Disrupting the Roofing Industry: David Bitan’s Vision for a Better Customer Experience

Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have David Bitan. He is with Bumble Roofing. Welcome.

David Bitan: Hello Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Bumble Roofing. How are you serving folks?

David Bitan: Well, we’re serving the white glove experience, something you don’t find in that in the industry. Uh, much too often, uh, specifically in roofing. We’ve been in the business now since 2019, myself, since about 2008. And one of the things I noticed early on was that homeowners aren’t getting the the experience they deserve. And as time went on, you know, spending some time as a salesperson in the industry, as a product manager, I noticed more and more and more that that piece was missing. And so I decided in 2019 to launch Bumble Roofing out of Los Angeles, California.

Lee Kantor: So just kind of give us a lay of the land of our roofers, pretty much kind of small to midsize companies in, in most local markets. Is that how it typically runs?

David Bitan: Yeah, I would say so. I think, you know, you’re noticing now a lot more PE backed firms coming into the roofing space. You have the franchise owners, you have, you know, firms that are doing roll ups of small mom and pops. That’s where it’s headed. It’s a very fragmented trade. Hasn’t been touched by PE other than the last couple of years prior to that. Even now. Right. The majority is small mom and pops. Uh, they may do great work, but they’re not providing the experience to customer service.

Lee Kantor: So when you got into it, was your intention to franchise all along, so you built it to be a franchise or was that something? After doing it a while, you’re like, you know what, I have a pretty good system. I can replicate this.

David Bitan: Yeah. So? So no. So the intention was never to franchise a couple different reasons. One is I wanted to build this thing on my own and and see it grow organically too, which is the primary reason is I have no idea. Franchising was was a thing in the in the home service space. So I thought franchising like most people, was fitness and food and a small little box. Right? And so after spending about four years in the industry, or really about really about three, I decided, let’s take that next step. Let’s have some more locations. Again, franchising was not even a thought in my mind. And as I was doing that and started talking to colleagues and peers of mine, I came to realize that franchising was a thing. Since I had an old buddy of mine by a restoration firm franchise out here in LA, and that’s when my eyes kind of opened up. I started doing some research. I got really excited. I think franchising is not just a great opportunity for the franchisee, but for a founder like myself. I’m not a big fan of these pea rollups, and the main reason is there’s no ownership in every single location. And I think ownership is the most important aspect of a local service business, right? When you’re on the ground, when people know that the business owner lives in their market, understands their market, understands the demographic and makes it much bigger difference. And they have, you know, at the at the end of the day, they have they they have a piece of that pie. Whereas with these PE you know, with these PE firms, backed firms, they’re opening a bunch of locations. The ownership group, the management group, they’re usually sitting in some nice office suite in some big city. And so they don’t understand what the customer actually wants. And as I mentioned early on, right, we’re all about the white glove experience. We’re all about the customer experience. And you can’t get that unless you have somebody who truly cares on ground floor.

Lee Kantor: Now for the listener who isn’t maybe as familiar as you are about these kind of roll ups, can you explain, um, why they’re happening or where where these, um, private equity firms are seeing the opportunity because, uh, I don’t know if everybody as, uh, as knowledgeable about this subject as you are.

David Bitan: Yeah. So I’ve been noticing it over the last five years or so. Uh, more so on, on on the HVAC side, the plumbing side, the electrical side. You’re starting to see it a lot more now in roofing as well. Um, so what these PE firms are doing, right? They, they they come and they buy these mom and pop shops for very low multiples. Um, you had a lot of, um, you know, baby boomers that are getting ready to retire and they have nowhere to pass their businesses down to. So they’re getting, I wouldn’t say pennies on the dollar. A lot of them are making, you know, pretty nice exits, but, um, they wouldn’t be getting what usually the business is really worth multiple wise. And so these bathrooms are coming in. They’re buying these companies for one to, you know, to three, maybe four x. Uh, and then they’re putting it all into one portfolio, putting everybody on one system, under one umbrella, under one brand. And the goal is, you know, usually between 4 to 6 years later to go and sell that as one company.

