Bath Planet Featured in Buffalo Grove Countryside

Bath Planet was featured in an article in Buffalo Grove Countryside that ran on Wednesday, July 17. The article begins by focusing on the Executive of the Year award that Vice President Rick Hirschhaut received at the American Business Awards 11th annual banquet in Chicago. The article focuses on Bath Planet's attention to customer satisfaction and doing the little things to ensure a 97 percent satisfaction rating from their customers. Furthermore, the article discusses Rick's gold Stevie award for Bath Planet next year, after receiving the silver award for the second time this year.

Award-winning exec closes service gap

BUFFALO GROVE — The hole in Rick Hirschhaut’s industry was gaping: 47 percent wide. He has closed it 44 percent, and his efforts earned him national recognition.

Hirschhaut, a 52-year-old Buffalo Grove resident, is the senior vice president of Palatine-based BathPlanet, and on June 17 earned the Executive of the Year Award in the Consumer Products and Durables category of the American Business Awards’ 11th annual banquet, in downtown Chicago.

His company makes products that can cover up your bathroom’s 1970s look and 1990s mold, but he won his award because he prioritized customer service in an industry that leaves half its customers disappointed.

“Half the people in America wish their contractor never stepped on their property,” but Hirschhaut said that almost every Bath Planetcustomer felt like they had been working with a professional. “If we say we’re going to be there at 9 o’clock, we’re ringing the doorbell at 9 o’clock.”

Bath Planet custom-makes acrylic liners that fit over old bathtubs and showers, covering out-of-date looks and scrub-defeating scum with a modern appearance. When Bath Planet’s parent company, BCI, hired him four and a half years ago, his job became to position the company in a customer-service gap that had eluded so many others.

Hirschhaut said home remodeling industry studies he’s seen indicated that 47 percent of homeowners end up dissatisfied with what their contractors’ work. His approach: become known for arriving and finishing on time and supplying a strong warranty.

“Everybody seems to have a bad experience with home remodeling,” Hirschhaut said.

Doing the little things to change that experience changed Bath Planet’s bottom line, he said. He boasted that 97 percent of his customers ended up satisfied with their work.

“Without question, we’re taking market share,” and he said his firm had seen 36 consecutive months of one-year-later growth. “To me, there’s nothing more exciting than business growth.”

BCI created Bath Planet three years ago, and Hirschhaut said one of his first objectives was to make the company successful enough to qualify it for consideration for the American Business Awards. He achieved that goal last year, when they brought home the second-place “Stevie” (the AWA’s title for its trophies) in Consumer Products and Durables.

Last month, Hirschhaut won the top individual honor in that category.

“I was stunned, to be honest,” he said. “Although my name is on it, it’s a team award. Without the hard work of a whole lot of people, I would not have been there.”

But his next objective eluded him: He wants a gold Stevie for Bath Planet, but his company brought home a silver for the second time. The key could be in further closing the industry’s gaping customer-service maw.

“We’re going to keep trying,” he said.

Read the full article here. 

20 Ways to Update Your Bathroom

Are you planning a bathroom renovation this summer? Before you move too quickly, read through Real Simple's list of 20 Easy Ways to Upgrade your Bathroom:

1. Old wooden crates make smart holders for extra toilet paper and rolled bath towels.
2. Turn an unused nightstand into storage for small towels, makeup, hair tools, and toiletries.
3. A sink skirt hides a multitude of sins. You can easily make a no-sew one from a pretty bedsheet.
4. When your tub lacks wide ledges where you can store bath products, hang a multilevel fruit basket for additional space.
5. A shelf rack with hooks is a great answer to the storage problems posed by smaller spaces.
6. Separate cosmetics by category--lip colors, shadows, blushes, etc.--and store them in small drawer organizers that you can easily rearrange.
7. Make a long soak in the tub even more luxurious with bath salts, lush towels, and aromatic candles within easy reach.
8. Think of an unused sugar bowl as a decorative container, perfect for cotton balls and Q-tips.
9. Something as simple as an over-the-tub wire rack devoted to bathroom goods adds a nice touch, along with extra convenience.
10. Unused, mismatched serving pieces act as great countertop organization to keep toiletries looking neat.
11. A woven basket holds an ample supply of toilet paper, eliminating the need to hunt when you're down to the end of the roll.
12. Another approach: repurpose a tall cylindrical vase to hold extra rolls of TP.
13. A retractable mirror is a practical solution on walls that won't allow for a conventional mirror.
14. A bouquet of flowers in a bathroom feels unexpected and fresh. Even a small vase of yard-cut greens adds freshness to the room.
15. A perfumed tablet of preserved cranberries and orange slices adds a delicious note when slipped into a vanity drawer.
16. A calming color on the walls, like a rich blue-green, gives the room a sense of tranquility.
17. One lower cost solution to old bathroom tiles: blunt the behind-the-times feeling by painting the walls a complimentary color for a cheerful scheme.
18. One attractive option for window treatments is faux-wooden blinds, which offer all the elegance of real wood and none of the worries of water damage or warping.
19. On the other hand, you can let the sun stream into your bath through an oversized picture window - especially if you've got a view to show off.
20. Towel bars have been replaced by hooks next to the shower, eliminating the need for folding and just-so draping. An extra hook allows a space for the bath mat to dry.

Read all the tips from Real Simple here.