Mario Morariu’s pathway to the trades began with him actually being encouraged not to go into the trades.

His parents, Romanian immigrants, pushed for Morariu to go to college and seek out an alternative career. His father, Cornel, had been a plumber in Romania where he had started by carrying all tools and materials via bicycle before making the move to the United States, settling in Portland, Oregon, and founding Cornel’s Plumbing, Heating & Air. Morariu was only 3 when his family made the move.

“My father had done it for so long, and I just wanted to do something in finance or tech or the medical industry, really anything else,” Morariu says. “My parents encouraged me not to go into the trades because, having come over here, they wanted me to have an easier life, I suppose. So they pushed me in the direction of going to school. The traditional route.”

But a trades career ended up being the right fit for Morariu, and once he returned to the family company, he brought other experiences that helped kick the growth of Cornel’s into a higher gear. A company that for a long time was a one-person operation is now 45 employees strong and doing over $10 million in annual revenue. Much of that growth has occurred in just the past five years.

“Coming on board, my goal was to grow something for the future,” Morariu says. “My parents had sacrificed so much for me, coming here and taking those risks. I realized what I had here. So I wanted to build something for the future for my parents to look forward to as well. A lot of people get into the business obviously to make money, which is necessary, but it’s also become a lot more for us now, where we’re responsible for a lot of people’s families.”

SIMPLE START

Cornel Morariu began plumbing in 1982 in Romania. In 1997, after moving his family to the U.S. and settling in Portland, he quickly got back into plumbing, working alongside another plumber.

He was still staying small, working out of his garage at the time son Mario Morariu came on in 2017.

“I always had an entrepreneurial interest at an early age,” Morariu says. “I purchased cars, fixed them and sold them. I tried to start online businesses. Just anything I could to make my own way. I tried a whole lot of different things, different industries to see what I would really enjoy. But I always wanted to eventually do my own thing at some point.”

Just prior to joining Cornel’s, Morariu had been working long hours for OnTrac, a delivery company. He had only worked some summers for his dad up to that point.

“I was living with my parents at the time,” Morariu recalls. “I finally said to myself, ‘You know what? I’m going to look at going into the trades. Plumbing has always taken care of our family.’ If I was going to get married and create some stability, I needed to use my skill set and all of my failed endeavors to take over the family business. I came home one night, my parents were sitting on the porch, and I said, ‘Hey, why don’t you let me take over the business?’”

Morariu says there was some reluctance at first, but his dad eventually decided to give it a try. First, Morariu went to school for his journeyman’s license.

“From the start, Cornel’s passion has always been to provide the best service possible, with an emphasis on quality and customer care,” Morariu says. “When I came on board, my goal was to build on those core values, but also to grow something for the future — something that could make my dad proud.”

GROWTH PERIOD

Cornel’s moved out of the small garage and into a 5,500-square-foot space in 2020, the same year the company first exceeded $1 million revenue. It continued from there as the company added more employees and services. In 2021, revenue increased to $2.8 million. In 2022, it increased to $4.2 million. In 2023, it was $6.8 million. And 2024 closed at over $10 million.

“Now we’re running out of space,” Morariu says. “We definitely need to move into a larger location just to grow and expand more.”

Cornel’s has been figuring out its right mix of services. When Morariu joined the company, his father had been doing small service plumbing jobs and remodeling projects. Cornel’s has since dropped the remodeling work to focus on the service side of things.

“We loved doing remodeling work and worked with a lot of great contractors. But it just kind of came to the point where we had to make a choice,” Morariu says. “Same-day service work that paid immediately or remodeling where we’d be waiting for a project to wrap up or there’d be pieces that were not ready for us so we’d have to pivot and go to other jobs. There’s some loss of efficiency there. We felt that on the service side of things you could get a lot more done and in an efficient manner. And we have processes to ensure customers stay steady daily. It’s much more controllable, the service side, especially as you scale.”

In February 2021, Cornel’s added an excavation division, including sewer replacement and rehab. That contributed to growth, but the company recently scaled back in that area during summer 2024, now having two techs available for drain cleaning calls only and referring out any major work.

“The market seemed to shift a little bit,” Morariu says. “It seemed a lot of people were getting into that field. Just the lead cost alone was very high for what it was. Equipment was expensive, the liability for doing it was high. I don’t know if the demand for it is quite there, and we wanted to allocate more to other areas of the business.”

One of those other areas was the HVAC division, which Cornel’s launched in July 2023.

“Expanding into HVAC has always been part of the bigger vision,” Morariu says. “I’ve long aimed to offer the ‘big three’ in home services — plumbing, HVAC and electrical. HVAC was a natural next step for us, and so far, it’s been going really well. Of course, there have been challenges — finding the right people and managing the increased workload — but overall, it’s been a great addition to our business and one we’re excited to continue growing.”

At the moment, HVAC is about 35% of Cornel’s workload with plumbing-related services making up the remainder. Morariu says he believes the breakdown between the two service areas will soon be 50/50.

