July 1999 Making Home a Little More Accessible Venture Magazine, July 1999 Issue Age or injury can turn a person's home into an obstacle course of slippery bathtubs, insurmountable stairways and arthritis-aggravating switches. One solution is to outfit the house with grab bars, wheelchair ramps, intercoms and other safety devices. Most any handyman could do it, but a Nashville company is finding it a lucrative niche market. "We're providing one-stop shopping for all the modifications," says Mark Fry, one of three partners in Life@Home, Inc. The company is an offshoot of MKF Construction, a residential renovation and remodeling firm Fry has run since 1995. MKF was getting so much home safety work that a separate operation seemed viable. Life@Home will walk through a client's house to spot problem areas, asses which devices are needed, furnish the products and install them. The analysis is free. Most of the jobs end up costing $200 to $400. Fry's own market research showed how much of a hassle it can be for the typical homeowner to find good installers. "We spent about a day calling handymen and plumbers," Fry recalls. "Half of the time you wouldn't get them. And then they really couldn't give you a firm price. Then they'd have to buy it from a local hardware store." Ventures got a taste of that procedure by calling 12 handyman services in the Twin Cities area and listening to their answering machines before connecting with Walt Lindahl, owner of Walt's Handyman Service in Plymouth. "It's probably a good market to get into," Lindahl says of home safety equipment. "I've never heard of anybody specializing in things like that." But the local handyman market is highly competitive, he warns, and a lot of elderly people don't have much money to shell out for such hardware. That all depends on where you look, counters Fry. "One of the things we're doing is talking with rehab centers," he says. Physical therapist often recommend that their clients get home safety devices, but leave it at that. Now Life@Home is getting referrals. It's a growth market. Fry gives figures from the National Center of Health Statistics showing 34 million people over the age 65 in 1997, a number expected to swell nearly 70 million by 2030. Those numbers put visions of franchises in Fry's head. "We found there's just a lot of local people doing it; no national presence. That's what we hope to become," he says. Fry has his master's in business administration, while partner Ronnie Ferguson has franchise experience. Richie Simmons is the remodeling expert of the trio. "It's definitely a business that could be run part-time or out of the house," says Fry. He's hoping to put the franchise fee at $25,000 or less. Fry hopes to have the first Life@Home franchises elsewhere in Tennessee by the end of this year. Located at 4701 Trousdale Drive, Suite 114, Life@Home is open from 7:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. For information, (615) 831-5411 |