The story of Armour Roof Co. is an interesting one and quite honestly, an accidental business opportunity.
Spencer’s dad owned a print shop and his building was up for a new roof. He happened to get a flyer from a company offering roof coatings and gave them a call. The roofer explained that he was “new” to roof coatings and had recently gotten training to do the application.
Not necessarily the best move during a sales pitch.
Spencer’s dad took that information and thought “I bet I could pay my son to do this for me. I’ll pay for his training to learn this new roof system and he can give it to me at wholesale pricing.”
At the time, Spencer had no experience in construction, however, it took his dad up on the offer of learning this new system. Shortly after the training, Spencer and his co-founder, Brad, started Armour Coatings Inc.
They also happened to be operating 2 other businesses simultaneously- a chimney sweep and exterior cleaning business.
Their attention was divided and they couldn’t fully devote their attention to Armour and it showed. After completing Spencer’s dad’s roof in July 2015, they were able to last one other sale.
The sale completed later that fall and during the one week of warm weather in December, they decided to attempt to install the coatings.
There was a huge problem, however. Coatings usually take an entire month to set. Not a week.
So not surprisingly, that roof failed and had to return in the Spring to completely tear it off and re-coat it for the client. Yet they didn’t throw in the towel. They ran the numbers for the work and realized that Armour had much more potential than the other 2 businesses so they sold them in order to focus entirely on Armour.
That same Spring Armour was able to land a huge job and about another dozen jobs for the 2016 year which was a huge morale boost. It was the first time Spencer and Brad felt like “We are a legit business now.”
2017 was a year they decide to scale EVERYTHING. This included a shop instead of operating out of a garage, hired a full time sales person, and got a crew of coating applicators. That proved to be too aggressive on the expenses and so the following year we decided to go back to the basics and do things more conservatively.
Both Spencer and Brad were now the ones installing roof coatings instead of crews. Scaling back proved to be the right pivot for our business because we were able to grow by 120% that year (and quite honestly, have not stopped growing since).
In 2019, we wanted to continue to expand so that looked like bringing on more people and adjusting the roles of Spencer and Brad in the business. Brad focused more on business development and Spencer did more project management. Eventually Spencer was pulled back into office work to fill a gap in the company for admin/billing/strategy.
Over the next few years we continued to experience steadied growth.
Last year, Brad had the opportunity to sell his shares back to the company in order to focus on his health and his family and so he took it.
Armour is predicted to grow by 100% in 2023 with plans to expand into Kansas City and Tulsa. Additionally, we have started to strategically grow team members- both in the office and on the field to help streamline our processes. We’re excited for our 9th season this year and will continue to deliver value and excellence to all our clients.
