Avenue Road vs. Alpine Roofing, Or When Two Toronto Roofing Companies Look Eerily Similar
There are a lot of roofing companies in this city. At one time, they took up the second largest number of pages in the Yellow Pages - after escort services - and competition is fierce, mostly because nobody looks forward to replacing their roof, and repeat business, if it happens, is often separated by an interval of a decade or more.
In Toronto, the fiercest competition between roofers is at the high end, where two companies, Avenue Road and Alpine, are both the largest and most established in the business. They have other things in common; they were both started in the mid-70s, both currently have owners of Greek descent, and feature logos of striking similarity, plastered across their trucks and signage - tall, sans serif blue letters on white backgrounds.
"Sometimes it's confusing to people," says George Spyrou, Alpine Roofing's office manager. "They want to phone Alpine, but they have the Avenue truck come by and they get the phone number from it and they call Avenue or vice versa ... I've had customers phone to honour warranties on work that Avenue's done. That's because of the big blue letters on the trucks."
"It's been my observation that a lot of these businesses have mirrored their marketing very directly that have positioned themselves to look very much like us," says Craig Bennett, deputy executive director of Avenue Road Roofing, "to the point where some customers think we own both companies, one in the east and one in the west."
While competing with each other, the two companies have to compete with much smaller, often fly-by-night concerns - what Spyrou calls "a guy and his truck" - who can undercut them by hundreds, even thousands of dollars, mostly because they don't have the same overhead or labour costs, or obligations to insurance, warranties or employee safety. This has led to a guerilla marketing war on the street, which has manifested itself in posters pasted on the back of street signs and wire and plastic bag signs, tactics that are as successful as they are publicly unloved.
Bennett says that Avenue Road can take indirect credit for the wire and plastic bag signs, which were pioneered by Avenue Road Advertising, a company started in 1993 by Louie Pateropoulos, brother of the roofing company's owner.
Ultimately, though, the real battle is between the two giants, and there are stories of Alpine sales reps happily undercutting Avenue Road's estimates, though Spyrou hotly denies them. Still, Bennett is proud to admit that his company will charge the highest price for a job, despite the competition.
"It's been my experience in the roofing business that there are a lot of people who truly don't understand the cost of being in business," he explains, adding that "you can't get a Mercedes for the price of a Hyundai."
Comments (25)
1
Anybody who uses a fly by night roofing guy based o a sign they saw stapled to a telephone pole without checking his references is a moron.
2
Both Alpine and Avenue need to be heavily fined for putting their stupid signs up illegally all over town. Does the city not give a shit?
3 Ask your friends for a roofing guy reco. Hopefully it won't be either the Alpine or Avenue clowns
One of these companies did our roof recently, and did a piss poor job around the chimney. It was leaking like crazy, and they refused to come back and fix it in a timely manner. We had to hire someone else to to the work to prevent further damage.
Unfortunately, I can never remember which one it was whenever I'm making recommendations to friends.
We have had work done by both of these companies. We were less than happy with the more expensive one. The other company did a fantastic job. The project manager was not happy with a couple of the bits that they had subbed out to other contractors and brought them back to rebuild a chimney on our roof.
Both of these companies are complete garbage!!! Their customer service is horrible. The people they have working for them look like they are forced to be there, very unprofessional. A number of friends have used both of these companies and all had leaks!! Bigger is not always better and in this case that is completely true! Next time your write an article BlogTO do some research http://homestars.com/companies/194958-alpine-roofing?page=1#reviews_container
This is the second waste of space article on blogto in as many weeks - the one last week about Prohibition's owner refusing to apologize to someone was also a complete waste of my life.
Not an article? If you owned the #3 roofing company in Toronto, this is the best article ever.
Than... don't read it?
Why does it have to be 'news' to be on BlogTO? I thought this BLOG was about TORONTO so wouldn't that mean anything goes, as long as it happens in Toronto? If you want news than watch the news or read a newspaper.
"high end"? I dont think so. I had work done by both and they both had to come back 3 times to fix things. In the end I did it myself.
Actually, I quite enjoyed this little blog entry. It's not supposed to be an 'article' morons.
I've often wondered if they WERE the same owners and thanks to this article and some intelligent comments, I'll look elsewhere for my roofing needs.
What I would like to have seen the writer do however is delve a little deeper into this story and maybe this is all part of their "plan" to dupe people into using one or the other. Both Greek owners? Hmmm. Fishy. Opa!
I love how on that homestar site there are only some bad reviews that the companies bother to respond to while they ignore the others. Makes them look like even bigger douchebags. And the responses they post are incredibly lame.
I wish the people who caught the roofers drinking on the job had photos. Otherwise it's unprovable.
I had a great experience with Alpine a few years back. Avenue Road won't even call you back unless it's a big job (with a corresponding big price tag).
i for one like these stories, they are interesting to me as a local, and i can't read them anywhere else. to the haters; relax guys, go read the stars shitty new home page if you want the same toronto news everyone else has.
Agreed -- an interesting little local story. For those who want hard news, might I direct you to the BlogTO "Morning Brew" section?
There's an answer for those looking for decent roofers, contractors of all kinds. Try Home Stars...I did and very happy. The people rate the firms. With comments of praise as well as the horror stories - plenty of them.
interesting? Really? Who knew talk about roofing would be interesting? And aren't BlogTO's stories all local, hence their url?
i wonder what is more of a waste of time for some people, reading a blog post you don't like and logging into that blog to post a bitter comment, or clicking 'back'. some people just like to see their own words...
interesting post, but hey come downtown, there is junk advertising, everywhere and i mean EVERYWHERE- but nobody complains about it. what makes the suburbs so sacred? not trying to justify the junk, just saying... get used to it.
after previous bad experience with roofers i can say that avenue road is the best. they work thru the bad weather and never complain. the crews were beyond professional. I felt like i was treated like a client and not like another job. plus they have a great guarantee. Thanks to Avenue Road i have a great roof.
Avenue Road did my mother-in-law's roof and it was a great job, professional, timely and has never leaked. What few people know is that Alpine actually copied Avenue Road's look as he was originally red on white in the '70's and '80's. It was his attempt to compete with ARR. And another fact is that ARR is owned by two people, and one of them is a regular Canadian munji cake like me. And I am sure both companies, Alpine and ARR consist of good people who work hard, or they wouldn't still be around and doing well. A little good news to counter all the nay-sayers.
I know both companies being in the industry myself and in actual fact one is owned by two individuals (one is not Greek by the way) and they are not the original Owners. The other is the original Owner, and is Greek but what does cultural backgrounds of owners of roofing companies have anything to do with anything? Really?? Do you question the cultural background of people with everything you purchase? just seems alittle asinine if you ask me.
I am in the process of scheduling interviews for a roofing contractor.
I know the basics (i.e. proof of insurance, license, written price, schedule) but are there any other questions
I should be asking that would effect the outcome of the roof? Is it ok to flat out as for referrals?
Do you think it is important to actually meet the foreman who will be on the job?
Any insight would help!! Thanks!
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