Reliable Water Services: Hot water. Great Service. Fast.

Winners of the 2011 "How I Got My Business Out of Hot Water" Challenge

Gross Automation — 1st Place Winner

We changed the name of "How I Got My Business Our of Hot Water" Challenge to remove the "I" and "My" because it really was a team effort to recover. I couldn't have done it alone. In May of 2010, we were 6 figures in the hole and circling down the drain. One of our major customers, representing our largest receivable, was unable to pay their bill. We had invested heavily in their product development, performing not just contract manufacturing for them, but helping them redesign their product line to incorporate multiple new and updated technologies. We could no longer ship without payment. It was a standoff. Our 20‐year‐old, 24‐employee, industrial‐controls distributorship was in hot water. Read more...

SHOP Boutique — 2nd Place Winner

SHOP is a women's clothing and accessories boutique focusing on updated classics in quality fabrics, with a few lower‐priced, trendy options to wear for a season or two. When my daughter and I opened SHOP in 2007 we knew that Capitol Drive in Shorewood would be rebuilt in the summer of 2010. From official releases we understood that the reconstruction would be done in two consecutive three‐month projects: one half would be the work from Lake Michigan to Oakland Ave.— the section in front of SHOP— and the second would be Oakland Ave. to the Milwaukee River. We knew the construction would affect SHOP, but we had over two years to establish our customer base. By then we would be able to endure three slow months. How bad could it be? Read more...

La Luna Foods — 3rd Place Winner

When my wife and I began the process of taking a dream into the realm of reality, the odds were horribly against us. What we had was a product; what we lacked was a producer. Oh sure, we had taken the pallets of friends and family on a soaring rollercoaster ride of flavor from our own kitchen, but one does not generate a frozen Mexican food company from the confines of one's house. Neither does one run into the boardrooms of the great manufacturing giants in the frozen food industry, hand over a family recipe, and walk out with numerous companies excitedly bidding against each other to be the one who makes your dinners available in frozen food aisles across the country. No, that is the stuff of Hollywood, and if we wanted to chase the horizon of our dream, we would have to come up with a more reasonable plan. Undoubtedly, it would be one that would cost us time, energy, and funds, but we dared to not sit idly by and end up wishing—20 years later—that we had taken a chance. Read more...