On a late June afternoon amidst one of the worst economic downturns in the country’s history, Mark Elia, CGR, CGP, of Mark of Excellence Remodeling in West Long Branch, N.J., brims with optimism. He is on his way back from three days of training with the Building Performance Institute to become a certified energy auditor. That same morning, much to Elia’s delight, the New Jersey Clean Energy program announced increased incentives to help homeowners pay for energy-performance retrofits.

For Elia, this was proof that embracing green remodeling, and energy efficiency in particular, had been a good move. The new certification would qualify him or any member of his team to conduct these assessments and make recommendations for upgrades in the state of New Jersey. Typically those recommendations include better windows, more insulation, high-efficiency furnaces and water heaters, as well as air sealing. The new incentives from the state, he said, would allow people to put in $20,000 worth of improvements for about $62 a month. “You can’t beat that,” says Elia. He speculates there is enough air sealing work alone to operate a separate division of his firm.
The transition to energy efficiency stands in contrast to his business as it existed only 18 months prior. Back then, Mark of Excellence, like a lot of remodeling companies, was still experiencing a high level of activity related to bigger projects. His average ticket was about $80,000. Today it stands at $50,000.

Elia has had to impose some tough changes to his full-service remodeling firm. The company has a staff of seven, including himself, down from 13 last year. Lacking a receptionist, inbound phone calls are now routed directly to mobile phones. “It’s one of the sacrifices that we’ve had to make, but every call gets a live voice,” says Elia, who started his company 22 years ago as a windows, roofing and siding business and gradually expanded into design/build projects and a true, full-service offering.

Today, the company is operating with a six-week backlog, and Elia is seeing an uptick in inquiries. Earlier this year, the picture was murkier. To keep bigger jobs coming in, Mark of Excellence kept its marketing budget fully intact, but it also selectively trimmed its gross margins to lock up quality projects. In some cases this meant allowing customers to buy their cabinets directly from his source.