Business View - December 2014 27
CONSTRUCTION
with local retail stores, and ultimately to significant re-
tail chains including Walmart.
A quick phone call to the state determined that the
name Quinco was once again available for use, so
Deese incorporated as Quinco Electrical in February
1993 – six months after D & P’s inception.
And not too long afterward, he got what he now de-
scribes as “help from the grave.”
“We decided to bid a Valencia (Community College)
campus project in Kissimmee,” he said.
“It was way too big for us to do. But I was operating out
of my garage and I had maybe three guys helping me
out at the time. So we just threw the number out there.
Sure enough, a guy called me up and asked me if I was
the same Quinco that Charles Deese owned. I didn’t
lie, I just said Charles Deese was my grandfather. We
got to talking about my grandfather and his dog and so
and so, and he said ‘Any grandson of Charles is good
with me, I’m going to send you a contract.’
“The contract was like $3 million, and I had $300 in
the bank, so I pulled a few guys together and I told
them, ‘I’ve got no money. I can’t do anything for you.
I can pay you when I get my first draw check, which
could be six-to-eight weeks from now.’ But everybody
said, ‘Let’s do what we can do with it.’ Anyway, I ended
up making $1 million profit off the job and that’s where
I got my start-up money from. I was poor and broke
and digging coins out of my couch, but my granddad
helped me out.”
To say things have evolved since then would be putting
it mildly.
The modern version of Quinco Electrical now employs
950 people and operates in 19 states, with each of
its brick-and-mortar offices – in Florida, Georgia, North
Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas – serving a territory of
roughly 500 miles and crossing neighboring state lines
as needed.
“We started out in schools and office buildings and
then we went to the retail sector when the retail sector
boomed,” Deese said. “We were chasing Home Depots
and Lowe’s and Targets and Walmarts and things like
that all over the country. That’s what spread us out,
these retail chains. Retailers like dealing with some-
one that they know, so we started to branch out.
“We knew at that point that we were on to something.”
The climate these days, Deese said, has clients fi-
nally emerging from a prolonged economic downturn
in which the lowest bidder was the one who was typi-
cally getting contracts. Now that things are improving,
he said, reputation and reliability are factoring more
into decisions – and customers are again attracted to
Quinco because it’s managed to stay afloat with prov-
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Quinco Electrical Inc.
WHAT:
Provider of electrical services for various
elements of the construction process, including
large commercial, industrial, specialty projects,
hotels/hospitality, retail, build-outs, design/build
and low voltage
WHERE:
Corporate office in Winter Park, Fla.;
other offices in Georgia, North Carolina, Okla-
homa and Texas
WEBSITE
:
