Seizing the Opportunity
Taking advantage of the right chances leads to dramatic success
![With a current staff of just over 90 employees, owner Jason Tate says residential and commercial plumbing remains the company’s biggest division.](storyassets/carolinas/feature_stories/F17-FS2-Seizing-the-Opportunity/F17_NC_FS2_Interior1_530x370.jpg)
With a current staff of just over 90 employees, owner Jason Tate says residential and commercial plumbing remains the company’s biggest division.
![Jason Tate (right) and Shop Manager Mike Ayers going over equipment repairs.](storyassets/carolinas/feature_stories/F17-FS2-Seizing-the-Opportunity/F17_NC_FS2_Interior2_530x370.jpg)
Jason Tate (right) and Shop Manager Mike Ayers going over equipment repairs.
Sometimes, the growth of a business sprouts from a single opportunity, success traced to a single chance taken or missed. For Jason Tate of Steve Tate & Son Plumbing, Inc., that chance came 10 years ago. He took it, and hasn’t looked back.
The origins of Steve Tate & Son Plumbing, based in Mount Airy, North N.C., are a familiar story to small-business men across the country. In the 1980s, Steve Tate entered the plumbing trade. By 1995, he knew enough that he was comfortable opening his own business, Steve Tate Plumbing. It was a very small business, just Steve and his son Jason, operating out of a 10 by 16-foot utility shed in their backyard.
“We were doing residential work, door-to-door service calls,” Jason recalls. “We’d do just about anything, but there wasn’t much manpower—just me, helping out after school and on weekends. It was just us, we had two trucks and every day we’d leave, going off in two directions to do the work.”
Eventually, Jason became a licensed plumber and bought a half interest in the company from his father. It was renamed Steve Tate & Son Plumbing. Slowly, the company began to grow, generating more work than father and son could manage on their own. In 2004, they hired their first two employees, one of whom is still with the company.
Jason had his eye on moving into more commercial plumbing, which he thought was the best avenue for the company’s growth.
“I was concentrating on commercial jobs,” Jason says. “I saw the potential there for the future. When the economy contracted, commercial work kept us going, though we had to expand our service area to keep growing. We moved out of our neighborhood and became licensed in several states.”
In 2007, Jason saw his opportunity with a North Carolina Dept. of Transportation (NCDOT) project helmed by H.B. Rowe & Co., Inc. The project included the construction of several new rest areas, and the plumbing contract for that project was up for bid.
“It was the largest job we’ve ever done, and I think it really set the tone for our work in the commercial industry,” Jason says. “I was only about 20 years old at the time, trying to put in a bid for this project. I really want to thank the Rowe project manager, Jody Phillips, for his faith in us. It was a huge risk for him to give the project to a young guy who’d never done a project that big before, and I’m grateful he took a chance on us. We got the contract, did the job well, and it gave us a huge boost in the commercial market.”
A Pipeline of Success
With that successful project as a springboard, Jason has spent the last decade building Steve Tate & Son Plumbing into a multifaceted corporation. In 2009, Jason bought the other half of the company from his father, who had decided he wasn’t interested in the headaches of continuing to grow the business. Jason and his sister, Ocean, ran the office, hiring additional trade workers, responding to more invitations to bid and broadening the company’s work area.
“In about 2010, we started doing utility work,” Jason says. “We hired a utility guy. We bought some excavators and dump trucks and really started diversifying the company. At that point, we had about 35 or 40 guys and could do residential, commercial and utility work.”
At first, most of the utility jobs were small and low-key, Jason says. The company started doing utilities in new houses, then in multifamily developments. In 2011 and 2012, Jason hired some additional staff to broaden the utility business and started doing large-scale commercial work.
Back in 2004, Jason and his father had moved their business from a backyard utility shed to a commercial building, occupying a suite with a single garage door. By 2009, the company had grown too large for the space, so Jason purchased another building just down the street from that first office. Later, he bought the entire building that housed that first commercial office, as well as the land in between, creating a 4.5-acre complex for Steve Tate & Son Plumbing’s headquarters. Today, the small suite that used to house the entire business serves as Jason’s office.
“Venturing out from working behind our house, we were kind of scared to rent this one little bay,” Jason recalls. “Now, that little bay is my office.”
Still not content, Jason made some more moves in 2014, broadening the suite of services his company has to offer.