David Bitan: The problem is, is where the problem lies. And I seen a lot now, um, with, with, with the HVAC industry, the problem is that all of the founders, all of the GM’s, they usually get a nice paycheck. They end up leaving. Right. The difference between that and franchising is that you have ownership on ground level. So when you have this PE firm coming out and buying 100 HVAC companies across the US two years from now, all of those founders are gone. All those presidents are gone. All the owners are gone for the most part. And so what happens? You now have, you know, a management group running these locations remotely, and you’re not getting a level of service, the level of customer experience that you actually need in order to be successful. And so that’s where you’re seeing a lot. Not to say that, you know, there’s a lot of firms that do very, very well. And they run a tight ship. Uh, but most, most of what I’ve seen, um, usually ends up failing in a couple of years in.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Uh, it seems like the the folks are the ones who typically win. So, um, you keep talking about kind of this white glove service, this super service. Um, how how does your service kind of distinguish itself and differentiate itself from your competitors when it comes to roofing, where a lot of folks just say, hire somebody and then, you know, then it’s done in a couple of days.

David Bitan: Yeah. You know, I love that question because first of all, we could probably spend two hours on the phone talking about the difference between Bombo Roofing and Traditional Roofing Company. I always like to tell people it’s it’s it’s it’s not rocket science. It’s it’s answering the phone in time. It’s showing up. When you say you’re going to show up, it’s cleaning it up at the end of every single day, offering a power wash at the end of your project and making sure you’re there when, when, excuse my language. When shit hits the fan. Um, that’s that’s that’s what it really takes, right? Little things. Uh, answering an email, um, sending an estimate the day you’re on your, you’re on the job site or the day you leave the home, um, those little things is what ends up making it work. I’ll give you a quick story. One of my first franchisees that came on board, uh, we went out to visit him in his first couple of months. And during our site visits, uh, we’ll do everything right. We’ll, we’ll we’ll go to job site visits. We’ll go on appointments. Uh, you know, we’ll do deep dive marketing. We’ll knock doors, whatever needs to be done. Whatever that franchisee, uh, thinks, thinks is, uh, is going to be a good use of our time. And so we went out a couple of appointments, we went out to a bar restaurant, um, and we show up, um, you know, we take our measurements, we sit down with the owner of the bar restaurant, and within 30 minutes, guys signing a contract. And I had to ask him because, you know, 30 minutes pretty quick. I had to ask him, like, why? Why did you end up going with us? And he says, I called.

David Bitan: I don’t remember if it was 6 or 8, but he said, I called about six companies. You were the only ones out of the six that showed up and gave me a proposal out of the other, the other five, one other one showed up. It’s been two weeks. He’s never sent me anything, he’s never communicated, and the other four never even got backed. So again, when I say what makes us different, it’s what most consumers believe the standard should be. Um, but obviously there’s a lot more to that, right? We have accreditations. We are a platinum preferred roofer, which only 0.7 percent of roofers across the nation can say they are art with Owens Corning, one of the leading manufacturers. Shingles. Uh, we are Lowe’s Pro provider, which only 1% of contractors can say that they are. Meaning we do business with Lowe’s. We’re background checked by Lowe’s. Any person that comes into your home running our Lowe’s Bumble badge, you can rest assured they’ve been through a background check. We are at RCA members, the National Roofing Contractor Association. We are a top 500 remodeling for five years now, running with qualified remodeling. This year we are number 251. This is not just roofing companies. This is all remodeling and replacement companies throughout the US. A very prestigious list. So the list again goes on and on and on. I think from the sales process, the customer experience standpoint, um, the post, you know, post sale and post project, there’s a lot of things that we bring to the table, but I think pre project is where most consumers and owners have their cards up.

David Bitan: And what we do differently is we offer a very easy sales process. One, you can go online right now. Lee, I’m not sure where you’re located. Uh, but if we do have a market, uh, inside of where you live, uh, you can go onto our website. Put in your address. Within seconds, you’ll receive a quote on what your roof will cost you. Uh, via email. And we do that free through AI and satellite imagery. Will measure the roof via satellite through AI. Uh, within, as I mentioned, a couple of seconds of finishing that that, um, that AI powered, uh, satellite roof measurement, you will receive a quote via email. So those little things is what makes a huge difference. The cons of communication, the consulting piece have only come out. We’re not there to sell people. We’re there to educate them on what they’ll need. I’ve logged into several appointments throughout building Bumble Roofing, where we walk into a home where most roofers will say, hey, yeah, we’re going to sell you a $30,000 roof. And we walk out and say, hey, all you needed was some sealant on your pipe. We took care of that for you when we were up there. And in ten years from now, when you really do need a roof and new roof, we’ll be sure you give us a call. So, uh, it’s really that that’s that’s what we mean by white glove. Customer experience is not screwing people over. Roofers and contractors have a very, very, very bad rep. And we just want to be the ones that that change that rep.

