- Award category: Niches
- Speciality: Bathroom remodeling
- 8 years in business
- 2010 volume: $7.9 million
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Staff: 20 office, 40 field
Credit: georgelong.com
Not many people have a remodeling epiphany, but in 2000 Lawrence Closs, then a marketing and advertising executive, did. “I saw a display on tub liners at the Remodeling Show,” he says. “And I knew I could make the phone ring.”
And ring it has. Despite Hurricane Katrina and the loss of a large swath of his consumer base, Closs has been able to make “everybody happy,” as his slogan says. Closs knows he is not just selling one-day bath remodels. He is selling happiness.
With his monthly newsletter, “The Happiness Digest,” his relationship sales approach, fine-tuned marketing skills, and a systems-based business model, Closs has carved out a substantial client base and grown a company that does 10 jobs a day. NewBath was a recent recipient of an Inner City 100 Award sponsored by Initiative for a Competitive Inner City and given to the fastest growing inner city companies.