Conference Call: Why Kenco Roots for "Competitors" Like Mrs. K's Home Repair & Construction
Kenco Academy presents: Conference Call, a series featuring the local businesses in our conference. Different teams, sometimes competing for the same championships, all invested in the same season going well.
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Around here, everybody understands conference rivalries. Two teams can be in the same conference, compete hard when they line up against each other, and still want the conference as a whole to be strong. Because, at the end of the day, a good conference raises everyone's level… and a weak one drags everybody down with it.
We think the home improvement industry works the same way, even though most contractors don't treat it that way. The old habit is to treat every other company within driving distance as a threat: guard your leads, never refer work out, assume that if a homeowner calls someone else, you've lost. That's a non-conference mindset in a business that's a lot more like a conference than people realize.
At Kenco, we believe the best defense is a good offense. We build relationships with businesses that share our values — even when our services overlap and we're technically going after some of the same jobs — because a homeowner who ends up with the right contractor is good for the whole conference, not just whoever wins that one matchup.
Mrs. K's Home Repair & Construction is a good example of what that looks like, and it's the first team we're featuring in Conference Call, an ongoing Kenco Academy series
introducing you to more of the local businesses we compete alongside and refer to, one matchup at a time.
To be clear up front: Kenco and Mrs. K's are two separate, independently owned and operated companies. This isn't a merger or a joint venture. It's simpler than that, and more like conference affiliation than a front-office move. These are two different teams, two different rosters, same conference, and same interest in the product put on the field being worth watching.
A Business Built on Adapting to What Homeowners Actually Need
Mrs. K's got its start about three and a half years ago, growing out of a flooring company that kept running into the same problem: customers needed minor repairs and subfloor work that didn't fit neatly into a flooring installation. So that work was either outsourced or given away for free. Rather than keep leaking that value elsewhere, the team built a dedicated handyman business to capture it.
From there, it grew: painting, kitchen and bathroom renovations, partnerships with real estate agents and restoration companies, and more coming every week. Today, Mrs. K's operates as a general home repair and renovation company… one that, like Kenco, has had to figure out payroll, cash flow, and staffing through a mix of W-2 employees and 1099 subcontractors to stay flexible as demand shifts.
That kind of adaptability (building the business around what customers actually need rather than what the original game plan said) is something we respect. It's a big part of why we wanted Mrs. K's in our conference.
Where We Overlap, and Why That's Not a Problem
Here's the part that might surprise you: Mrs. K's and Kenco both offer some of the same services, like decking, siding repairs, and shutters. On paper, that makes us direct competitors. Two teams + competing in the same sports + right down the road from each other. (Sound familiar?)
In practice, it just means we occasionally play against each other… and we're fine with that.
When a project falls outside what we consider our core strength, we don't want to talk a homeowner into it anyway. We'd rather hand them off to the team that lives and breathes that work every day. So the roster split looks like this:
Kenco's position: windows, exterior doors, sunrooms, and roofing — the products and installations we've built our reputation on
Mrs. K's position: painting/staining, drywall, interior doors, flooring, bathrooms, kitchens, attic insulation, and more of the renovation work that requires a different kind of craftsmanship and project management
For the handful of services where we both take the field, like decking, and shutters, we simply refer based on fit: whichever team is the better match for that homeowner's specific project, timeline, or budget gets the call. Nobody's keeping a rivalry scoreboard. The goal is the right outcome for the homeowner, not a win for either team.
A Shared Playbook: Trusted Advisor, Not Salesperson
One thing that came through clearly in our conversation with Mrs. K's is a philosophy we run just as hard at Kenco: we don't show up with one product and a four-hour sit-down at the kitchen table trying to convince you that what you actually need is whatever we happen to be selling. That's an old playbook, and it treats the homeowner like an opponent to be out-argued instead of a person to be helped.
Our approach, and Mrs. K's approach, starts with listening to what the customer actually wants, then matching that against what we know, from experience, to be reliable, high-quality products paired with installation that's built to last. That mindset is a big part of why we at Kenco built our own Carolina Collection window lineup in the first place… so that, instead of steering everyone toward whatever’s easiest to sell no matter what a homeowner tells us they need, we have a genuinely good option to match them with. Sometimes that means the product we'd recommend isn't the one we walked in planning to pitch. That's fine. The recommendation has to fit the homeowner, not the other way around.
Mrs. K's has built that trust in part by being deliberate about how they communicate. Home renovation decisions are very often led by women in the household, and Mrs. K's — which is itself a woman-owned business — has shaped their approach around that reality: how they listen, how they explain options, how they follow up. It's a small detail with a big impact: it's the difference between a homeowner feeling talked at and a homeowner feeling heard.
That's the same standard we hold at Kenco. A trusted advisor asks questions before calling the play. A salesperson doesn't.
Sharing the Roster
Being in the same conference isn't just about respecting each other from a distance. It’s also about the people who actually do the work. Vetting quality subcontractors is one of the hardest, most time-consuming parts of running a home improvement business, and it's a challenge every team in this conference deals with. So Kenco and Mrs. K's are working together to share vetted craftsmen and craftswomen between our two companies.
For the subcontractors, that means steadier, more consistent work. For homeowners, it means the same quality bar whether the truck in the driveway says Kenco or Mrs. K's.
Serving the "Missing Middle"
Both of our companies have made a conscious choice not to chase the extremes. Neither of us wants to be the team that only takes the smallest handyman tasks or the sprawling, high-end renovations. Instead, we focus on what we think of as the missing middle: the standard homeowner with a real project, a real budget, and a real need for craftsmanship who often gets overlooked by contractors chasing bigger tickets.
That's a lot of ground to cover! From a single window replacement to a full sunroom addition, from a bathroom refresh to a full kitchen remodel, and no single team covers all of it best. That's exactly why relationships like this one matter. When a project calls for someone else's position, a good handoff beats a mediocre attempt to play out of position every time.
What This Means for You
If you're a Kenco customer, this means that when a project comes up that isn't our position — say, stylish flooring in your beautiful new sunroom 😉 — we're not going to leave you to figure it out alone. We'll hand you off to a team we trust and stand behind.
If you're a Mrs. K's customer, the same is true in reverse: when it's time for sharp, energy-efficient windows to enjoy the view from your modern, updated new kitchen and bathrooms 😎, you're being referred to a company that Mrs. K's trusts with their own name.
We hope you come to appreciate this partnership as much as we have. At the end of the day, we’re simply two independent companies in the same conference, both built on the belief that recommending the right team for the job, even when it's not us, is what actually earns long-term trust.
That's the whole idea behind Conference Call: introducing you to the teams in our conference we've come to trust… even when that means sending you somewhere other than straight to a Kenco quote. We think that's what being a trusted advisor actually looks like, and we're excited to introduce you to more teams in the coming weeks!
Have a project that spans both exterior and interior work? Reach out to either team — we'll each play our position and make sure the handoff stays smooth.
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