Hollister garage door installation business flourishes
Imagine getting into a car on the way to work and hitting the
garage door opener and waiting. And waiting. And waiting. The door
won’t open and the minutes are ticking away. For California Over
Head Door, a garage door installation company in Hollister, they
are quite familiar with the panicky calls from homeowners who are
trapped in their own garages.
Hollister garage door installation business flourishes
Imagine getting into a car on the way to work and hitting the garage door opener and waiting. And waiting. And waiting. The door won’t open and the minutes are ticking away. For California Over Head Door, a garage door installation company in Hollister, they are quite familiar with the panicky calls from homeowners who are trapped in their own garages.
Eddie De Leon, the owner of California Over Head Door, estimated that 40 percent of their business is servicing garage doors.
“If the car is inside and they can’t open it or the door is on top of the car, they will even call on the weekend,” said Rosie Polanco, De Leon’s older sister and an employee.
De Leon started out as a garage door installer more than 20 years ago and started his own company in 1995.
“I stayed with it all my life and got a license,” De Leon said. “We are pretty well established, but it takes a lot of maintenance.”
While servicing doors is a big part of the business, De Leon’s crew of five installers goes out on 30-50 installation jobs a week. The crew work in Hollister, but also travel around the Central Coast from Greenfield to Monterey to Morgan Hill.
The installers travel in white trucks with the California Over Head Door logo on the side. The increase cost of gas has been the biggest challenge recently for the company.
“A little more than 10 years ago, we didn’t have to leave Hollister,” De Leon said.
But with the building moratorium, he has had to branch out into other communities.
The company installs commercial doors, residential doors and even has several contracts with city or county departments.
“We work a lot with realtors,” Polanco said. “We’ve even installed doors at fire stations.”
One thing that keeps the company busy is that they are the installer for the Home Depot. The doors that they install run the gamut from economy models that cost $500 to custom-designed doors complete with stained-glass windows that can be upwards of $10,000.
“People are looking for more custom designs,” Polanco said. “It adds value to the house.”
De Leon works as the salesman for the company and has a set of mobile garage door samples that he can take out to a site with him for customers who can’t stop by their showroom. More and more, people have already chosen the design that they want based on something they’ve seen around town.
“I have to make two trips – one to see what they saw and one to see what they have,” De Leon said.
The timeline to get a door installed once a customer has selected it can be anywhere from 5-10 days if it is a basic door or longer for custom orders. Once the installers go out on site, though, the door is completed in one day.
“Our installers enjoy it,” De Leon said. “They are never in the same place two days in a row.”
Once in a while there are surprises when the installers show up. Sometimes people have animals locked up in the garage so the installers need to wait for the homeowners to move them out of the work area. The installers also need at least 10 feet of clearance to work on the door so a messy garage will delay the job.
“Our company is pretty unique,” De Leon said. “You see many plumbers and electricians. But when it comes down to doors, we are pretty separated.”
