MANALAPAN – Studies confirm that only a small slice of American businesses ever make it to their 50th anniversary or beyond. Ace Home Improvements in Manalapan beat those odds and passed that milestone a long time ago.
“My grandfather Gus and my Uncle Billy started the business in 1953,” said David Fisher, 50, third-generation owner and president of the company and a lifelong Marlboro resident. “They were chicken farmers, but both of them were handy people who saw an opportunity to start a home improvement business in the booming, post-World War II market.
“They started out selling aluminum windows and storm doors in a space behind Federici’s Family Restaurant in Freehold and named the company Ace Aluminum Products because that ensured that it would appear at the front of the phone book,” Fisher said. (The company is unrelated to the Ace Hardware store chain.)
After a fire destroyed their space, the business relocated to 17 South St. in Freehold from 1958 to 2004 (in a facility now housing Aurum Events and Catering) and ultimately moved to their current location in 2004 to a building in Manalapan that the family purchased and custom-designed to fit their growing needs, offering siding, roofing, windows, doors and an ever-expanding array of other home remodeling product and services.
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“Eventually, my father Barry and my Uncle Irving joined the business with Gus and Billy and my father and two uncles continued to run it when Gus died in 1977,” said Fisher, whose father took on the role of president in 1995.
Growing up, “I always knew I’d go into the business,” Fisher recalled. “As a kid, I worked in the shop helping the warehouse manager and doing other jobs like repairing screens and loading trucks, and then during summers at college I worked in the warehouse stocking material.”
And though Fisher graduated with a business/accounting degree from the University of Maryland and worked as a CPA at a large accounting firm in Manhattan from 1995 to 2000, his full-time return to his family business was only a step away.
“In 1995, my uncles Billy and Irving both retired, leaving my dad to run the business alone, which he did for five years,” Fisher said. “He ultimately reached out to me because he needed help and I was ready to leave my accounting job and commit full-time to Ace. I came into the family business in 2000 and my father and I became partners for many years; he recently semi-retired and I became the president and sole owner two years ago.”
‘Different crews for every product and project’
Today, from their 10,000-square-foot space on Route 9, which features a customer showroom, offices and shop on the ground floor and a warehouse upstairs serviced by an elevator, customers will find a one-stop shop of home remodeling products.
“We provide everything from windows, roofing, siding, doors and awnings and have expanded into masonry as well as kitchen, bath and basement construction to keep up with the times,” Fisher said. “We offer top-notch brands, including Okna windows, ProVia doors, Raynor garage doors, Craft-Bilt awnings and room enclosures, and TimberTech AZEK decking, and we sell and install Andersen and Marvin windows as well.
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“After a customer calls us, we’ll typically go to their house to assess their needs and take measurements, and then we’ll invite them into our showroom, where we have our products on display so that they can see and touch samples and ask questions,” Fisher said of his company’s process.
“We have a team of expert installers who specialize in what they do by product area, so there are different crews for every product and project,” he noted. “Projects can range from the simple purchase and installation of a storm door for under $1,000 to large jobs featuring a full suite of windows, doors, siding, roofing and more for over $100,000.
“While most of our customers are from Monmouth, Ocean and Middlesex Counties,” he added, “we’ll travel for a referral or a previous customer and we service all of New Jersey.”
Among industry trends, Fisher said that window, door and siding technology has come a long way over the years.
“We were called Ace Aluminum for most of our existence because aluminum was a major material used in these applications, but ultimately vinyl and composite became popular (and we changed our name a decade ago because we offer so many products and our former name was pigeonholing us),” he said.
As for other trends, “homeowners are definitely looking for maintenance-free options, energy-saving technologies that keep the cold out and the heat in, and long-lasting products; roofing materials, for example, used to last for 20 to 30 years but now come with a lifetime warranty.”
He added that windows with black frames, sashes and grids (as opposed to white ones) are currently in vogue, as are strong, laminated windows that are more resistant to break-ins and/or bullets.
According to Fisher, the pandemic introduced a new level of volatility to his business.
“While business was strong during the pandemic because many people worked from home and opted to invest in home upgrades, materials were very delayed and windows that would normally take three to four weeks to receive took three to four months,” he explained. “At the same time, it felt like every day our manufacturers were announcing price increases, many of which still haven’t come back down, and we got hurt on contracts that we were locked into as prices on materials like lumber skyrocketed.”
Though he said that material shipments are for the most part back on schedule, “it’s been tough to find good workers since the pandemic,” he noted, adding that the seasonality of their industry poses other challenges.
“We’re busy from spring through fall, but winter is our slowest season, so we run a sale every February for our anniversary to encourage customers to get a jump start on remodeling projects,” he said. “Our industry also cycles with the economy, which is currently a difficult situation because interest rates are high now and can deter people from investing in home remodeling projects.”
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Seeing the ‘before’ and ‘after’
Despite the ups and downs of their operations, Fisher said that there’s no place he’d rather be.
Supported by a team of 19 employees (many of whom have been with the company for decades) and subcontractors, all of whom have become like family, “I love what I do,” said Fisher, who oversees operations and does “a little bit of everything” while his father continues the activities he enjoys most — selling products and interacting with customers — on a part-time basis.
“I love going to our jobsites to ensure that everything is going well and talking to customers,” Fisher said. “And I especially love seeing the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of our jobs, some of which are truly mind-blowing. It’s exciting to see the customer reactions and hear them tell us that the jobs came out even better than they expected.”
While the pressure to live up to his family legacy remains high, “we have a great reputation for doing quality work and I’m very proud of our company’s longevity and what my grandfather, father and uncles built,” Fisher said.
Then, as now, he said, “when it’s time to replace, call Ace!”
Ace Home Improvements
Location: 342 Route 9 N., Manalapan
Phone: 732-617-4070
Owner: David Fisher
Founded: 1953
Website: acehomeimprovementsnj.com