Lee Kantor: So when you were developing the concept, and I’m sure at first, um, you were on roofs yourself at some point, but at the, at the point of inflection when you said, okay, we’re going to franchise this and we’re going to, you know, kind of document all of our systems. We have our ideal customer profile. We know what a good franchisee would look like. What, um, what was it like getting those first few franchisees? Can you talk about kind of the launch phase of this, uh, franchise?

David Bitan: Yeah. Uh, and and I’d love to be as transparent as possible. Um, so, uh, when we first launched franchising, we had one location under our belt. We had the Los Angeles location, the company owned store. Uh, and so all we knew is what I knew, right? Uh, which is pretty much the Southern California roofing market, which is, uh, as I’m sure you could probably guess, much different than the rest of the landscape across the US when it comes to roofing. We get, if we’re lucky, two weeks of rain out here. We do get the Santa Ana winds, but still much different than what you see across the map. And so when we launched, we’re now opening locations across the map. My number one biggest fear was like, okay, is this thing going to work? Like we have systems and processes in place, but is it going to actually work? And so when we got a few projects under our under our franchisees belt that, that that felt really, really good. Um, and uh, you know, show showed that this thing can work. Um, what we ran into, though more often than not, in our first, I would say 8 to 12 months, um, are a lot of things that we didn’t know we needed. Uh, for example, Los Angeles is not considered a considered an insurance or a stolen market for obvious reasons.

David Bitan: Uh, we started opening up locations, these insurance markets, and we realized, oh my God, we need to figure out how to write up contingency agreements. We need to figure out how to use exact amount. We need to know how to talk to these public adjusters and to these insurance claim adjusters, and to have to and read policies. And so those type of things, in the first 12 months of franchising, I would say it happened a lot. Um, it didn’t happen very often because there was a lot of playbooks and systems and processes that we had missing. What I love about the platform that we’re part of, the parent company and power brands, is that when they say we are here to empower our franchisees, we want to see our franchisees success, success. Uh, they actually mean that. Um, and so I’ve always had the opportunity as a brand president, uh, as we were growing to go out, seek whatever playbooks we needed, seek whatever technologies we needed, uh, seek whatever consultants we needed in order to ensure our franchisees have all the systems, processes, and tools in their toolkit to be the most successful in their market.

Lee Kantor: So, um, what was kind of the profile for that ideal franchisee? What does a candidate look like to you?

David Bitan: Yeah, it’s really, you know, someone who’s who’s who’s driven. Um, I always, you know, whenever I have prospect calls, I always tell them, hey, this is not easy, right? Regardless of what business you open, you’re still opening up a small business. I don’t care if there’s 20 locations, five locations or 500 locations. It’s still going to be hard to put your name on the map and your market. And so what that takes is a lot of drive, a lot of hard work, and a lot of hours in your first 12 to 24 months. And so for me, it’s and this is, this is how I’ve kind of held my standard for, for for job interviews for, for, for, you know, franchisees prospects coming in. It’s really just the gut feeling that I get. If I feel like someone’s going to put in the work every single day and still want to do this after I’ve instilled the fear in them of what a small business is, the roller coaster that they’re about to go on emotionally, financially. Um, right. For those first, I would say 12 to 24 months, uh, if they still want to move forward. That, to me is the type of prospect that we’re looking for. Right. And on top of that, somebody who’s willing to get. Into the local community. Someone who’s willing to go around, join networking groups, show up at your local realtor’s office, uh, cold, cold call and cold outreach via email, uh, to to local GCS, property managers, insurance companies and really get out there. And we always say that it’s like your your goal is not to put Bumble Roofing on the map. Your goal is to put David on the map and to go to roofer and not market. Bumble roofing just makes it easy from a system standpoint and operation standpoint and planning standpoint, a marketing standpoint. But you want everybody to know everywhere you go that you are the local expert when it comes to roofing and bumble, roofing just makes it a little bit easier. Does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Now where that is your franchisee, one of those mom and pops that are saying, you know, I want to be with a brand that has more systems and, and is, you know, maybe more organized than I am and maybe can fill in some of my gaps. Or is there somebody who’s never been involved in construction or roofing?

David Bitan: Yeah. So, um, we we’re happy to entertain both. Uh, we have had a lot more luck with people who know nothing about roofing. Um, so most of our leaders, uh, are corporate, you know, leaders, um, some come from tech, some background engineering. Uh, I would say other than one. Um, nobody’s had any experience in the roofing space. And so we take them from not knowing anything to being able to sell roofing within a couple of months.

