Raise & Shine Blinds is extremely honored and grateful to have been featured on VoyageMIA Magazine. We take pride in our success story and are thrilled to share it with the City of Miami!
You can read the full story below or by directly visiting VoyageMIA.
Today we’d like to introduce you to Morr and Ari Kadoch.
Morr and Ari, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Our company is family-owned and was originally established in California back in 2004 after our father decided to move the family from Israel to the United States in hopes of a brighter future, filled with a higher level of security, superior education, and a breadth of financial and business opportunities. Our initial clients were acquired via “door knocking” and distributing flyers, which gradually allowed us to invest in further marketing efforts and become one of the “go-to” window treatment retailers in Marin County, California. Although residential projects initially represented the majority of our revenues, we began to experience demand from the commercial market, including general contractors, developers, schools and universities, and property managers.
Ari and I grew up with the family’s window treatment business and were exposed to many aspects of the industry at a young age. However, we decided to pursue different career paths post-college. After five years in the corporate world, developing experience in the investment management and marketing industries, we decided to abandon our “9 to 5” jobs, leverage the expertise we had accumulated, and start a company which would allow us to maximize our creativity, wealth potential, and most importantly, the passion for the profession we were raised with.
Although we were extremely familiar with the California market, we recognized the volume of real estate sales/turnover and new construction in Florida, presenting business growth opportunities unmatched by any other market in the United States today. Raise & Shine Blinds was established in January 2019 with a primary focus on commercial projects, including multi-family residential, assisted-living facilities, offices, educational buildings, and healthcare-related properties. We continue to aggressively seek partnerships with general contractors and developers throughout the state of Florida, in hopes of exhibiting our exceptional client service, communication and organizational skills, and project management capabilities, and ultimately becoming their preferred vendor. We are so fortunate to have found a niche and region we can excel in as a new business and look forward to what the future has to offer.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not! The toughest obstacle was making the initial decision to leave our comfortable and well-paying jobs behind us, only to take on a massive pay cut, fund the startup of our new business with our savings, and face an uncertain future. Additional challenges included lack of support and ridicule by family members and close friends, familiarizing ourselves with a new demographic characterized by different taste preferences and price sensitivities, partnering with the appropriate suppliers to best drive us toward our objectives, hiring professional staff with true passion for and dedication to the trade, marketing ourselves and instilling trust and confidence in new clients, and the list goes on.
Please tell us about Raise & Shine Blinds. What should we know?
Raise & Shine Blinds is a commercial-focused window treatment company, offering both supply and labor capabilities to developers, general contractors, real estate agents, property managers, and homeowners. Our service area is comprised of South, West, and Central Florida and we specialize in multi-family residential projects, assisted-living facilities, offices, educational buildings, and healthcare-related properties.
We are most proud of our ability to stand out in a market/region with a tremendous amount of window treatment dealers and competition. We bring with us a level of client service, attention to detail, professionalism, and ability to deliver in a way specifically tailored to the construction industry, which is not offered by many competing vendors in the state. This is feedback we constantly receive from the general contractors and developers we collaborate on projects with, as they highlight the difficulty of finding competent companies to properly handle the window treatment scope.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
We had a very simple childhood growing up in Tel-Aviv, Israel. And it was simply irreplaceable in our opinion. We were very happy children, surrounded by loving family members and strong friendships. Ari and I were always together, whether we were playing street soccer, playing hide-and-seek around the neighborhood, or climbing trees. We are three years apart and were always best friends, experiencing our childhood together as we grew older, switched schools, and ultimately migrated to a foreign country (United States). It is somewhat beautiful to think that, despite of the constant war threats and hostile environment, we were still able to act as children and enjoy an unforgettable childhood in Israel.
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