunlap acknowledged that it wasn’t immune from the effects of the economic downturn of the past year.
“In 2008, we were rolling along throughout the year like there was nothing happening, until about October, then we hit a bump in the road. From then, yes, by our standards, things have been tight. The current market has had an effect on our business.”
But even in down times, companies have to maintain their facilities, and they can’t wait too long if a roof is showing signs of wear, Dunlap noted.
“Service work becomes even more of a focus, because if an existing customer is not able to afford a roof, then we turn more toward services and give them a price for repairing the roof,” Dunlap said.
“Sooner or later, you’re going to need to do something with your roof, because the longer you prolong it, the more damage you’re going to do to it.”
While it remains to be seen whether the commercial real estate market will suffer from overbuilding, fewer leases and more vacancies, Dunlap said the industrial side of CentiMark’s business – providing roofing for plants, factories and warehouses – is slowly showing signs of life.
“It’s not a great improvement, but over the last couple of months, we’ve noticed our proposal deliveries starting to come up,” he said. “I can say absolutely in the last few months, we have seen interest and activity start to pick up a little bit. It’s enough to make us somewhat optimistic, but not enough certainly to make us overly optimistic.”
Regardless of whether the recovery is just around the corner or will rebuild itself more slowly over time, Dunlap said his father’s decision to base the company’s operations in Southpointe continues to pay dividends.
In addition to its headquarters at 12 Grandview Circle, CentiMark also has a sales office on Technology Drive, housing its contracting office, all local crews, salesmen, estimators and managers.
“It’s a huge advantage,” Tim said. “We broke ground in 1995 and moved in 1996. Some of the major reasons we located here was the park itself. It’s a nice mixed-use combination of office, retail and housing. It’s a beautiful park to draw people into. We’re 25 minutes from downtown, 25 minutes to Pittsburgh International Airport. And interstates 70, 79 and the parkway are all nearby.”
The strategic location is important, he said, because “our guys are on the road constantly.”
CentiMark’s headquarters also was designed with another strategy for sales, Dunlap added.
“We designed the building to bring customers in. We wanted a setting where we felt comfortable bringing them in, but to entertain them as well,” he said, noting the presence of Southpointe Golf Club and the park’s restaurants.
“We set our building up to be customer-friendly. Each of our roofs here have a different system that we install on them,” so whenever customers visit, they can see all of the systems at work.
“With many roofing companies, you’re coming to a two-story cinderblock building. The roofing industry is really a mom-and-pop business. Ninety-five percent of companies out there do $3 million or less a year in business. It’s really a fragmented business, serving a local market.
“When our customers see our building and how gorgeous it is, they’re awestruck. We have a huge success rate of getting a customer in and being able to close a project.”
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