Lee Kantor: And are they the ones on the roof? Are there? You teach them how to find the right person to be on the roof?

David Bitan: Yeah, it’s a mix of both. We have we have our operators and our owners who want to get on the roof, who want to get dirty. When I say on the roof, they’re not installing shingles, but they like to perform inspections. They like to handle the sales. We do teach to bring about required, you know, part of our requirements to be a sales person from day one. So the goal is not to have them on the roof. Our model is 100% subcontracted, which is how most roofing companies work anyways. So you do not have to physically be on the roof, uh, if you do not want to. Uh, I would say it’s probably about 5050 of the franchisees that come out of the franchise, etc..

Lee Kantor: Now, how difficult is it to find those subcontractors in today’s climate?

David Bitan: Yeah, surprisingly not difficult at all. We, uh, I thought I thought that would possibly be one of our biggest hurdles that we’d have to get over when we started Bumble franchising, because I know how difficult was it for me in LA to at least find good ones? Uh, but through through our national suppliers, uh, supplier relationships, we’ve been able to, uh, basically open up the Rolodex of every local rep, uh, in any market we opened and get our franchisees connected, uh, with, with subcontractors in that market. Uh, there are also other avenues, like third party, um, hiring sites, recruitment sites that we find subs on there. But literally out of all of our franchisees, not one has had any issues finding subcontractors.

Lee Kantor: And then, um, do you have a story you can share, maybe a success story? Do you have enough track record that, um, you’re starting to see, uh, some of the success of people who are working your systems in a local market?

David Bitan: Yeah, there’s there’s there’s plenty. I’ll share. I’ll share one and maybe one more. We’ll we’ll jump off as and as I’m talking about this one. So, uh, our franchisee, um, out in Richmond, um, about three months in, uh, secured an HOA roof replacement, uh, for a large gated community, uh, for about $850,000. The biggest project sold, uh, to date at that time in Bumble roofing history. The biggest project before that, uh, was about 400 grand out in Los Angeles. So that was a big feat, especially three months in, uh, surprisingly. Um, you know, I was shocked. I was pretty scared to to have him take on a project that early on, but he had a great subcontractor that finished a project, just like any big project. There was a few hiccups here and there, but they finished it. The customer was super happy. Uh, job came out beautiful. No major issues whatsoever. So that was to me that that that was one of the greatest success stories we had early on. Uh, and then I can’t really get into the numbers if it’s not our FTD yet, but we do have a couple franchisees, uh, that have almost three. Their initial, uh, ramp up, uh, projections. So that that to me is another great success story.

Lee Kantor: So I’ve been doing this show for a while now, and I’ve run into a lot of what I’m calling them, kind of, um, clusters of franchises that, that, um, franchising is being turned into kind of where a person can buy one franchise, but they can buy like kind of complementary franchises in and around their brand. Um, I know that you guys are working within the, um, Empower Brands, uh, platform. Can you talk about how that’s been? Because it sounds like their model, uh, kind of aligns with that thinking around home services.

David Bitan: Yeah, I think with us, you know, one, um, we have several sister brands. Uh, we’re a total of ten, uh, that all cover the same verticals. So we’re we’re all we’re all in the home. We’re all selling home services everything from windows to insulation, fencing, outdoor living, uh, outdoor lighting. Um, uh, we have restoration services as well. Uh, as well as some irrigation and landscaping services. And so, um, there is always the opportunity. We do have a couple of owners, uh, inside of the bungalow roofing system that do own some of our sister brands. Uh, one of them being a koala installation owner and a conservator irrigation owner. Uh, and two others being superior fence and rail owners that came into our system. Uh, being that we are early on and we are a younger brand. Uh, we want to see you succeed first in Bumble before we saw you more, uh, we’re not in your franchise or the 1030 territories and say, okay, thank you for the franchise, but you go figure it out. Uh, we we make it difficult to buy more than more than three, right? So four is our max. Our new Bumble Bumble roofing franchisee. You better come in with a a very good business plan if you want to get four. Uh, the sweet spot. It’s usually around 2 to 3, but we’re not going to tell you more. And we’ve had, you know, prospects that came in and they wanted to bite off a lot more than they can chew. And tell us that’s a red flag, right? Like we want people to be realistic, down to earth, understand what this takes. And I don’t care how much money you have, buying 20 territories of anything is not a smart move. And so we’ve realized that time and time again, uh, we’re lucky to be part of a of a platform like Empower Brands.

