By Claudia Loucks
Geneseo Current
Neal Erdman is ready to unveil the showrooms at the new home of his business, Erdman Construction, 101 South Chicago St., Geneseo. The grand opening will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday and the public is invited.
Food and lemonade trucks will be available for guests to purchase items and Erdman will provide beverages from Geneseo Brewing Company to guests.
Erdman started his construction business in 2019 after doing projects for friends, family and other people in the area.
“I got very busy with those work projects and decided to turn it into a full time business,” he said.
In the beginning it was just Erdman doing all of the work – from projects in the field to all of the sales and office work.
“It quickly became a lot of work so I hired a bookkeeper (Heidi) to help with some of the office work. She is still with Erdman Construction and has become an integral part of the internal operations of the business.”
In the beginning, Erdman worked out of his garage, which he used as his shop, and an extra bedroom in his home became his office.
“I began to hire carpenters to help with the increased workload and in the winter of 2020 space became available at 105 South Chicago St. and we moved the business into that location. The space was a former dance studio, next to Mega Tan and I remember sitting in that huge space, with my little desk as the only furniture and thinking ‘this is too much space, what will we do with it all’?’’
When asked about the biggest hurdle he had to overcome in running his own business, Erdman replied, “Right after I moved into the new space in the winter of 2020, things shut down as a result of Covid. The first few months were a bit scary as the phones did not ring much. I kept the marketing going, and eventually the phones started ringing and have never stopped. I hired business coaches to teach me how to scale a business without making some of the mistakes that could happen along the way.”
One year later, 2021, Erdman Construction had many more carpenters than Erdman himself in addition to a project manager. Office space and a showroom were added…”We hired even more carpenters and sales staff to handle the increased workload,” he said. “We partnered with Amwood Homes for our new home construction side of the business and we became very busy building homes on top of all our room additions and remodels.”
In addition to the already heavy workload, Erdman decided to obtain his roofing license for Illinois and said, “We quickly became very busy in our roofing and exterior department, and I brought on two roofing salesmen and it didn’t take long until we felt we had outgrown our current space, that at one time had seemed like too much space, and needed to look for something larger”
The current home of Erdman Construction, right across the parking lot from where they were located, became available in the fall of 2023 and Neal Erdman said, “We jumped on the opportunity. We decided to expand our services again into cabinet retail and began to build out our showroom and cabinet design center in our new building.”
“With the help of all of our great team members, we have built a premiere showroom for our new home selection process and cabinet retail space,” he added.
Erdman currently has 18 employees from field crews to project managers, sales staff, marketing and customer relations, office staff and an in-house design coordinator.
When asked why he started his construction business, Erdman replied, “I felt that I could be successful by focusing on quality, customer experience and integrity, and I will continue to do that.”