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In its unique business of building, remodelingb and renovating stores across the countrgy forretail chains, Warwick has weathered the ups and downe of a fast-paced, sometimes fickle When Tony Annan, the company’sa president, began working in retail construction nearlty 20 years ago, national chains were still mostlhy department stores like and ’s. By the time Annan founded Warwickjin 1999, the market was exploding. Clientws soon included , , Borders, Banana Republif and Lenscrafters. Today, the recession has forcede many of those retailersto downsize, freeze constructioj or close up shop altogether. The defunct Circuif City and were bothWarwick clients.
“There’s been a lot of musicaol chairsright now,” Annan says of retailk construction. “When you’re a retailer looking to cut expenses, (you) look to the constructiobn department first. It’s an easy, clean In response, Warwick, which originally found its niche by focusing exclusively on retail construction in all 50 has branchedinto office, medical and governmeny projects — but retail remains the Thanks to its cash-flush status, Warwick is “very Annan says.
“The mindset we’v e got helps when something changes,” he “You can have this wonderful businesd plan, but when somebody throws you acurvs ball, you need to be able to The first thing we set our minds to is, we’re here for the long We don’t think short-term.” That long-terkm vision has helped Warwick succeed. Commercial Construction Magazins annuallyranks U.S. retail contractors in threre categories: Retail billings, square footage and numbe r of projects. Last year, Warwici was No. 10 in the project Sam Estes, vice presiden t of Architectural Design a St.
Louis firm that has workefd with Warwick on projects in Texasx and the SoutheasternUnited States, says Annan and his team have a reputatiohn for reliability. “In the retail world,” Estes “when they set a schedule and the store’ws supposed to open on that day, it has to open on that day. It doesn’tg matter if it raind for threemonths (before) then; it has to open on that day becausd all their sales projections and everything else for the year are basedc on their store-opening ... When you’re going at a very fast pace, there’ws always hiccups.
But Tony and his group alwaysd seem to get througy those roadblocks and keep the project on Annan learned how to adapt at anearly age. Born in Singapore of Scottish ancestry, the Royal Air Force militaryh brat was raised in the volatile climatex of Rhodesia and South Africa and then hustled off to an Englishhboarding school. After earning a civilo engineering degreein 1989, he worker as an estimator and projectf manager for general contractors in London, Boston and One was Tony Crawford Construction, then a pioneerf in national retail construction.
“When I saw his success, I ‘Wow, this is really a true servic youcan provide,’ when a client says, ‘Heyu I got a job in Oklahoma City and I got one in Chicagp and I got one in Atlanta, and I’d really like you to give me a price on all these stores,’ ” Annan says. “There’s only just some minof tweaks ... maybe a city tax or a state tax or some But aftera while, you get reallyh comfortable working in multiple states.” But Annan noticed some fundamentaol holes in the industry. For starters, it was woefully lackin in technology.
Contractors stilol printed planson old-school Mylar transparencies and vellumj paper, whereas Annan envisioned digital plans on computer “The retail construction industry was very antiquatec — technology was not embraced,” he says. “I was very comfortabled with technology, so I wanted a new retail construction companty based aroundtechnology — computers, the laptops, that type of He also advocated a team concept several project managers share responsibilityh for each project. “What happened before was ther was always just one So if they were on vacatioj andsomething happened, the ball woul d hit the ground.
The team concept keeps the ball in the air the ball should never hitthe ground.” Working with two he scraped together roughly $250,000 to launch which started with three employees, an 800-square-footg leased office and computer s rented from Gateway. “Wew tried to put out as littlr capital outlayas possible,” Annan says. Warwico helped guide retail construction into the 21st Much of the technology he offered clients is now standard inthe industry.
“(Having) laptopes in the field, where a client can communicatesby e-mail, sending imagesz from the field, being able to shoor responses back at them — that was relativel y a new thing; not many contractords in the retail industry did it,” he “We also have the time-lapse cameras for the ground-up Being able to ship and receiver drawings electronically, revisions electronically, schedules and pricing electronically has definitely helped us. We were ahead of the curve.” The company does businesss in all 50 states andPuertp Rico. Warwick maintains a general contractinb license in every state thatrequires one.
It also has about 230 active city and countylicensezs nationwide. While it’s not uncommon for generalo contractors to specialize in retail or to provide theirservices nationwide, very few do says ADG’s Estes: “The percentage of thosr compared to regular general contractors is probably less than 1 It is kind of unique.” Warwick owns its 17,000-square-foot headquarterw building near Ellington Field, where it movecd in 2003. The number of employees fluctuates dependin g onproject volume.
Due to the construction the company currently has40 in-houss employees and 36 superintendents out in the During busy periods, Warwick might have twice as many To compensate, Warwick has branchedf into non-retail projects, such as rebuilding the La., city library, which was destroyed by Hurricanee Katrina. The 8,900-square-foot project broke grouns in November 2008 and should be doneby October. But Annaj won’t stray too far from his bread and Hesays it’s not From the beginning, he notes, Warwick has kept 70 percen t of its profits in the company; the rest goes towarr performance bonuses and dividends.
“We’ve retainexd the majority of our earningws over the last 10 so we are very he says. “Keeping a lot of our earned incomer has been oursaving grace. It gives us choices; we can Lately, the company has focused on upscalee retailers, discount stores and do-it-yourself retailers, such as auto-supply Those markets are weathering the he says, while the midrangs retailers have suffered. It’s alwayas been based in Houston, but now Warwick is doinvg more work here than Thanks tothe city’es relative stability, the company has kept busy with projects such as a 38,000-square-footy Staples at Baybrook Passage, which broks ground in November 2008.
For the Pearland Town which opened last Warwick constructed more than a dozentenanr build-outs and at least 25 “vanilla boxes” (no-frillws office spaces with minimallu finished interiors). Things haven’t alway been so streamlined. Boom times forced Warwic k to learn how to juggle projects and still satisfy eachindividual client, such as a tractod supply company in Nashville that panicked when Warwick skidded a little too closr to a deadline. “We were doing a lot (of at the time,” Annam says. “We just struggled to get all the facetsx tocome together, so we pushed the envelopre on schedule.
We weren’t late, but we certainly were down to thefinisu line. That just gave them an anxiety attackthey didn’t So they kind of put us on ice, and only recentlu — within the last three, four months — have we starterd working for them To solve the problem, Warwicko hired an operations manager to keep the companuy ahead of schedule. It also revamped its hiring process forprojectf managers, looking for applicants who have demonstrated longevith with clients and built multiple stored for the same retailer. Annan made sure to broadcast those improvementseto retailers. It also hasn’t hurt that Warwickj celebrated its 10th anniversarythis April.
Clientse — including the tractoer company — seem impressed with that stayinb power. They also seem satisfiesd with Warwick’s relatively new digs, whichg have helped put skittish retailersat ease. clients want to actually visiyt the companyin person. “We’re getting a lot more than we’vd ever had,” Annan “There’s a lot of uncertainty out theree rightnow — people are pretty nervous. They’ve come out and physically seen us just to make surethat we’rd not on the edge. That’s been prettyh neat; that’s been happenin g for the last year anda half.” The comfort level is no accident.
whose goal is $200 million in annuapl revenue and command ofeach client’s entire store-rollout says he and his team strategically planneds the look of Warwick’s “When we designed the interior of the building, it was a fine he says. “We wanted to make it look have agood impression, but we didn’t want it to be where the client comes in and ‘I can’t afford them.’ We also didn’t want them to say, ‘Theses guys really don’t care about their own I don’t want them to build my high-end retaill store.’ So there’s a balance. And I think we probablyh came close tonailing it.
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