(Seguin) — A Seguin based air-conditioning and heating company is being recognized as one of the best in the nation.
Tri-County Air-Conditioning & Heating recently received the “Building A Higher Standard” award from American Standard. The corporation each year chooses the top dealers from around the country, and this year’s prize goes to Kay and Bubba Martin, the husband and wife team behind Tri-County AC & Heating. The Martins say they were shocked when they heard the news.
“American Standard picks four dealers in the entire nation every year from the Customer Care Program to be a dealer of the year. It’s not just because they sell more than anyone else. It’s their character, their teamwork, their community service, stuff like that,” said Kay.
The award is not something that you can earn on your own. You first have to have someone who thinks enough of you to nominate you for consideration. Tri-County was nominated by Dan Carter. Carter is the territory manager for Aces Supply, which is the American Standard distributor for this part of the state. Carter says there was something special about Tri-County, and that’s why he made the nomination.
“Kay and Bubba and Tri-County is a great company, a great bunch of people and they are fun to work with and they are committed to the community and they are just good people,” said Carter.
Kay Martin says it’s a special honor to just be nominated for the award, so they were thankful for that. She says this is not a popularity prize. She says there’s a process in place to make sure that they choose the right company that represents the “Higher Standard” that American Standard is looking for each year.
“They white out everybody’s names and so it’s completely unbiased judges with American Standard and we couldn’t believe we were even nominated and then when we found out that we won, we were just blown away,” said Kay.
One of the big reasons why Tri-County was honored with this award, is the company’s community involvement. Bubba and Kay Martin are involved in a number of community events and organizations and for years, have generously given their time and money. That level of community support is also reflected in their work each day. Bubba says they really do see their customers as more than just people who need their service. They say their customers are like their family, and they’ve been watching that family grow for 26-years now. They say taking care of their customers, their employees and the community has been key to their success.
“We work three, four generations deep in families and we just feel like we are part of everybody’s family and we hope they feel the same way about us,” said Bubba.
Kay adds, “We just felt that this is how it was but come to find out through American Standard, this is not normal. It’s rare to have a business that has this kind of depth in the community in longevity. Like most of our employees, we have four or five that have been with us for over 20 years. Many, many of them have been with us 10, 15. It’s pretty incredible and that speaks volumes in how you treat your employees when they stay with you especially in such a transient kind of life that people have now. They don’t really stay at a job for very long.”
Bubba says it’s all about being different and unique.
“And Seguin is not normal. Seguin is exceptional and we want to show that to the rest of the country,” said Bubba.
And the couple will definitely get a chance to show off Seguin. American Standard sent out a production team to interview the couple, and to help build a multi-media campaign that will spotlight the company for the next year. Ira Chute, owner of Highway 93, a video production company in Tucson, Arizona, is the person who’s in charge of helping to put together that campaign. He says American Standard brought him and his team to Seguin to help Kay and Bubba Martin tell the Tri-County story.
“We produce what we call the dealer profile which is like a highlight reel of what makes this business tick so we do sit down interviews with the owners and managers of the company. We talk to sometimes long-standing employees, sometimes young brand-new people and just see what makes this company special. Why is great to work for people like Bubba and Kay Martin and what are they doing that makes this work so well for the last 25 years,” said Chute.
Chute’s done lots of these types of projects in the past, but he said that he was impressed by what he heard from the Martins during those interviews.
“I think something that stood out to me because I meet tons of people who do this all over the country — Bubba and Kay like they really take the commitment to the community seriously and they know that being in a small town, your repetition means even more. You can’t just have these one, off relationships. It needs to be a relationship that might last 20-30 years across multi-generations. So, they are doing it,” said Chute.
Their love for Seguin is really at the heart of their success and their overall story. Bubba Martin says supporting things, like the Guadalupe County Youth Livestock and Homemakers Show, are just ways that they can continue to give back to the people in this community.
“Like the country and western song says ‘this is my town.’ Well, this is my town and we love Seguin and they like the way we fit with our community and with our employees and no, we had no idea we would ever be up for anything in Seguin or for sure out there in mainstream,” said Bubba.
The company will be recognized by American Standard for a full year, which means that Seguin will also get recognized during that time. Kay Martin says they get lots of corporate support for their marketing for the next year, and American Standard is also paying for a party for Tri-County employees and their families.
“We will have this honor for a year. It’s a pretty pricey gift really that they are giving us. We are going to have a billboard. We’ve never had a billboard. We are getting a billboard. They are doing still photos of us. They have a drone that they are going to fly over us and do all kinds of stuff. It’s like first-class. We are blown away. They are making a commercial for us that’s going to be on the American Standard website and they really want exceptional dealers so they are showing what they want dealers to aspire to. We get to be keynote speakers at the next national convention for American Standard that they have. It will be in 2021 and they show our commercial and it will be a question and answer session on how do we stay in business as long as we have, how to stay married as long as (we have),” said Kay.
Showing that it also takes a little comedy to make things work, Bubba says “It’s easy when someone is easy to get along with as I am.”
For people who know Bubba and Kay Martin, they know that faith is as big a part of their business as it is their life. Kay says that’s just the way they live, and the way they run their business. She says it’s a big part of the reason why they’ve been so successful now for more than a quarter of a century.
“Bubba and I pray for our employees every day and their children and like say one of them is struggling in school or someone has been sick or a pregnancy that has been troublesome, we pray for them by name and we have prayed for this company since we started it. We just wanted to be able to bless people and be generous. It’s so nice to go and spend a ton of money down at the youth show or just be a sponsor and not think anything of it. It’s so much fun to be generous but you can’t be generous unless you are successful so God has gifted us with both of those things and we feel really blessed,” said Kay.
Despite winning this national award, there’s still a great deal of humility demonstrated by the Martins. They never expected to win any awards for what they do. They do it, because that’s how they think business should be done, and how they think people should be treated. That’s why it took a little while for this big moment to really sink in.
“When we sat down in that interview this morning with all those cameras and all those lights and mics on and all that, I just was kind of blown away. We both lot a little emotional because we had no idea, it would come to this,” said Kay.
Bubba says it’s just special. “Seguin is special and we can’t believe we got an award,” said Bubba.
The television commercial will be prominently featured on the American Standard website. The Tri-County AC & Heating profile will also feature discussions with employees and with long-time customers, who have firsthand accounts about the quality of service and support that helped the company earn this award. American Standard hopes to use Tri-County to help tell Seguin’s story, and explain why both the company and the community have worked so well together for more than 26 years.