Brea-based Service Champions Inc. is expanding into the northwest after acquiring a company with 200 employees generating more than $60 million annually.
Family-owned Seatown Electric, Plumbing, Heating and Air provides services to Seattle and the Greater Puget Sound community. The sale price was undisclosed.
“It’s one of the best businesses that I’ve seen in the country,” Chief Executive Frank DiMarco told the Business Journal. “Its operational and financial results certainly won us over.”
The acquisition is helping Service Champions push close to $1 billion in sales. When it was purchased in 2020 by New York-based private equity firm Odyssey Investment Partners, Service Champions was on a $280 million run rate.
“We’re well past $500 million,” DiMarco said. “We’re heading toward $1 billion.”
Family of Plumbers
Leland Smith founded Service Champions in 2000. Smith hails from a family of plumbers in Kentucky where he grew up.
His edge was to provide quality services in an industry known for poor treatment of customers, such as technicians showing up on time. Service Champions also has a subscription service, where for $19.95 a month customers receive a tune-up twice a year in March and October for their systems. If their systems break on a hot or cold day, their systems will be fixed that very day.
Under the umbrella of Odyssey, Service Champions has made more than a dozen acquisitions in recent years.
For example, last December it expanded into the Denver area with the purchase of 60-employee firm M and M Heating, Cooling, Plumbing and Electrical of Longmont, Colo. In April, it expanded into Las Vegas by acquiring Fetch-A-Tech, a 60-employee firm with 70,000 customers.
Service Champions is looking at acquisitions in other parts of the country, both to buttress existing markets and expand into new areas, DiMarco said.
Service Champions hasn’t yet felt a pending recession, which may help the company find bargains among struggling independent firms, he said.
“We view it as an opportunity when you’re well capitalized,” he said.
The company, with about 2,500 employees, is now the largest residential service provider of heating and air conditioning services in the Western U.S.
Service Champions goes to market via several local trade names, including Moore Home Services, Bell Brothers, ASI, Adeedo and ProSkill Services.
Great Location
DiMarco, who took the CEO role in 2022 while Smith remained as chairman, said Service Champions is continuing to look at acquisitions in both new and existing geographies.
The purchase of Seatown was attractive because of its location, where Service Champions didn’t operate.
“One of our goals is to find the leading businesses in every area that we go to,” DiMarco said. “How they train their staff is similar to how we run all of our businesses.”
Seatown was begun in 2014 by Brandon and Lorissa Phillips.
“They’re a younger couple who learned and listened,” DiMarco said. “They invested in their people, let their management teams grow.
“When I first walked into their facility, I thought that they operate the same way that we do. The striking piece is when you see the facility, the training, the branding, it means someone is taking dollars out of their business and caring about their employees and how they’re seen in the marketplace.”
Seatown began by providing electrical services, an area that Service Champions is considering entering.
“That’s intriguing to us,” DiMarco said. “We can learn from someone who is best in class.”
Seatown’s brand and management team will remain while the owners will continue as investors.
“People and service are at the core of all we do at Seatown,” Brandon Phillips said in a statement.
“We empower our well-trained, carefully selected team to use their judgement and go above and beyond the standards set down on paper. Those same core principles are in Service Champions’ DNA.”