“In about 2014, we were so busy,” Jason says, “and we only had one service guy. I started talking to Scott McHone Plumbing. They did nothing but service work; that was their whole business. I approached them and ended up buying the whole company. That brought us into the 75-80 employee range. That same year, we were having a lot of work done on our buildings, and I ended up hiring those guys, too. Their experience lets us do a lot of eave work, stone work, concrete work. It’s not a separate construction division, but another service we’re able to offer.”
There was one more division left to add to make Steve Tate & Son Plumbing what it is today. In 2016, Jason acquired an HVAC and electrical company, diversifying his business into what it offers now.
Credit Where it’s Due
While justifiably proud of what Steve Tate & Son Plumbing has become, Jason is quick to share the credit with his father, with his employees, with the community—and with his contacts inside and outside the industry, such as Brady Johnson and Dick Johnson, owners of local plumbing supply stores, whose help was essential to Jason as he grew the business.
“In 2007, when we did the NCDOT job, H.B. Rowe never would have heard of our company without Brady and Dick Johnson,” Jason says. “They told Jody Phillips about us. This was a large job, demanding a lot of materials, and we didn’t have the money to buy them. I definitely didn’t want to ask the company we were working for to put up the money to buy our materials. Brady and Dick worked with their supply house to get us the materials. If not for them, it would have been a very hard struggle trying to do a job of that size.”
He continues, “I also have to give at least 90 percent of the credit for our success to the ladies in the office, including my sister, and the guys in the field. They always do good work and keep our customers happy. We’ve got some key guys who make sure everything gets done. My guys are willing to work after hours, on the weekends, whatever it takes to bring the job in on time and on budget. I’m lucky enough to have a very dedicated, very loyal team. We even have some employees living out of state who almost never come to our office—their job is taking care of the projects we have going on in other states, from Virginia to Georgia.”
“And I also have to give credit to the Lord above,” he adds. “Things have fallen into place the way they need to for a reason. I am also thankful for my wife and kids, for their understanding of the time I am away from home to keep the company running.”
Jason feels that the community has been loyal to him, and he believes he needs to be loyal in return. Steve Tate & Son Plumbing sponsors multiple youth teams and church groups, and has given funds to help many individuals (both inside and outside of the company) with bills related to chronic medical problems. This summer, Jason bought a new scoreboard for the local high school.
“We feel like giving back is the most important thing we can do,” Jason says. “In my eyes, you can’t give enough.”
A Foundation for the Future
The company has come a long way from its days operating out of a utility shed in the Tates’ backyard, working small residential plumbing repair jobs. In recent years, Jason says his business worked on a $40 million manufacturing plant in Richmond Hill, Ga., stretching the company’s limits because of three factors: the sheer size of the project; its six- to seven-hour distance from the main office; and the millions of dollars’ worth of machinery inside the plant the team had to work around.
Just last year, Steve Tate & Son finished a two-year job on a 7-mile sewer project. It required multiple bores to complete, one of which was more than 400 feet through a very flat slope and constituted a significant challenge for the company’s utility division.
The company also has multiple contracts per year for what Jason calls very fast-paced food industry jobs, taking a raw space with nothing in it and turning the space into a functioning grocery store in the span of 15 weeks—a task the requires work from all facets of the company performing in concert with all the other contractors and builders.
“Maybe the biggest thing is, I’ve had to re-create myself in a manner to manage the different companies,” Jason says. “I still oversee every division. I consider myself a leader, not a boss-man. I wear my work boots every day. I want my guys to know I’m no different and no better than them.”
Given the company’s startling growth in the last decade, it might be surprising that Jason has no plans for any more expansion. He’s happy where it is now and is concerned any more growth might make the company too large to manage by himself.
“Along with growth come growing pains,” Jason says. “We’ve experienced them. I want to make sure our quality level doesn’t slip. We’ve actually talked about scaling back just a bit to be sure we keep happy customers and employees. We don’t want to outgrow our comfort zone.”
Steve Tate & Son Plumbing’s comfort zone is rather large. With a current staff of just over 90 employees, Jason says residential and commercial plumbing remain the biggest division, though utility work is also a significant slice of the pie. The latest addition, HVAC, is still new, but the team has tackled a few large jobs, with more in the works.
“I think the moral of this story is with my faith,” Jason says. “God led me in the direction he did with this company. I get a chance to talk to a lot of young guys. I can give them a chance to learn a trade and better themselves. I think what keeps me driving every day is the hope for the future of the guys who work here. I want to see them succeed, I want them to have my job one day.”
![Greg Lynch](storyassets/contributors/GregLynch.jpg)