Growing up around the plumbing industry and watching their father, Bob Ray as he worked endless hours diligently growing his business, made the opportunity to purchase Atlas Plumbing for brother and sister, Rod and Sunshine Ray even more special.
Rod Ray worked alongside his father from a young age, being mentored and taught the trade. He became his father’s business partner in 2011.
In early 2014, Rod approached his sister Sunshine about buying their father’s business and becoming co-owners and partners. This new ownership team would consist of Rod’s plumbing knowledge and expertise, and Sunshine’s business marketing degree.
“One of my favorite things to share about Atlas Plumbing is that my father truly built a million-dollar company on his good name,” Sunshine Ray says. “He would always say, ‘Sunshine, do your best by every customer with genuine integrity in all your work. Honesty goes a long way in this industry.’”
Rod and Sunshine attribute this foundation to what inspired their rebranding efforts, designs and ideas in bringing back a vintage look and good time feel.
“Most people have a pretty good idea of what a plumber does,” Sunshine Ray says. “So, we wanted to keep our new look straight forward and fun. Dan Antonelli, creative director and chief creative officer of KickCharge Creative brought Atlas Plumbing’s vintage goodtime feeling ‘to life’ creating the branding, logo and truck wrap.”
The company has since grown to have 20 employees and 12 vehicles. Six of the 12 vehicles are wrapped. Three are on deck to be wrapped, while the others will keep the old Atlas signage so that the logos can be easily covered when subcontracting cure in place liners and sewer services for other local plumbing contractors.
A New Direction
“We just won the Best Plumber award for Henderson which is super exciting,” she adds. “We are going to be featured on the cover of a local Henderson community magazine. Actually, what’s really cool is we’re going to get some commercial time on our local channel as well.”
Since purchasing the company, Sunshine feels the opportunities for marketing at this point are endless since there was never any marketing done.
“Some of the marketing avenues we have chosen so far are at our local grocery store on the front and back of the store carts,” Sunshine Ray says. “We are the local plumbing authority in a couple different community magazines and are in this year’s Golden Knights Yearbook.
“We hired Scorpion, our amazing marketing team that designed and implemented our website,” she adds. “They handle our PPC campaign, Google service listings and blog.”
“There is still so much more to do but I’m just so excited for each step of our future,” she exclaims. “Rod and I know we could not have made such a great impact with the new branding if our service and overall performance did not match. Each member of our Atlas team brings their own unique talents, personality and care that have made Atlas Plumbing stand above the rest. Sky’s the limit!”