Cornel’s maintains a fleet of about 30 Ford Transit service vehicles. On the plumbing side, it uses RIDGID inspection cameras and locators, Spartan drain machines, and JETTERS NORTHWEST’s Eagle line of jetters.

For the HVAC side, Cornel’s works with Daikin ductless and unitary systems and is recognized as a Daikin Comfort Pro. The company is also a Rinnai Pro, using Rinnai systems for many installations. For tank-style water heaters, Cornel’s relies on Bradford White, and for fixtures, the company uses brands like Delta and Kohler.

A STRONG IMPRESSION

Another key part of Cornel’s growth has been its branding.

“Growing beyond just my dad and I, I knew branding was going to be a big piece, so I got to work immediately on it,” Morariu says.

He created a logo.

“We started with a black-and-white logo. I tried to make it clean. A simple but timeless design,” Morariu says.

He built the first iterations of the company’s website, a skill set he had from building websites for other people. That was the start, but more recently in October 2023, Cornel’s underwent a rebranding to further boost its visibility — a new logo, this time incorporating a mascot, that is part of all areas of the company’s identity, including a redesigned website and service vehicle wraps.

“Our previous branding was OK, but it didn’t convey the right emotions, didn’t line up with who we are,” Morariu says. “I feel like this brand better aligns with all that.”

It’s a far cry from the previous black-and-white stamp-like logo. The new branding uses bright, eye-catching colors, something Morariu says he believes helps a lot for being visible and warm and inviting to people in Portland’s often dark and rainy climate.

“I think people knew of us, but I don’t feel like we left a large impression until the rebrand,” Morariu says. “Now it’s hard to miss the trucks. They’re super bright.

Accompanying that new color palette is the company mascot, a cartoon lynx in a plumber’s uniform. The lynx is the national animal of Romania, so it refers back to Cornel’s roots. KickCharge Creative assisted the company on the rebrand.

“We knew we wanted to do a mascot because it definitely can convey an emotion with people, seeing a great mascot,” Morariu says. “When we were thinking about what the mascot needed to be we thought about the lynx, it being the Romanian national animal. So we chose to do that as a nod to our heritage and where we came from. And then the color scheme, again just colors that really pop. We wanted to  make a big impression and be loud in the market, to stand out from the competition.

“I think it’s had a huge impact on business. Just from a cultural standpoint employees love it. And our customer base loves it. We’ve gotten tons of feedback. The feedback I get is usually when I encounter somebody I haven’t talked to before and I mention our trucks. Most of the time they’ve seen the vehicles because we have people on the road. It just seems like the attention aspect of it has been big with us driving around constantly and people seeing us in the neighborhoods. Being a cohesive, professional brand has yielded results. We’re not the cheapest on the market, and we don’t try to be because we provide an outstanding level of service. But it helps to have a really put together brand for that first impression with customers.”

SEEKING EFFICIENCIES

Another important aspect of business growth is operational efficiencies, and Cornel’s is always looking for ways to streamline operations. A recent example of that is its move to a vendor managed inventory system.

“We see it going really well from a cash flow standpoint and a reporting standpoint. Those were the big factors for moving to a VMI versus just doing it ourselves,” Morariu says. 

Cornel’s has contracted with Standard Supply to manage its VMI. It means Standard Supply handles all aspects of Cornel’s inventory, monitoring materials and making sure Cornel’s has everything it needs at any given time to handle its workload.

“This means we don’t have to carry the financial burden of purchasing and storing large amounts of equipment and materials ourselves,” Morariu says. “It’s allowed us to focus on growth without being held back by inventory concerns. When you do it yourself, you’ve got the carry cost of the material, paying someone for the labor of managing it, the training. There’s a lot of overhead expense that gets cut out from having a business do all that for you. The way I explained it to our team was we’ve built a business around providing great service to our customers. And Standard Supply has built a business around doing that for their customers, which is us.”

Especially when you’re in the process of growing a business, Morariu says something like a VMI is very beneficial.

“Carrying the cost of material in-house is fine, but if someone else can do that for you it becomes increasingly helpful, especially at scale,” he says. “Just to be able to say, ‘Hey, this is the percent of scale we’re looking at in the next year, make sure to scale material accordingly,’ and have someone else worry about that instead of our team. It’s going to be huge for our future.”

GLUE GUY

Even though Morariu has largely taken the reins of the family business and its future prospects, his father is still a strong presence in the company. Cornel’s has grown well beyond its one-person-shop origins, but at its core is the culture that began in the 1980s with a plumber in Romania traveling to jobs on a bicycle.

“My dad provides a lot of support to the guys in the field and is just generally a big culture fit for them,” Morariu says. “Being that person who greets the guys in the morning. New guys get the same respect as the people who have been here forever. You’ll find him doing whatever is necessary. If someone needs a tool, that’s him. He is in charge of building the fleet out and the fleet maintenance.

“He’s kind of the glue that holds things together.”