How This Entrepreneur Built a $3M Garage Door Business

This week, I sat down with Bobby Vickers, founder of Dvana, a garage door company in North Texas with a model most in the industry never attempt. Bobby grew up in home services, working at a family-owned remodeling company that scaled from $3 million to about $16 million in revenue over a few years.

He left that business to partner with a manufacturing veteran of two decades, and together they built Dvana around a simple idea: build what you install. Most of the garage doors Dvana sells and installs are manufactured in-house, then shipped across the country, while the company still services and installs name-brand steel doors locally across North Texas.

We covered why Bobby wanted to skip the traditional three-layer markup on home service products, how Dvana sells without outside salespeople or in-home appointments, what the new construction housing market looks like from his seat, and the red flags homeowners should watch for before paying any home service technician.

The Key Takeaways

Below are the most essential insights from my conversation with Bobby that you can apply to your home services business today.

1. Building What You Install Instead of Reselling It

Dvana’s core model is manufacturing most of the garage doors it sells and installs, rather than buying from a distributor. The company also services and installs name-brand steel doors from national manufacturers across North Texas, and ships its own manufactured doors nationwide, including a shipment headed to Phoenix at the time of this conversation.

“Our model as a garage door company is to build what we install. So most of the garage doors that we sell and install are built by us. Local services, you can only do so much, right? When you make something, you can put it in a lot of different places.”

— Bobby Vickers

2. Skipping the Three Layers of Markup Homeowners Never See

Bobby explains that in a typical home services purchase, a homeowner is paying a manufacturer, a distributor, a company, and a sales rep, each of whom needs to make money. By manufacturing in-house and going direct to builders and homeowners, Dvana removes those extra layers, similar to how brands like Allbirds or Warby Parker disintermediated their supply chains.

“You have a manufacturer that has to make money, you have a distributor that has to make money, you have a company that has to make money, and you have a sales rep that has to make money. Why don’t you just work direct with us?”

— Bobby Vickers

3. No Outside Salespeople, No In-Home Appointments

Dvana sells with inside salespeople only, meaning customers can get a price over the phone without a two or three hour in-home sales visit. Bobby said he built the process this way because he disliked that model at his previous company, and because home services are notorious for high pressure, in-home sales tactics.

“I don’t want someone to come into my house to sell me something. So for us it was just wanting to sell in a way that we wanted to buy. Now we’ll do two and a half, three million this year and there’s two of us.”

— Bobby Vickers

4. A Basic Tech Stack Built Around Jobber

Dvana runs pricing, dispatching, and service through Jobber, letting any team member build a quote from the product catalog. Bobby is skeptical of adding AI receptionists or SMS follow-up tools for their own sake, arguing that if a tool would make an employee more productive, he would rather hire the tool than the person.

“If you don’t answer your phone or return a text message or reply to an email, technology will not save you. Your job is to follow up. Your job is to be honest. So we are not that tech heavy.”

— Bobby Vickers

5. Trading Low Margins for Lifetime Value With Builders

Bobby notes that private equity typically avoids acquiring new construction home service businesses because builder margins look thin compared to break fix service calls. Dvana accepts those lower margins in exchange for the lifetime value of builders who order five to ten high value projects a year, and bundles labor and materials into a single price rather than itemizing them.

“What we exchange for low margins are lifetime value. We like the lifetime value of dealing with a builder that’s going to build five to ten high value projects a year. For anything that we do, we bundle it. We do not separate labor and materials.”

— Bobby Vickers

6. A Hyper Local Housing Market, Strong at the Top and Bottom

Bobby said homes priced above roughly $1.2 million and entry level homes under $400,000 in his North Texas market are both moving well because supply cannot meet demand at either end. The middle, homes in the $550,000 to $900,000 range built by smaller volume builders, is tougher, while land purchases by well capitalized developers signal which markets can withstand a slowdown.

“The housing market at the top and the bottom makes it through unscathed relatively. It’s really the folks in the middle that build maybe 20 homes a year in that 550 to 900,000 range. I think that’s tough, at least in North Texas.”

— Bobby Vickers

7. Watch for the Zelle Scam and the “German Engineered” Spring

Bobby warns homeowners to never pay a technician’s personal Zelle account or with cash or a check, and to always get an invoice and pay by credit card so a bad job can be disputed. He described a caller who was charged $2,000 for a broken spring after being told it was custom “German engineered,” roughly five times what Dvana charges, and paid the technician directly through Zelle with no recourse.

“If a company is not willing to give you a price range over the phone, it’s because they want to scare you into paying a lot more money than you need to. If it sounds weird or it just doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.”

— Bobby Vickers

Looking Ahead

Bobby’s biggest piece of advice for anyone considering home services is to learn the specific niche before buying into it, pointing to a search fund buyer who acquired a fencing company without realizing how restrictive and low margin residential fence remodel work can be. He also cautions against quitting a stable job to jump into home services without understanding the personal sacrifice involved, since customers call nights and weekends and results take longer and cost more than expected.

“It takes time and it takes longer than you think, and it costs more than you think. You can do it, but there’s a lot of personal sacrifice and a lot of luck that has to happen along the way. So don’t enter into it lightly.”

— Bobby Vickers