Delamere Industries Inc. is a privately owned company since December 2015 in Brooksville Florida. The company specializes in the manufacture and installation of FDOT handrail and fencing products, primarily commercial, throughout the state of Florida. Before becoming Delamere Industries, the company had been in business as Elite Fence for 16 years. Throughout the entire timeframe, the company has been widely recognized as a leader in its field.
Founded in: 2015
Hernando County
Manufacturing
70% Increase
172% Increase
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
Paul Hughes (President and CEO) is a Chemical Engineer with an executive leadership background in the Oil business. Nicole Hughes (CIO) has a Finance & Marketing background. It has always been our plan to own and operate our own company. However, having started with nothing, we needed to save many years to establish startup funds.
Was there an ah-hah moment that led you to your entrepreneurial journey or the idea for your company?
Once we had established funding to start our business it was a foregone conclusion that we would move forward. We spent time learning how to fully leverage our finance options and it was the realization that we could utilize 401(K) funding, without tax implications, combined with an SBA loan to provide extra startup funding that pushed us over the final hurdle.
Tell us about your business and the value it brings to your customers.
Delamere Industries Manufactures and Installs high-quality Industrial Handrail and Fencing for customers all over Florida. Our prime customers are large construction companies, the Florida Department of Transportation, and municipalities. We have established a reputation for quality, safety, on-time, and on-cost performance. When we gain a new customer, they tend to come back and become a long-term partner.
Tell us about your company culture.
We try hard to maintain a family feel for our company. New employees are welcomed and quickly become a part of the team. Delamere is a little old school when it comes to company events and we enjoy Christmas parties with Santa for all of our employee’s children and other events throughout the year. We firmly believe in being fair with our customers and supplying our products at a competitive and reasonable price. Quality performance is a top priority for all our employees…. We do exactly what we say we’ll do and always fulfill our commitments.
What’s your competitive edge?
Our skilled employees, quality, pricing, and on-time performance.
Cashflow flexibility has been a challenge since its inception. As a manufacturer we often have a large amount of cash tied up in inventory and growth is expensive. We have worked hard to ensure that we stay ahead of our growth when it comes to available cash. Hiring the right employees has also been a challenge. We usually train employees in house as there is a lack of manufacturing capability in the local recruitment pool.
The Hernando County Economic Development team has been extremely helpful over the past few years. Our team of external bankers, lawyers, accountants and the SBA have also been great resources.
We continue to be pulled to do more by our customers and our contract backlog is growing very quickly. We hope to double in size within 2-3 years and again within 5-6 years.
Our sales team is starting to focus on out-of-state projects because of customer needs. We don’t see any slowdown coming in the foreseeable future.
It’s not any one moment or event. For me, it’s taking pride in watching our employees grow and improve their lives through dedication and working hard.
What does it mean to be selected as an Honoree?
We are all delighted to receive the award and still can’t believe that we are being recognized in this way. Many of our customers appear to be very impressed with our achievement and we hope that this leads to increased sales.
We are also looking forward to utilizing the resources that are now available to us through GrowFL.
What is your advice for aspiring or fellow business owners?
When starting a business there are no half measures… You need to give the business 100% of your effort, 100% of your time, and 100% of your resources until you are established…… Once you have established a great team and all of the wheels are turning, life is much more fun!
GrowFL is driven by one goal – to cultivate second-stage growth companies across the state. Second-stage companies are the backbone of Florida’s economy and the definition of economic success and prosperity.
GrowFL, through our diverse programs and services, provides proven methods to help overcome unique challenges facing second-stage companies as they grow.
