Nova Designs + Builds _______________________________________________________________________________________
John Schrader , Principal of Nova Designs + Builds shares insights into the organization ’ s story and significant milestones . “ When I first started the company , it was more of a kitchen and bathroom showroom . We quickly realized that the main concern of homeowners buying kitchen and bathroom products was how they were going to complete their project . So , we started offering construction services and the size of the company pretty much quadrupled in the first month because of that .
“ The next phase involved moving into larger projects . Instead of taking on kitchen and bathroom refits , we started working on complete home renovations , and particularly so , in the San Francisco area . They tended to be in the medium-to-highend range , rather than the super luxury homes you find in San Francisco .
At that point , I would say our limitation was our expertise . Realizing that , we brought in an architect , Fabien Lannoye . Fabien moved back to the states in 1996 , having grown up in Belgium , and joined Nova in 1999 . While his expertise in Europe wasn ’ t necessarily in the residential market , he is an excellent architect and extremely structured in his approach .
People first
“ Around the time Fabien joined us , approximately ten-to-15 percent of our work was in-house projects . After a couple of years , this grew to encompass approximately half of our workload . At the same time , we started doing high-end luxury homes in San Francisco , so , the volume doubled once again . After several years and following increasing delays with permitting in San Francisco , we branched out into Napa
70