MSI Builds National Reputation

Robbyn Tumey used to only “initial” company contracts. The letters “R.L.T.” left enough ambiguity to raze the walls that sometimes popped up when prospective clients found out Managed Subcontractors International Inc. had a secret.

Tumey, the Rogers drywall and labor subcontractor’s president and CEO, is a woman.

“Early on, a contractor would say over the phone, ‘Let me talk to a man,'” Tumey said. “We were a young company, and I eventually hired some good people who were men, but who were young and still learning on the job. They’d be on the phone with a contractor, and I would have to be standing behind them telling them how to answer.

“I’d have to say, ‘Ask if it’s an interior or exterior job,’ and things like that. I’ve bucked the status quo all my life, so it didn’t make me mad. It was just the cost of doing business at the time.”

Robbyn Tumey’s signature is all over MSI today. A national firm with field offices in Atlanta, Dallas and Orlando, Fla., MSI grew its annual gross revenue 46.7 percent from about $15 million in 1998 to $22 million in 2003. She said business is already up 57 percent through the early part of 2004 compared to 2003 as a whole.

Tumey said she dabbled in commercial and residential real estate projects for years before discovering a niche need for outsourced drywall labor. She watched too many contractors lose money on jobs because promises were made in unfamiliar markets. The problem was contractors couldn’t find the labor to get the job done.

“I saw that companies would bid jobs, but they didn’t know the labor or the area and their labor costs were skewed,” Robbyn Tumey said.

The company specializes in commercial metal stud framing, drywall, acoustical ceilings, painting and commercial stucco work. MSI now provides labor for the five largest drywall contractors in the United States including Acousti Engineering Co. of Orlando, Fla., and Midwest Drywall of Wichita, Kan., which did the drywall work for the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

During summer months, the firm will have as many as 1,200 workers per day on jobs in 46 states.

Rocket Start

Robbyn Tumey stopped standing in the background in 1999 when MSI obtained its federal minority status certification as a Women’s Business Enterprise National Council subcontractor. Instead of hiding her gender, the Rockford, Ill., native began using the certification as a marketing tool.

Most public works projects request minority participation, and the status helped open some doors, she said. Only about five percent of MSI’s annual business comes from WBENC jobs, however.

Brentt Tumey, MSI’s director of operations and the owner’s son, said MSI does advertise in Construction Dimensions, the monthly magazine of the 33,000-member Association of the Wall and Ceiling Industries organization. It also markets itself through postcards and fliers, but he said MSI’s growth has primarily come through word of mouth.

Within the first three months of business in 1997, MSI grossed $3 million in revenue. By the end of 1998, it was five times higher.

“We really jumped like that, and we honestly don’t know how we built it up so fast,” Brentt Tumey said. “It just happened, and we just went with the flow. We flew around the country and met with a number of people. But mostly, we just have a good rapport with the guys and a good reputation in the industry for good service.”

MSI once moved 130 people to the Bahamas to do metal-stud framing and hang drywall on a 500,000-SF, $1.85 million contract job for the famed Atlantis Resort. The firm did all of the framing and hanging for the Dallas Stars Hockey Arena.

MSI also did work on the Carolina Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., and the Omni and Regent hotels in Atlanta.

“We have people that want to work all over the country,” Brentt Tumey said. “If they are willing to travel, we can find them work.”

A third division of MSI is a housekeeping labor outsourcing service for condomiums in seaside Florida. Robbyn Tumey said she discovered that many Hispanic drywallers who did seasonal work for her company had to leave their wives behind in other countries.

So she developed a housekeeping labor service that annually employs about 140 women who want to accompany their spouses to America. The result, she said, has been a happier work force.

Looking Local

Brent Tumey, 29, said although MSI achieved national prominence as an outsourcing company, it would like to begin doing more subcontracting work locally. He said MSI’s business is about 70 percent outsourcing labor and 30 percent subcontracting, but the company wants to flip those figures on jobs in the Northwest Arkansas market.

“We have a lot to offer Northwest Arkansas,” Brentt Tumey said. “We can meet accelerated schedules. When you have projects of this size coming into the area, you’ve got to think outside the state [for local prospecting].”

