Martin Pettigrew is the owner and CEO of Monarch Roofing and Monarch Solar

Monarch Roofing has locations in both Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head, South Carolina, as well as in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Amassing this number of locations and running a successful roofing business is a strong testament to Pettigrew’s resolve and work ethic.

Pettigrew, a French-Canadian, was born in Rimouski, a small city located in the province of Quebec.

It wasn’t until Pettigrew was eighteen years old that he immigrated to the United States to pursue a career as a golfer.

This led to him enrolling at St. Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania as a member of the Red Flash’s NCAA Division-I golf team.

Following graduation, Pettigrew transitioned to Myrtle Beach to pursue a professional golf career, but after that dream fell short, he decided to stay in the local area and work toward becoming a roofing contractor.

While in the process of becoming a contractor, Pettigrew worked multiple jobs.

This included parking cars at night as a valet, where he would frequently interact with successful roofing business owners from the Myrtle Beach area.

“It was great money. I was really interested in what the contractors did for work. It seemed like they were living the dream. I saw them as rockstars, but I also learned something very important,” Pettigrew says, noting how the contractors’ who frequented the club he worked at weren’t prioritizing their roofing businesses like he expected.

“Once I started asking questions, I found out that they were not doing what was right for the homeowner. They would tell me they didn’t care if they did a good or bad job because there was so much work out there. That was in 2007.”

Soon, once the American economy tanked, so too did the roofing businesses of the local contractors.

“Every single one of them went out of business,” says Pettigrew. “It was infuriating because I was working two jobs just to barely get by, and they had it so easy.”

Armed with the knowledge of how not to run a roofing business, Pettigrew soon started his own company.

He says his goal has always been to take the “con” out of contracting.

“I want to bring professionalism to our industry. That’s what I’m passionate about. I am obsessed with our customers. I want to do what’s right for them,” he says.

This mentality is exemplified across every department at Monarch Roofing, another reason why the company is experiencing success.

“The entire team at Monarch Roofing is focused on what we have to do to better serve our communities,” Pettigrew says.

Part of this strategy includes investing in vehicle wraps, a tactic Pettigrew employs that allows him to stand out from his competition.

“When we talk about branding, that is the best way to brand because when we go to meet a homeowner, they have already seen our trucks,” he says.

Beyond brand-sensitive truck decals, another key to Monarch Roofing winning jobs has been their ability to consistently follow-up with homeowners during the sales process.

“If you don’t keep up with the homeowner, they will start to lose interest because someone else will knock on their door and give them a free estimate,” Pettigrew explains.

“If we don’t keep up with prospective clients, then they’re going to go somewhere else. We can control the follow-up process better from the inside. It’s easy to send a text message or email so then the outside salesmen can just go to appointments.”

In doing so, Monarch Roofing is then able to deploy more salesmen to more homes, which in turn results in more sales and revenue.

“Instead of going to three appointments a day, we can go to ten appointments a day. The company who goes to ten appointments a day is going to win,” remarks Pettigrew.

Despite having good systems in place to win more jobs, Monarch Roofing has still encountered their fair share of challenges, most notably back when the aforementioned recession affected roofing businesses everywhere.

“We couldn’t find any jobs back then because the recession just hit,” Pettigrew reveals, but slowly Monarch Roofing established a client base, and they eventually landed a metal roofing job that totaled $33,000.

Pettigrew thought he was finally turning a corner, but he soon learned he had bid the job for $5,000 less than he should have.

“Even though it was a colossal failure, I learned how to price metal roofs,” Pettigrew says of that incident.

These days, Monarch Roofing sells a lot of metal roofing jobs. They even produce their own metal.

Carl Martin is the Maverick Metal Fabrication General Manager for Monarch Solar.

He says the company decided to make their own metal because they felt they could execute the production process better than their competitors.

“We started doing metal because we saw a need within the business. We weren’t getting the service from other companies that we wanted. We figured that since our roofing concept works, we could apply that same model toward a metal roofing business and do it better than everyone else,” Martin explains.

By being willing to take risks, Monarch Roofing has steadily been able to evolve their roofing business.

“You learn so many things by embracing failure,” says Pettigrew. “As long as you’re alert and willing to learn, then you shouldn’t be afraid of failure.”

Part of evolving also includes having a top-notch team that can be delegated tasks.

Pettigrew is a huge proponent of delegating assignments to other team members, but emphasizes that before delegating, roofing business owners should first educate their employees.

“With delegation, you have to first teach someone how to follow your process. The best way to teach someone is to master it yourself. Then you can do it with someone else, and before you know it, they’re doing it on their own,” Pettigrew says.

Pettigrew’s business philosophies are why he has the utmost belief that his team will perform, and also why homeowners should feel confident that Monarch Roofing will work to ensure their roofs are being handled correctly.

“Every homeowner wants the same thing. They all want to get serviced. It’s very important that we focus all our efforts towards doing what’s right for the homeowner. We are obsessed with our customers,” Pettigrew says, adding that his commitment to the local market goes beyond just helping homeowners get new roofs.

“We focus on giving back to the communities. We donate roofs to veterans because we’re very passionate about veterans.”

Pettigrew’s devotion to doing what’s right also extends to helping his local community by hiring as many people as he can, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many people becoming unemployed.

Explains Pettigrew:

“The roofing industry is challenging because we thought it was going to slow down in 2020, but it ended up being busier than ever. There were a lot of storms, wind damage, and hail damage. When COVID hit, we thought everybody was going to be panicking but instead it was a perfect opportunity for us to start hiring people because the unemployment rate was really high.”

“We took advantage of this by hiring a lot of people. We have recruiters who allow us to pick the best talent to join our company. All things considered, we made the most out of a year that should have been really negative.”

At Monarch Roofing, the company motto is that homeowners deserve the best.

Based on what we have learned from them so far, Monarch Roofing is certainly embodying that motto in all facets of their roofing business.

To learn more about Monarch Roofing, visit their website today!