Ayers Celebrates 38 Years

Virgil's first workshop

As spring tries its hardest to stick this week, it’s easy to look toward the future. Spring is a time of growth and expansion. But it’s also a good time to think about roots. In order to grow and move forward, you have to have a solid root system. This week marks our 38th year in business, and although a lot has changed, many things have stayed the same. Let’s take a look at Ayers’ roots.

In 1981, Virgil Ayers started a company with a few dollars in his pocket, a second hand work van, and a shed. He didn’t have a team behind him, or a fifty page business plan. He had one customer and the crazy idea to build a business based on treating his customers well. He used the profit from his first job to buy materials for the second job, used the second to fund the third, and so on. He quickly built a reputation on leaving the basements he worked in cleaner than he had found them and going above and beyond to do the right thing for his customers.

In the ensuing 38 years, Virgil has seen his crazy idea grow beyond his wildest expectations. First he was able to hire a few guys to help with projects, then watched this expand into having foremen running their own crews to handle multiple projects each day. Eventually he needed to expand his full-blown company into a new building and hire a dedicated office staff, and soon after he joined the Basement Systems and Supportworks networks to expand the company’s ability to serve a wider geographical area.

Today, we’re 140 employees strong. That includes fully staffed (and always growing) departments to take care of our customers at every stage of their journey, from the moment they see an ad online all the way to their first annual maintenance check-up. We serve customers throughout Michigan and northern Indiana and have been recognized by professional organizations like the BBB for excellence in customer service and business ethics. And we’re not done yet.

We want to do the best job we can for our customers. Problems with your home can be stressful, and when it comes to below-grade issues they can be downright scary. That’s why we hire the best and brightest in the industry and train them to not only solve problems, but to give our customers peace of mind and help make their families happier, healthier, and more comfortable at home.

Every day, we come to work with the goal of redefining our industry. We want every interaction with a customer to be the best experience they’ve had with a contractor. As we grow, there are some growing pains; we’re not always perfect. But we’re always trying to be better than we were yesterday, and setting goals to top that tomorrow.

We want to thank every employee who has dedicated themselves to fixing basement, foundation, crawl space, and concrete problems and helping customers across the state over the years. And we want to thank every homeowner who has invited us into their home to discuss solutions for the problems they’re facing. We are thankful for the trust you put in us and look forward to helping Michigan and Indiana families for years to come.

Finally, we want to thank Virgil for putting the roots in place and encouraging them to grow. Here’s to 38 years.

The Ayers campus today