Local Handymen Compete With Apps for Work

Like many handymen, Zach Laurie got into the trade out of necessity. It was 2008, the start of the recession.

“I quit my job,” Laurie says. “There was an economic downturn. I spent a couple of years coaching basketball part time, applying to jobs left and right.”

Then Laurie started fixing things for people, and it became a full-time thing. I spoke with him as he was installing shades for some longtime clients, Eleanor Sue and Andrew Miller, in San Francisco's Mission District. He’s been working for the couple for a few years now.

Over the past seven years, the business has grown. Laurie wants to take it to the next level, and hire someone to help with the workload. But one thing gives him pause, and that is the rise of handyman apps.

“It has made me more hesitant than I otherwise would be,” Laurie says.

Gone are the days of the Yellow Pages. Today you can use any number of apps to find a handyman, including TaskRabbit and Thumbtack. Home Depot has an app and Lowe's uses Porch. You can even order up a handyman on Amazon.

All these apps provide service on demand. Laurie says he can’t compete on convenience and speed. So to develop a successful business model, he is emulating one of the most successful handymen in the city — Russian Hill Rick.

I met Rick Haelig at his studio on Russian Hill, where he was modifying a metal bed frame on a makeshift worktable in his kitchen.

Like Laurie, Haelig started his handyman business out of necessity. Now it is part of his persona.

“I wear cargo shorts and embroidered polo shirts every day, even when I’m not working,” Haelig says, “There is a tape measure on my belt all the time. And that's who I am now. During my career in sales, I was just another guy in a blue shirt and black trousers walking around SoMa. Now I am embodying this can-do fix-it personality.”

Haelig says establishing a brand is key to his business -- it is what builds loyalty and name recognition. That is why he has those embroidered shirts, a logo on his truck and a website that plays a James Taylor classic, "Handy Man."

Haelig says the new wave of apps contradicts the handyman ethos — the entrepreneurial, independent, self-made spirit. On an app, he says, he could not build his brand, which would defeat the whole point of having his own business.

“If there was no brand name,” Haelig says, “I would definitely enjoy this a lot less. It would be less fulfilling and less satisfying.”

Haelig says many of the new apps have called, trying to enlist him, but he’s not joining.

Another handyman, Carl Mueller, did sign up for TaskRabbit, which he says was a quick way to find work. “I jumped into it with both feet and I started running with it. It was great.”

Mueller began landing jobs overnight. Soon it was a full-time gig. But then Taskrabbit changed its platform, and suddenly Mueller says it was harder to communicate with clients and organize his workday.

“I felt like I was just at their beck and call,” Mueller says, “much more like an employee and no longer an independent contractor. And I said, 'Screw it, I’m going to go out on my own.' ”

Mueller says handyman apps are great if you just need to make a buck, but he couldn’t depend on them to build his own business.

Back in the Mission, Zach Laurie is finishing the shades for Eleanor Sue and Andrew Miller.

To compete with apps, Laurie is to trying to provide a more personal connection. That is why, Miller says, they have been using him for years.

Miller says, “He's a human and he's a father and he's kind of a friend as well, so interacting with him on that level makes our decision to use him so much easier.”

Miller says it feels like he is supporting the local community by working directly with Laurie.

There is no app that gives him the same feeling, he says. At least not yet.