Photo: Garage Kings Salt Lake City
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Oct 1, 2021 (Gephardt Daily/Bill’s Marketplace/Sponsored) – Garage Kings, the Salt Lake area family-owned business specializing in state-of-the-art flooring for covering for garages, basements, front porches, sidewalks and patios, is expanding to meet growing demand across the state of Utah.
Whether installing the latest in epoxy flooring, or applying their high-tech, durable Polyaspartic Flake Finish to a home or business, the Garage Kings’ crews are rolling dusk to dawn up and down the Wasatch Front.
It’s taken years of hard work, nurtured by not only keen business insight, but also a delightful twist of fate, one which led to a most unlikely “family reunion” with the discovery of a “long lost relative,” someone they had know for years, but who is now officially part of the family and an indispensable part of the team.
The four year old business was initially run by Hoosier brothers Devin and Drake Myers. They followed dad Rick’s’ advice, who saw the rising popularity of the emerging floor coating industry as a unique business opportunity and urged them to take the plunge.
The brothers started the SLC area operation as a small team applying epoxy coatings to cement garage floors for customers across the Wasatch Front. Word of their unique product and customer service quickly spread – most all of it by word of mouth – and demand grew steadily – at first a trickle, then a stream; the brothers soon realized it was time to scale up.
Fast-forward and the business is a thriving concern with family members managing 12 floor-installation crews, a small fleet of company trailers, a sales department, commercial and residential divisions, and countless happy customers in Salt Lake County, Davis County, Utah County, Summit County, and even a following in St. George.
Photo: Garage Kings Salt Lake City
At the calm center of the burgeoning business “hurricane” is administrative coordinator Mary Myers, who, as a lifelong organizer and a career event planner back home in Indiana, brought unique qualifications to the table.
She also happens to Devin and Drake’s mother.
“I’m the house mom,” Mary said with a laugh, explaining that she signed on after the business’s early growth, and she realized two men working around the clock to install floor treatments could not reasonably be expected to find time to schedule jobs, answer phones, order supplies, troubleshoot problems, and manage every other aspect of an upstart operation.
Photo: Garage Kings Salt Lake City
“There was so much business for just for the two of them,” Mary said. “I was watching them work to get a handle on things, and being in the event, business, and doing weddings I was like, oh, I gotta get my hands on this! I really like organizing businesses. So, I came in and helped them get organized and learned everything I possibly could about the operation. I actually installed floors with them for about six to eight months.”
Besides the original and standard solid epoxy finish, the company now offers a decorative marble epoxy finish, which has been described as “art on your floor,” and their signature Polyaspartic Flake Finish, an especially good choice for high-use and commercial projects.
“The cement covering also protects from stains and permanent damage from automobile fluids, leaky lawn mowers, chemical spills, spilled paint, vehicle and foot traffic, and even tire marks.”
Besides garage floors, the finishes can be applied to porches, kitchens, walkways, bathrooms, and around pools, or anywhere a customer seeks a protective surface with durability and flair.
“With the different options, there’s something for almost every budget,” Mary said.
One of the challenges Mary helped navigate was the sudden change in the business climate in 2020. Yet despite the challenges posed by the pandemic demand for Garage Kings services continued to grow. The number of job bookings actually increased as the year progressed.
“I think it’s because people were at home all this time and suddenly focusing on things that they needed or wanted to improve.” Mary said.
To help deal with the spike in job bookings Mary hired Britney Luedke, a trusted family friend, who grew up with Drake as a classmate growing up back in Indiana. Britney and Mary were known to think alike, and was jokingly known as “M.J.” for “Mary Junior.”
In early 2020 Britney was a working aboard the Queen Mary, the famous ocean-liner turned floating hotel in Long Beach, Calif., when the pandemic put her job in dry dock. She agreed to the Myers’ family offer join them in Salt Lake City as Garage Kings’ administrative specialist.
Britney’s decision to join the Garage King team was considered a homecoming. She she had long been “thought” of as family after all, but little did anyone know the family connection was more than just a feeling.
“I was looking for a long lost relative,” Mary explained. “I was using an ancestry research site and had done a DNA test. I told Britney how much fun I was having and told he she should research her own family tree.”
The next time Mary checked her account on the ancestry research site, she had notification of a new relative, one that hit close to home.
“Turns out I have a not so distant cousin; her name is Britney Luedke,” Mary said, laughing! “So it really is a family business, after all! ”
To learn more about Garage Kings Salt Lake City and their state of art garage flooring coverings, check out their website or call 1-385-695-6244.
Photo: Garage Kings Salt Lake City
Garage Kings Salt City is a sponsor of Bill’s Marketplace & Gephardt Daily
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