VB Homes, Virginia Beach, Va.
Type of business: custom builder/remodeler
Years in business: 19
Employees: 14
2006 volume: $5 million
2006 starts: 3
About 10 years ago, Chris Ettel and his employees found a way to help their community, their industry, and their own company at the same time. The focus of the effort was Virginia Beach’s Technical and Career Education Center, which offered high school-level classes in the construction trades. “The kids were learning these trades in the classroom,” Ettel says, “but we wanted to give them the opportunity to learn them in a real-world setting.” Along with other business leaders and local professionals, Ettel helped establish a nonprofit foundation to raise the funds for the students to build a house with their own hands.
“We all made contributions ourselves,” says Ettel, whose group also solicited donations of building materials and direct assistance and secured interest-free financing from a local bank. “The students contributed the majority of the labor, but where they couldn’t it was donated.” Ettel, the only professional builder on the foundation board, pitched in his company’s help with invoicing, scheduling, quality control, and general guidance, “essentially instructing the teachers.” The project, a three-bedroom, 1,700-square-foot house, was so successful that it became the model for a perennial program. “We’re on our eighth house,” Ettel says, and each has sold at a profit. The foundation returns most of the proceeds to the city’s school system in the form of teacher grants for innovative classroom programs. Last year’s grants, which average $1,000, totaled some $90,000. “We want to make a direct impact in the classrooms,” says Ettel. But the impact on the student-builders is what inspires him. “These kids get very excited about going out there and building a home, as opposed to just being in the classroom,” he says. In the process, they experience the rewards of a vocation that often does not get the respect it deserves. “This is a viable career for these kids,” Ettel says. And he can back up that statement. “We’ve been able to place some of these kids with other companies, and our own. It’s a good thing, and it certainly helps us out too.”