David Bitan: Um, I have several mentors that, you know, help me and help me understand the, the landscape of the industry. Um, part of what we do as brand presidents, uh, as we connect to once a month and have kind of like a, a meeting of the minds and share best practices. Share trade secrets, share different technologies and softwares that may be beneficial for the other brands. And we share our partnerships and vendors as well, which I think is the coolest part of it all. Uh, I mentioned earlier in the call, you know, we have, a partnership with Lowe’s. Uh, we are a close provider. Uh, every single location becomes a Lowe’s provider. Uh, from day one. That would not have happened without our sister brand, koala insulation. Uh, I can’t tell you how many cold emails and cold calls I’ve made to all the emails I’ve found online for Home Depot, Lowe’s. Uh, you name it. Uh, over the years, and nobody would respond. And then finally and become part of the power brands. Uh, and we become this franchise system that’s growing pretty rapidly. And all these doors start opening. People are now coming to me. Right. And so, uh, again, one of those stores being Lowe’s would not have been opened if it wasn’t for the, uh, for the relationship they have with our sister brand. So all those type of things, you know, kind of fall back on, on on the entire big picture. Uh, and, and talent and power brands. And it would not be Bubba would not be where it is today if it wasn’t for the for the entire platform.

Lee Kantor: Now, did you start out at Bumble? Um, without partnering with empower. And then you realized, hey, I’m going to be better served if I join forces with them?

David Bitan: Yeah. So I started Bumble Roofing on my own, uh, in 2019, out in Los Angeles. Just one location that we’re playing in the franchise. And then, uh, when I started looking into franchising, the original plan was to, uh, do it on my own. And I realized that I know a lot about roofing. I know a lot about home services. Uh, I know nothing about franchising. And while I may be able to do this on my own, maybe it’s smart to seek out a partner. So, uh, that’s what I did. Uh, I reached out to the broker about, uh, who helped facilitate the acquisition of my last home service business. Uh, and he brought, uh, a couple of different groups, uh, to, to to the table, uh, one of them being in power brands. And, uh, the rest is history. Uh, and power brands, for me, was really love at first sight. Um, the, the offers were all pretty much aligned with each other, but, uh, I knew I wanted to stay wherever I’m at. I didn’t want to just hand over the keys to Bumble Roofing and see it become what I know it can become on its own. Uh, and, um, ultimately, I’m glad I made that choice. I say love at first sight because every other company I met went, and I see this now. In hindsight, uh, they were all about the financials, all about the spreadsheets, which to me was normal. Right? I thought that was common with PE backed firms. Then power grants comes in. I meet Scott Z, the CEO, and some of their other team members, and they just care to get to know me.

David Bitan: Uh, obviously the financials came up at one point in the conversation, but the first couple of meetings it was just let’s get to know, David, is why his passion and vision behind Bumble Roofing, where he sees Bumble over the next 5 to 10 years and where he sees himself over the next 5 to 10 years. And to me, that was extremely important because I grew up in this industry. I knew nothing else. I dropped out of college back in 2007, moved back home to L.A., didn’t know what I was going to do and fell into this industry. Uh, and I love what I do, but what I’ve learned over time is that most the majority, at least the majority of companies I worked for, I don’t want to say it all, but you you hear this across, uh, you know, across the entire industry. Most companies are just out to make more money, right? In the home service business. And the companies who had their mission as Benjamin Franklin, as I like to say, right. The $100 bill at the top of their mission, those companies are the companies that ended up failing, the companies who had people, in this case, their franchisees at the top of their mission. Those are the companies that ended up thriving and being successful. And so for me, that was the most important factor in choosing a partner is who do I feel good about? Who do I feel has a good culture and actually cares about the people and just not doing this just because of the money?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, and it sounds like that their culture aligned with yours and and the values aligned. And that’s the culture and values you’re trying to, um, you know, kind of, uh, encourage your franchisees to, to live into. Um, and then that’s what makes a successful system.

David Bitan: Exactly.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, connect with you, um, or somebody on your team, what is the website?

David Bitan: Connect with me. Uh, you can find me at David at Bumble Roofing. You can also go online and Bumble Roofing franchising.com. Uh, or you can go to, uh, Bumble Roofing. Com as well as empower franchisees.com.

Lee Kantor: Well, David, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

David Bitan: Lee, thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.