Westchester County Business Journal Getting her way
Getting her way
Most entrepreneurs are lucky to have just one epiphany when constructing an enterprise.
Barbara Kavovit had three: her first clients; her divorce and an episode of “Sex and The City” when Samantha buys her own apartment.
Now the once bankrupt businesswoman is on the cusp of rebranding herself in the world of home improvement.
Through Barbara’s Way, Kavovit turned adversity into opportunity.
After graduating from SUNY Oswego with a degree in finance and economics, she returned to her family’s New Rochelle home. It was in 1991 when she found her true knack for home repairs when launching company Stand-Ins Corp.
“I would hear my mom and her friends complain that their husbands didn’t do anything around the house,” Kavovit said. “I came up with this idea that women shouldn’t have to rely on their husbands and they should be able to do basic home repairs themselves.”
The budding entrepreneur would stand outside of the Golden Horseshoe Shopping Center in Scarsdale to approach women who exited the Gristede’s grocery store.
“I would go up to them just like a politician, introduce myself and say, ‘I started a small home repair business and is there anything you need done in your house?’” she said. “And, believe it or not, they started calling.”
Queries ranged from leaky faucets to cracks in the driveway as Kavovit leafed through local publications for carpenters, electricians and tile men to contract with.
“I was all of 22 or 23 at the time, wore a tool belt and it was really an empowering feeling,” she said. “I would say about a year into it, I wrote a letter to IBM. I told them that with such a large corporate headquarters, there were probably a lot of contractors who didn’t want to deal with the small stuff. I said, ‘I don’t sweat the small stuff. Let me come up for a meeting.’”
Kavovit subsequently snagged a two-year contract for small, minor repairs at the corporate headquarters.
Through due diligence, her contract was extended to a Purchase facility where MasterCard is today.
Her project portfolio began to grow as Kavovit contracted a multimillion-dollar Riva Pointe Project in Weehawken, N.J., and managed construction of a Micro Bio-Medics facility in Pelham and Absolute Coatings in New Rochelle.
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