Marco Acosta says his Handy Plumbing Man business is “growing very rapidly.” Just how fast is that?

“The first year we did $300,000 in business,” says the San Francisco Bay Area businessman. That first year was in 2019. “We have experienced very rapid, but steady and responsible growth. I predict at the rate we’re expanding, the company before too many years will have annual revenue in the $30-40 million range.”

The company’s expansion in employees and equipment is equally impressive. From a one-man, one-van operation, it has grown to 38 employees and 22 service vans. Actually, that’s an exaggeration: In the beginning, Acosta had the help of his wife.

“She would go in crawl spaces with me to run drainage lines,” he says — surely a test of a marriage. “She has been with me all the way, in times of tears and through ups and downs.” 

Clearly the company is upward bound at this point, with the emphasis on up. “The goal I have is eventually to have more than 300 employees.” Sounds like growth, indeed.

CHALLENGING START

Acosta was raised in a business environment. His father was a contractor and, he says, “taught me how to run things.” He adds that other family members have businesses “all over the world.” With that family pedigree, Acosta went to work for other companies in the Redwood City area — “really big companies” — but eventually grew frustrated. 

While he had operational responsibilities at those companies, “I wasn’t the owner. There were things I wanted to do to steer the company toward more success, but there always were roadblocks.” So, at age 28, he decided to start his own business “and run the show like I wanted to run it.”

Unfortunately, Handy Plumbing Man got started about the same time COVID did. For two or three months, the young company struggled. “It was pretty darned bad,” Acosta recalls. “People were scared to let a plumber into their homes.”

At some point in the early days of the pandemic, the business owner realized that investing in gloves and masks was the answer. He bought 20,000 face masks and let customers know that he took their health concerns seriously. 

“That response to customer fears is what kept the company alive,” he says, looking back. He ended up donating some of the masks to Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center. “My response to COVID played a role in our growth.”

The pandemic episode reaffirmed in his own mind that residential plumbing and drain cleaning services was the right path for his company. He had seen companies fail during the recession of 2008-09 because they were serving commercial and new construction customers. COVID was a reminder of the precariousness of such commercial accounts.

A TOUGH ENVIRONMENT

When Acosta was a school child, he was fascinated by the process of building things, the systematic piecing together of different elements to create a whole. “It was very fascinating to me how things grew out of nothing.”

When Acosta started Handy Plumbing Man, he pieced together his previous experiences in the industry to create his personal idea of how a business should operate efficiently, profitably and in the best interests of its customers. So far, his idea is proving quite successful.

This is so even though Handy Plumbing Man is operating in the San Francisco Bay Area of California where there is plenty of competition. “It is a very, very, very competitive area,” Acosta says. “It’s saturated with plumbers.”

A more timid soul might have been daunted by such a business environment. Acosta simply followed his plan, one element of which is to leave every customer satisfied with his experience. “I have done a really good job in committing to customers,” the owner says. “When I walk out of the door, I want them to be 100% satisfied — not 99%.”

The various rating services show Handy Plumbing Man with hundreds of five-star ratings. Acosta says that if he hears of a customer displeased with Handy Plumbing Man, he is all ears. “If I have to, I’ll go out and do the job myself to make sure that customer gets a five-star job.”

Acosta offers customers flat-rate pricing. Furthermore, he does not mark up the cost of plumbing parts, passing along to a customer his cost and nothing more. “That is very unusual. I’m about the only guy that does that.”

He says the reason he can do so is because he operates in volume. For example, he sells and installs about 50 water heaters a month, a number that earns him a discount from the manufacturer. A dealer down the street selling 10 water heaters a month doesn’t get the same deal.

“I can lower my cost for the water heater just a little and pass along the savings to the customer — and still have a very profitable transaction.” The result: Customer happy and company in the black. Sounds a lot like a winning business formula.

A FULL-SERVICE COMPANY

Though the company does do “a little” commercial work, it takes on “zero” new construction projects. Its commitment is to homeowners. 

“People at home need hot water and they need to flush a toilet, so come what may, they still are going to need plumbers,” Acosta says. “COVID was a perfect example for me of why we are focusing on home service.”

Handy Plumbing Man is a little bit of a misnomer because it is not exclusively a plumbing services company. In fact, when Acosta started out, he first offered drain cleaning and repair. It was often open-trench work with nephews and cousins helping him dig the trenches and lay the pipe. Today, many of them are full-time employees of the company.

In 2024, the bulk of Handy Plumbing Man’s business is, in fact, clearing drains and cleaning, inspecting and repairing sewer lines, with hydrojetting and trenchless pipe repair among the options offered to customers.

But it is a full-service plumbing house as well and offers all the traditional plumbing responses to water problems in the home. Toilet clearing, repair and replacement. Faucet and other fixture repair and replacement. Garbage disposal installation. Shower and bathtub installation and repair. 

Its plumbing calls oftentimes end up with service techs doing drain work, of course and vice versa. “That happens very often,” Acosta says. “We go out to replace a wax ring on a toilet and find cracks on the toilet, then stick a camera down the sewer line and find a defective pipe.”

And the company repairs and replaces water heaters, too. That work is an important component of Handy Plumbing Man’s business. The company, on average, replaces 50 water heaters a month, and 10 tankless water heaters. Acosta’s favorite brands? Bradford White and A. O. Smith water heaters and Rinnai tankless models.

MORE AHEAD

Companies that expand rapidly sometimes overreach because of labor shortages. In today’s trade world, finding a new generation of craftsmen can be difficult. However, Acosta says he has not had to confront the issue.

“Thanks to God I haven’t had the problem,” he says. “On a daily basis, I have three or four guys asking for work. On a daily basis. The word spread pretty quickly that we treat our guys with respect. I have built a pretty good culture here, so people want to come work at Handy.”

The business owner has, for the most part, turned over the plumbing tools to his crew members. He goes out in the field to bid jobs, but “I’m pretty much here to support the guys. If there is an issue no one can figure out, they’ll call me. My job now is to keep the machine well-oiled and running smoothly and using my brain to plan expansion.”

Handy Plumbing Man is capitalizing on its momentum to keep moving forward. It is advertising some — online ads, a spot on the local Fox News channel, billboard space down the road — “but we mostly depend on word of mouth and repeat customers,” Acosta says.

Growth is happening in its services, too. To plump up its portfolio of offerings, the company is about to introduce heating, ventilation and air conditioning, Acosta says. “We’re in the process of getting an HVAC license right now.”  

It is a burgeoning company but the owner clearly is on top of it. Even so, there are growing pains. The company’s first office was in Redwood City. The office had to be moved to a larger space in San Carlos. “We’ve only been here a year and now this location is too small. I’m looking for a secondary location and some warehouse space.”

The owner’s vision for Handy Plumbing Man is expansive. Currently a San Francisco Bay Area enterprise, it is destined for bigger things. “We’ll keep expanding,” the owner says. “Eventually we’ll grow all across California, from Bakersfield all the way to Redding.”