The firm recently completed the metal stud framing and drywall hanging for the new Abuelo’s Mexican Food Embassy in Rogers. The original subcontractor could not meet the accelerated schedule, so MSI was offered the job.

Brentt Tumey said MSI started aggressively pursuing local work as a subcontractor this January.

“We have been given several opportunities by quality general contractors such as SSI and Basic Construction, which we are confident will be a testament to our commitment of customer satisfaction and quality growth,” Brentt Tumey said. “We have big dreams and work very hard to make those dreams come true.”

Brentt Tumey said the company recently completed the firewall work for the Zero Mountain Inc. freezer in Johnson. MSI was given four months to do the job, he said, and it completed the work in five weeks. Leo Anhalt, president of SSI Inc. in Fort Smith, said as the general contractor on the Zero Mountain job, his firm was impressed.

“I personally wrote them a letter recently to tell them how much we appreciated the manner in which they completed the project,” Anhalt said. “They completed ahead of schedule, in spite of the work environment they had to work in, which was below zero in temperature.”

Anhalt said he found out about MSI through word of mouth and contacted the company. He declined to disclose MSI’s rates but said they were very competitive.

“They were within our budget, so we decided to give them a try,” Anhalt said. “They did their work in a timely manner, and they did what they said they were going to do.”

Breaking Barriers

Although Robbyn Tumey said her biggest challenge early on was marketing the company, there was also the issue of building her reputation as a knowledgeable contractor. In the end, her ability to “talk shop” won many clients over.

“When they were talking about radius ceilings [curved ceilings], I was able to understand,” Robbyn Tumey said. “I have to give the guys credit, when I was on the job, they needed me. So they kind of forgot I was a woman.”

She said the firm doesn’t rely on its minority status to get work, but every additional opportunity helps. Robbyn Tumey said she prefers to let the company’s work speak for itself. The joke around her office is that you can’t hurt her feelings “because she only has one.”

“We’ve been on projects that needed a minority involved, and they knew we were a minority company and we got the contract because of it,” Robbyn Tumey said. “It’s something that we haven’t really pushed.”

Gossip, she said, runs more rampant in the construction business than any other circle. So once a firm gets a job done, the word goes out and a referral from a satisfied customer can go a long way.

MSI even helps frequently frantic general contractors get their project finished on time, and, in many cases, the developer is never the wiser.

“Sometimes our guys are even required to put on the other guy’s hat,” Tumey said.

Building Through Generations

Construction has always been a part of dinner table conversation with the Tumey family.

Most of Robbyn Tumey’s seven siblings work in the industry. Her twin brother, Bob, brought more than 30 years of construction experience to MSI in 2001 when he moved to Rogers from Rockford, Ill., to join the company. He’s now the general superintendent.

“If we don’t know how to frame it,” she said, “we’ve got someone in the family who knows.”

A total of seven Tumey family members work for MSI in Rogers, including Robbyn’s 26-year-old daughter, Kristen.

“People ask me if that’s a good thing,” Robbyn Tumey said. “I say it depends on the day.”

Brentt Tumey said that being a member of the Association of the Wall and Ceiling Industries also helps them keep up on the latest technology trends in drywall and finishing. Growing up in Illinois, Brentt Tumey said, he also worked on construction sites since he was 12 years old.

“I can frame, and I can hang,” Tumey said. “I’ve been out there in the field.”

He joined his mother after MSI’s first year in business. Robbyn Tumey and her husband Charles moved from Rockford, Ill., in 1992 to Fort Smith where Charles Tumey had accepted a position at Baldor Electric Corp.

The couple built a house at Beaver Lake in 1995 and moved there permanently in 1998 when he retired.

“I started this business in the dining room with one phone and one fax machine,” Robbyn Tumey said. “I worked 18-hour days. I got up at 4 a.m. because it was 5 [a.m.] on the East Coast and worked till 7 p.m. when it was 5 p.m. on the West Coast.”

MSI was able to move into a 4,200-SF office on Beaver Lake in 1999. Since then, Robbyn Tumey said she’s seen success come one brick — or piece of sheet rock — at a time. Today, she sees building construction much like rearing children.

“Building a building is like having a child: One day you hate it, and one day you love it,” Tumey said. “When it is finished, it is great to see it sitting there and say, ‘You know what? I did that.'”