Jim's latest new company. HomeStory Doors.

Remodeling franchisee
brings low-cost door
replacement firm to Utah


By Barbara Rattle
The Enterprise

The Utah franchisees for the national bathroom remodeling chain Re-Bath have expanded their business by adding a HomeStory Doors franchise, the second in the nation for Sacramento-based HomeStory, a door replacement chain that uses a proprietary high-tech method to vastly decrease the cost of replacing both interior and exterior doors.

Jim Fitlow and Mike Allen have operated Re-Bath of Utah in Salt Lake City since 2001. The firm recently relocated to about 8,500 square feet at 2350 S. West Temple to accommodate not only a flourishing bathroom remodeling business, but the addition last year of a Floor Coverings International franchise and now a HomeStory operation. Fitlow said the partners have exclusive Utah rights to all three franchises.

“We looked at the fact that we’ve been doing a great job at doing bathrooms for a long time and we have a huge customer base and a lot of those customers are still doing other things in their home,” Fitlow said. “We’ve already built the trust with them, but the problem with bathrooms is if you do a great job they’re not going to do it again for 20 years. We figured we have this great asset of a customer base, why not offer them more things to do with us? We searched what we felt our team and company’s core competencies were and tried to find other products that would work.” Enter HomeStory.

HomeStory’s proprietary technology generates custom replacement doors by taking precise digital measurements and capturing the geometry of the existing doorframe. It eliminates the need for time-consuming manual techniques, turning what is traditionally a three-day job into three hours.

“What this does is it takes the whole manual side out of the middle,” Fitlow said. “We go out, look at it, figure out what the customer wants, price it for them, and if they want to proceed we set up a measure with the technology piece, which goes pretty quick, and from there the entire manufacturing piece happens at Jeld-Wen, which sends us a made-to-fit door, custom made to fit each opening, and it’s factory finished. You take the old door off the hinges and put this one up. The prices are very comparable to the other ways of doing it because we pay for the technology piece to be in the middle of the process but we’re not paying for a crew of guys to be in the back shop manufacturing and finishing these things. We’re kind of swapping some labor dollars for technology dollars, but the technology allows us to have a virtually perfect fit every time. When we come back to the house we’re there for a couple of hours, taking out some screws, putting in some screws, versus tearing everything out. For $2,000 to $3,000 people can get eight, nine doors. One of the beauties of the door business is that every door you do affects two rooms. What is typically a remodeling project now becomes a redecorating project.”

A variety of door types, factory finishes and hardware are available, ranging from as little as $200 to about $2,000. Fitlow said the time between placing the order with Oregon-based Jeld-Wen and receiving the ready-to-install door is about two weeks.

Luke Helm, vice president of business development for HomeStory, said another headache faced by owners of older homes is also removed by HomeStory: the existence of lead paint. Because HomeStory disturbs little if any of the paint on a door jamb, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued the firm a letter saying it need not comply with the agency’s lead paint detection rules.

Eleven HomeStory territories have been spoken for, Helm said, and the sixth franchise will open soon. The HomeStory model is based on a door replacement firm founded in 1997 that still operates in Mountain View, Calif. The standard franchise fee is $300,000; initial investment is about $167,000, Helm said. Franchisees need not have any remodeling or contracting experience.

“We’re probably not going to stop at this,” Fitlow said of his expanding business. “There are a couple of other ideas we have in the fire.”