Brinkmann’s Brian Satterthwaite on Today’s Challenges in Construction
Date Posted: April 29, 2019
Posted In: Ideas, People,
From St. Louis Business Journal: This week’s Largest General Contractors List highlights the companies driving St. Louis’ construction boom. One of them, Chesterfield-based Brinkmann Constructors, jumped from seventh to fifth place with 30% revenue growth from 2017 to 2018.
Brinkmann’s $495 million revenue beat the company’s 2018 target by $80 million. To learn about the strategy behind the firm’s success, we spoke with President Brian Satterthwaite. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How has Brinkmann grown revenue over the past year? It’s part of our long-term strategic plan. We always think at Brinkmann, our economic driver is repeat business. About 80% of our revenue last year came from repeat customers who’ve experienced Brinkmann’s method before, and they continue to come back for us. And then by the same token, we always strategically target new clients. Usually, we try to target several new clients a year, and then our goal is to convert them into repeat clients. We started this strategy several years ago. So we’ve converted many of our new clients into repeat clients. And the clients are growing, and we’re growing along with them.
What are the company’s plans for 2019? It’ll be a pretty strong growth year for us again, probably 15-20% revenue growth. The breakdown between projects — senior living, big-box warehouse, student housing — it’s pretty similar to 2018. And we’re operating the same way. We’ve got a good backlog that we’re out working to execute and complete those projects. Every day we have to come in and make sure we’re looking for projects to keep us going in the future, and looking for new customers.