Sutherland Plumbing Relies on Repeat Customers

Ti Sutherland, owner of Sutherland Plumbing in metropolitan Portland, Oregon, doesn’t sweat the competition. Sure, Portland has a substantial population base of 2.5 million, but there’s plenty of work to go around. There are also plenty of plumbers to fill the bill.“Your competitors are not your enemies,” Sutherland says. “They’re your friends. We’re all out here doing the same thing. There is plenty of market share; you don’t have to do any shady business or undercut to try to win business. It’s not sustainable when you’re that way.“A lot of my success came on the coattails of discovering that,” he