Randall Robert Darr (Randy) November 10, 1965 to January 24, 1998.

That inscription appears on the home page of Darr’s Cleaning Inc. of Clyde, Ohio, beneath the names of the owners, Bernie and Roger Darr.

Bernie and Roger lost their brother Randy to a traffic accident, the first in a string of hardships that almost sidelined the business as it embarked on an ambitious expansion plan. There was no insurance policy on Randy’s life to help his brothers buy out his share of the business.

There were also loan payments for new equipment, and then the complication of an economic downturn that affected some of the firm’s largest customers. Bernie and Roger Darr succeeded with a strategy of continued diversification and growth, offering more to their customers instead of cutting back.

Today, Darr’s Cleaning has eight employees, about $1 million in revenue, and a diverse portfolio of services, including sewer jetting, CCTV inspection, trenchless pipe repair, and vacuuming.

Always a family

The company began a trajectory of slow but steady growth when it was founded in 1960 by Harold Darr as a furnace cleaning service. Harold sidestepped a decline in the furnace business by diversifying in 1967 to offer septic tank cleaning and portable restroom rentals. The initial fleet consisted of a vacuum truck, a van, and a cable machine.

In 1972, the company took on a partner, becoming Darr & Konst. Four years later, the partnership split into two business entities. The newly formed Konst Cleaning took on the furnace cleaning and portable restroom businesses, while Darr’s concentrated on pipe cleaning and septic tank services.

After the split, Harold Darr’s three sons gradually became more involved in the business. Bernie came to work for the company in 1976 and Roger 1980. Both bought shares in 1985. Younger brother Randy became an employee in 1987 and a partner in 1988. The trio bought out their father’s final 25 percent share in 1991. Harold stayed on as an employee and still pumps septic tanks up to 30 hours a week at age 76.

Clyde is a small town near Lake Erie, about 50 miles east of Toledo and 80 miles west of Cleveland. The company has direct access to U.S. Route 20, a four-lane highway, and a 10-minute drive connects it with Interstate 80/90, allowing Darr’s to service both cities. The company does work as far from home as the state capital, Columbus, about 100 miles away.

“With only 6,700 people, Clyde doesn’t have a large enough pop-ulation to support us,” says Bernie Darr. “I think people 50 miles away have more of an idea of what we do than people who live five miles down the road. Ohio has 88 counties, and we’ve provided services in 50 of them.”

Broadening horizons

As the company served clients over a wider range, it built its fleet size and offered more services. Local competitors collectively provide the same services, but Darr’s prides itself on being a one-stop shop. “Nobody in the vicinity does everything we do,” he says.

Besides the Vactor unit and septic tank pumping equipment, Darr’s Cleaning owns a trailer jetter from US Jetting, truck-mounted jetters from Sewer Equipment Company of America and Hi-Vac Corporation/ Aquatech Products, and a CCTV truck with inspection equipment from Aries Industries Inc.

The company’s trenchless sewer line repair equipment includes a trailer-mounted epoxy pipe lining system from Nu Flow America for repair of pipes from four to six inches, and a point repair technology from Infrastructure Repair Systems for lengths up to five feet and pipe diameters to 21 inches.

But the expansion coincided with family tragedy. While driving to inspect the rebuilding of one of the company’s jet trucks in 1998, Randy was killed when a train struck his car at a blind crossing.

“This was one month after we ordered the new Vactor,” says Darr. “We had talked for two years before that about buying life insurance for ourselves and creating a succession plan, but at the time of the accident we had no life insurance and no plan in place to deal with something like this.”

Without an insurance payment to support Randy’s family, the company had no choice but to take out a loan to buy Randy’s share of the business. “We already had equipment with a loan to pay down,” says Darr. “Just as we were expanding, we were hit with two big loan payments at the same time.”

Triple whammy

The company soon faced more trouble as an economic downturn in 2000 saw established clients fall away and traditional sources of revenue dry up. “We never thought our business would be so dependent on the economy,” says Darr. “We found out the hard way that it was. There wasn’t as much work as before, and projects that had been on were suddenly off. Then 9/11 happened, and it compounded the problem.”

To make matters worse, some clients most affected by the downturn were Darr’s largest. A single industrial client accounted for almost 20 percent of Darr’s annual revenue. The company’s strategy in response was to diversify.

“We realized we had so many mouths to feed and that the only way to do that was to expand our services,” says Darr. “Whenever we saw another need in the market, we went after it. We had to diversify.”

The company began to promote services such as trenchless repair, infrastructure point repair, electronic sewer and tile locating, leach bed rejuvenation, and smoke testing. “We’re the boys with lots of toys, with the knowledge and experience to best serve your needs,” says the company web site. But toys cost money, and the company had to be careful where it invested scarce capital.

“Clients aren’t using some of these services all of the time,” says Darr. “Certain services are just requested in spurts, so we have to maintain a list of offerings that’s always changing to keep pace with market demand.”

For example, the company doesn’t perform a lot of smoke testing, but because that service ties up very little capital, it can stay on the company roster without financial risk. Purchasing an extra jetting/vacuum truck, on the other hand, would please one or two clients but would stretch the company’s resources.

Darr’s also became diligent in choosing suppliers and products. “We have a good network of people to supply us, but it pays to shop around,” says Darr. “Whether it’s equipment, parts, or consumable supplies, the market is always changing and we need to look for good value to help the bottom line.”

Evolving strategy

Darr’s marketing strategy continues to evolve. As the company relies less on residential business, local advertising such as the Yellow Pages makes less sense. “Why go after the 25 percent of business we least need — residential — instead of concentrating on the 75 percent we want to expand on?” Darr asks.

“We’re in seven or eight regional phone books, and we’re cutting back on that. Our municipal, commercial and industrial clients aren’t looking for us in the phone book. A lot of our industrial business is generated by our web site and by word-of-mouth. A good example is an industrial park where we performed some work after the EPA came down hard on them. One successful job led to a series of referrals in the same area.”

The company is also aggressively courting the municipal sector, a market far less susceptible to market fluctuations. Roger Darr heads the sales effort and has won contracts with the town of Clyde and surrounding communities. A more vigorous sales effort has even struck up new contracts with old clients, although the company makes sure that no single client dominates its business.

This year, after overcoming significant hurdles, the Darr brothers are confident that the business is on firm footing. “We’re responsive to the market, we’re busy, we’re insured and we have a succession plan in place,” Bernie Darr says. “We have slowly come back to being a profitable business.”