By James Day
Two area companies have been honored for their business principles and ethics by the Better Business Bureau (BBB).
The BBB’s Great West/Pacific subgroup, which covers an eight-state area, bestowed Torch Awards on Mount Angel’s Hiddenbed of Oregon and John’s Waterproofing of Silverton. Hiddenbed won a small business award, while John’s was a large business winner.
Also honored from Oregon were Meticulous Plumbing of Portland (small business), Paris Group Realty of Portland (medium business) and Bliss Roofing in Clackamas (large business).
The Torch Awards is the most prestigious honor BBB bestows on businesses operating within its eight-state service area, said a press release from the group.
Winners must demonstrate a high level of personal character, meet the highest standards of ethics, and build trust with their customers and the community.
“It’s extraordinary to see how each of this year’s award winners went above and beyond in the marketplace and their community. They are setting the standard for what it means to be an exemplary and ethical business,” said Tyler Andrew, President and CEO of BBB. “We hope this recognition can encourage others to step up in their respective businesses and build an ethical marketplace for all.”
The BBB received 226 submissions for the Torch Award for Ethics. For the application and judging process, each organization considered was asked to supply responses to prompts. These prompts focused on their team’s character, culture, customer engagement and community involvement.
According to Roseann Freitas, communications manager with the BBB, companies also completed an essay application focused on those four main criteria. The applicants that best answered the questions associated with those criteria were named finalists. The finalist applications were then sent to independent panels of judges composed of past BBB award winners. Their composite scores determined the winners for each region in each category.
Hiddenbed of Oregon received the highest marks in the character and customers brackets, “demonstrating a strong commitment by the leader to model ethics to the team, and proactive tools and practices to provide outstanding customer service,” Freitas said.
John’s Waterproofing, Freitas said, also received high marks in the character and community brackets, “which showcased an above-and-beyond commitment to their community by providing help with the attics, crawl spaces, plumbing and electrical needs on new homes built through Habitat for Humanity.”
Hiddenbed is a family-owned business that began in 2011 and specializes in providing space-saving wall beds, cabinet beds, and multi-functional desk beds. The company has had to work to continue to adhere to its guiding principles despite the severe damage to the company in the 2021 downtown Mount Angel fire.
“We have acted with patience, honesty, and respect towards others as we work towards the full re-establishment of our business,” said co-owner Keith Cobb. “We have faced a number of challenges along the way.”
The first major challenge was to find new quarters where the business could operate.
“We received a lot of help from the community with suggestions where we could look and great generosity from the community through a Go-Fund-Me campaign,” Cobb said “We were quite quickly able to find and rent a space at 165 N. Main St. in Mount Angel to put our showroom and administrative offices. Additionally,
a local farm rented a sizable building to use for storage and assembly.”
Still to be resolved are getting the company’s manufacturing processes going and to find permanent manufacturing space. Insurance payout issues have plagued the first challenge, with Cobb noting “the wheels of government sometimes move slowly” for adding time to the process for finding a new building in which to manufacture.
Hiddenbed has had to let go of its two installers because of the length of time (the fire was Oct. 9, 2021) it has taken the firm to get back to normal.
John Waterproofing, established in 1974, is a family-owned business specializing in basement waterproofing, crawl space repair, and seismic retrofitting and “was very proud to have won the BBB Torch Award,” according to Jessica Dingle, director of marketing.
“Doing the right thing is very important to us at John’s Waterproofing. We are approaching our 50-year anniversary as a company and are proud to have the same Oregon Construction Board number since we first started. When [original owner] John Lombardi was retiring [in 2019], it was of the utmost importance to keep the company and its employees in good hands, which is why Robin Ekloff, who has been employed at John’s since 1997, decided to take over as the owner.
“His focus was, and still is, to provide the best for the people in the company and for all of our customers.
We practice this at the office by keeping the conversation going about providing ‘wow’ service to each other and to all the people we work with. We train people to do the right thing the first time and to work and act with integrity.”
