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Customer Profile: Custom Plumbing and Hardware
A do-it-yourselfer finds Yahoo! Site Solutions makes it easy to put her business online.

June 2007

When Kaitlyn Sharp [of Custom Plumbing and Hardware] decided to learn the custom plumbing and hardware business, she learned it inside out. Starting out as an accountant for the business her mom had started in 1978, she moved onto the sales floor in 1994. "My mother taught me the business from the decorative end," she said, "but I don't just want to sell pretty stuff. I want to know how it works." She went to plumbing school and took carpentry classes. "If there's a problem, I understand what it is," she said. "I go out to job sites and make sure that the plumbing is installed correctly before the walls go up."

She even visited a manufacturer and made a custom faucet that she uses in her own home. "It took me a whole day to make that faucet," she said. "I definitely had a better appreciation for the manufacturing process."

From their Houston warehouse and showroom, Kaitlyn and her mother served clients all over the world, from Nigerian elite to U.S. celebrities such as Barbara Walters and Ted Danson. "She was the grande dame of plumbing and hardware. I'm blessed to have learned from her," said Kaitlyn.

Kaitlyn's mother became ill and shut down the business, but Kaitlyn bought the company and reopened it before her mother passed away in 2006. "I'm glad I opened it again before she died," she said.

Bringing the business online
"I'm building my business up again," said Kaitlyn. "People would ask me if I had a website, and I'd say, you know, 'We're working on it,' but, we weren't really," she recalled, laughing.

"Everybody was telling me it would cost $3000—$4000 to do a website. The bids were just much more than I could afford as a small business owner. Then I found y'all." She registered a domain name with Yahoo!, but creating a web site seemed like a lot of work for someone with no web design experience.

That was before she knew about Yahoo! Site Solutions. Kaitlyn stayed home sick from work one day and, like a true small-business owner, felt guilty about it. "I opened up my computer, and I got an email saying, 'Why don't you get your website going?' " She decided to give it a try, and found Site Solutions easier than she anticipated.

"I looked at all the different templates, and I liked the one with the coral," she said. "It gave me some ideas on what to type. I was pretty nervous about it, but after a while, I realized I could just click a link and add a photo." Kaitlyn realized she could even go to manufacturer's web sites and use their promotional photos. "I learned a lot that day," she said, laughing.

Kaitlyn got her web site up and running that day. Over the next couple of weeks, she continued to add photos, specialized pages, and even a blog.

"Within three to four weeks, I already got a job off of it!" she said.

Rebuilding the business—and the fun
Custom Plumbing and Hardware seems well on the road to recovery, with clients from Aspen to Martha's Vineyard. Kaitlyn has one full-time employee and occasionally recruits her husband and son to help out. While she enjoys creating high-end fixtures, she notes that most of her clients can't afford them. Much of her business focuses on quality, mid-priced equipment that will last, and her background as a CPA and her plumbing knowledge help her clients save money.

As an extra service, she lets designers use her showroom to meet with clients, and she bakes cookies for them, or serves wine and cheese. "We like to entertain," she said. "If I can't have fun in my business, why do it?"

Kaitlyn even holds charity functions in her warehouse, such as setting up a pallet jack obstacle course for a local AIDS foundation. "All these ladies in formals were pushing the pallet jacks," she recalled. "They had a great time."

Taking it to the next level
Word of mouth marketing has worked successfully for Kaitlyn in the past, but true to her do-it-yourself nature, she's taking a marketing class. "I don't know how to market online yet," she said, then suggested that she does have some ideas by noting that her web site comes up first or second in the list of natural search results on Yahoo! Search.

And she's already planning another website. "I had so much fun with it once I started, I want to do another one. What I've thought about doing is something that goes directly to plumbers…" Spoken like a true entrepreneur.