Moon Associates
President: Jim Moon
Location: 1137 Park East Drive, Woonsocket
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Type of Business: Gutter Helmet dealer
Year Founded: 1994
Employees: 60
Annual Revenue: $6 million in 2003
Jim Moon first heard of a Gutter Helmet 12 years ago, when his father had
one installed on his home.
The Gutter Helmet is a closed gutter protection system installed over existing full-sized gutters that directs rainwater into the gutter through a continuous three-eighths-inch horizontal opening, while forcing leaves and debris over the edge and onto the ground.
Seeing the ingenious system as a necessity for New Englanders hassled by the chore of cleaning leaves from gutters, Moon called the company to find out more.
There was already a Gutter Helmet dealer in Rhode Island, but the Massachusetts territory was wide open.
“With a borrowed El Camino and a few newspaper ads, I became a businessman, running from one house to the next, changing from my installation gear into suits, taking calls and making presentations,” Moon said.
He worked alone out of a homemade office in Boston for a year, generating his own advertisements, sales pitches and doing installations as long as he could handle it. His one-man operation slowly grew to two and three as he began hiring his first sales and installation employees the next year.
Then the Rhode Island territory became available, giving Moon Associates free reign to sell and install the gutter protection system in both states.
“Today we have 20 of our own trucks – not borrowed – and a new 10,000-square-foot building. We’ve moved from 40 employees last year to 60 now, and we’ll need 120 to get to tomorrow. We are on a growth curve,” said the Woonsocket native.
The company’s first Rhode Island operation began in the former Marquett Credit Union building in Woonsocket. It moved for the fourth time to a new facility in Woonsocket in January from Cumberland, where it was based at two different locations. A ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new facility was held Sept. 30, which Woonsocket Mayor Susan Menard deemed “Gutter Helmet Day” in the town.
The new location also has a customer care center with new technology and customer representatives to handle all inquiries.
He said Moon Associates is the third-largest Gutter Helmet dealer in the United States, operating offices in Woonsocket, eastern Massachusetts, New London County, Conn., and Long Island, N.Y. – but the company is not even close to its expansion goal.
Every year for the past decade, the company has increased its business by 50 percent to 70 percent and will continue expansion along the East Coast, Moon said.
Moon Associates plans to hire another 40 employees over the next year to “saturate the market as much as possible,” Moon said.
Moon Associates recently became involved with two local charitable organizations. It donated time and materials to install Gutter Helmets on homes being built through Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that builds homes for families in need. The company also donated $5,000 to the Rhode Island chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation on Sept. 30, which will be used to pay for the wish of a local child with life-threatening illness. Moon Associates also gave the Make-A-Wish Foundation six weeks of its WHJJ advertising spots over the summer for public service announcements – $11,000 worth of ads.
Gutter Helmet was formally launched on the East Coast in the fall of 1981.
In the early 1960s, an MIT alumnus, Bob Demartini began development of a meshless cover for roof gutters. After almost 20 years of product development and testing, Demartini applied for the first patent. Over the years, he patented improved versions that incorporated into the first widely marketed and available gutter protection system, Gutter Helmet.
The Masco Corp. acquired patent rights to Gutter Helmet in 1989.
Today, Gutter Helmet is manufactured at a facility outside Memphis, Tenn.,
and backed by parent company Hart & Cooley, a $700 million U.S. division
of $6 billion international corporate giant, Tomkins PLC.
