Kenneth Brown was a salesman supporting a family when he decided to start installing fences as a side job on weekends. In 1981, when Brown lost his day job, he printed a box of business cards, put an advertisement in the phone book and starting taking telephone calls at home for his new full-time business, Statewide Fence Builders Inc.
More than a quarter-century later, the business occupies a two-acre parcel on Elmwood Avenue in Warwick, has annual revenue of about $3.5 million and about 35 employees, and sells and installs everything from simple chain-link fence, to a variety of traditional wood fences, to plastic fence, which has become increasingly popular in recent years.
Statewide Fence Builders also handles ornamental aluminum and steel fence – made to mimic old-fashioned wrought iron fencing but without the maintenance – and a variety of electronic gates. The company is also a wholesaler to smaller fence operators in the state.
About 80 percent of Statewide Fence Builders’ work is in the residential market, and the company is somewhat picky about the remaining 20 percent of commercial jobs it takes on, said Joyce Tavares, Brown’s daughter, who has owned the business with her husband, Louis, since her father retired 14 years ago.
“We only do projects that are a really good match for us,” Tavares said. “You know, a lot of these mill renovations, condo projects, more high-end stuff.”
Statewide Fence Builders’ evolution from a home-based business operated by Brown into a multimillion dollar company operating throughout Rhode Island, southeastern Massachusetts and even across the border into Connecticut took many years and involved an unexpected turn of events that lured Tavares into the fold.
In 1985, Brown made a business partner of a friend and frequent subcontractor 25 years his junior who worked for a wholesaler from whom Brown bought materials. Together, the partners purchased and renovated a rundown house at 1763 Elmwood Ave., turning the building into administrative offices and a retail showroom with a cash-and-carry business.
Tavares was happily employed as a registered nurse and had no intentions of taking over the family business when her father began easing into retirement in the early 1990s. But she started dropping by to make sure the transition at the office was going smoothly, and then her commitment to the business got personal – very personal.
“As [my father] got older he wanted to buy a place in Florida, like every Rhode Islander that you know,” Tavares recalled, laughing. “The business was getting busy, so I used to go in and try to help out my father’s partner – I’d answer the phone, I’d do the book work, that kind of thing – and I also struck up a friendship with him, and it worked out. We ended up getting married.”
After the wedding, Joyce kept her job as a nurse while continuing to put in hours at the business. The company had just one other employee, who helped Louis with installations. Statewide Fence Builders was at a crossroads – too much work for only two full-time employees, but not successful enough to satisfy the Tavareses.
Joyce quit her job as a nurse and joined Louis full time at the business.
“We decided we were going to go for broke and try to make this business really something to be proud of,” she said. “My father, when he left and actually retired, we were making as much in a year as we do in a month now. It’s been quite a little success story for him and I.”
The couple worked around the clock, six days a week. Louis focused on sales and field operations; Joyce managed the office, overseeing purchasing, the company’s finances, emptying the trash – you name it. Not content to leave the quality of their fence materials in the hands of mills and manufacturers as far away as Canada, they have spent the past decade buying several lots adjacent to their headquarters on which they now operate a large wood shop where they custom-fabricate cedar fence.
Tavares said the business has grown dramatically in recent years, in large part because of the goodwill her father and husband built with their customers from the start, when the business was small.
“Rhode Island is an extremely small place, and a good majority of our business comes on referral,” she explained. “We’re very, very proud of being in the fence business, and it’s important to us to do a good job.”
Company Profile: Statewide Fence Builders Inc.
Owners: Louis and Joyce Tavares
Type of Business: Seller, installer and fabricator of fences
Location: 1763 Elmwood Ave., Warwick
Employees: 35
Year Established: 1981
Annual Revenue: $3.5 million
