Inside Imagine Homes: Building Relationships With Vendors

At Imagine Homes Management, we’re big on doing the right thing for everyone in our communities. To deliver the best-in-class experience that our residents deserve, we work closely with our vendors. We caught up with Senior Vendor Manager, Peter Struble to get his insights on how we build better relationships with our vendors.

I grew up in a family of construction workers.

My dad was a general contractor and I worked for him during the summer breaks from school. After leaving home for college, I decided to move away from the construction industry and started a career in restaurant management. After a couple of years managing a restaurant, I transitioned into the food service and sales industry and I wound up spending 18 years of my career at the Sara Lee Corporation in sales and ultimately, sales management.

From there, I went on to work for one of my customers that was a family-owned coffee roaster in Philadelphia. They hired me as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. I stayed in that role for five years until the Mars company gave me the opportunity to work for a niche business that took care of fish in both exotic indoor aquariums and koi ponds. During my five-year tenure at Mars, I was a sales and marketing director for North America and Asia-Pacific.

After leaving my post at the Mars company, I decided to start my own business. I bought a franchise for CertaPro Painters—a home improvement business which I grew into construction. I managed that business for 12 years until I decided to sell it.

Prior to coming to Imagine Homes Management, I went on to work for SMS Assist, which was a company in a similar niche. They were starting a division in single-family residential at the time. I started out as a project manager for them, worked my way to a promotion, and ultimately became a vendor manager where I was tasked to establish, maintain, and improve vendor relationships.

Imagine Homes offered a work culture I couldn’t possibly pass up.

A former customer of mine from SMS Assist told me about Imagine Homes. At the time, he was joining the company as the VP of Construction. He told me about the amazing opportunities that Imagine Homes had to offer—but what really convinced me to work for the company was the culture.

I was also impressed by the fact that Imagine Homes places a lot of value on their contractors and their vendors. They are probably one of the best-paying businesses who employ contractors in the SFR space.

I’m thrilled to be a part of Imagine Homes. I think our culture and core values are ingrained in who we are—we live, breathe, and internalize them. Everyone, including our CEO John Frank, is on the same page in terms of doing the right thing for our residents, employees, and vendors. From collecting data to better manage our business to living a healthy lifestyle through work-life balance through wellness, Imagine Homes is truly best-in-class!

It’s a rare sight to see in the industry, but we have an organization that’s committed to doing the right thing for their employees, residents, and communities.

As a Senior Vendor Manager, I am responsible for overseeing everything concerning our vendors.

When I left SMS Assist, I was a Senior Vendor Manager. So, I was excited when Imagine Homes offered me the same position. As it stands, I’m responsible for all of the recruiting, onboarding, compliance, and anything else that concerns our vendors. I’m here to ensure that we have enough vendors in all the markets that we serve.

It is also my responsibility to make sure that we are taking good care of our vendors. So, I help work out any challenges that we may be having in the market with a vendor especially if it’s regarding pay. In addition to that, I spend a lot of time making sure that we’re onboarding our vendors properly.

I’m always happy to help our vendors work through insurance compliance requirements, whether it’s liability or workers comp. Aside from that, I ensure that BuilderTrend or AppFolio is all set up to accommodate the vendor.

Additionally, I’m also responsible for finding and negotiating for the best pricing from some of the national vendors for materials. I work directly with various vendors including Sherwin-Williams, Home Depot, and MSI Surfaces for flooring and quartz.

My role enables me to act as the bridge between Imagine Homes and the vendor community.

One of the most critical parts of my job as a senior vendor manager is making sure that our vendors understand how we operate our business here at Imagine Homes. I’m responsible for ensuring they understand how to connect with our local Imagine Homes team in the market.

I also make sure that the local teams in each market are reaching out to the vendors and that they meet on our job sites. Overall, I like to think of myself as a liaison between the vendor community and Imagine Homes.

When I envision my role at Imagine Homes, it will be a multidimensional one.

To provide a bit more context behind this statement, I want to emphasize that over the last decade or so, the expectations for the Office of the CFO changed drastically. The finance team is now expected to work cross-functionally to ensure that the organization is well-positioned for growth.

The finance role is a strategic one and the team needs to better understand all aspects of the business including which acquisition channels are most effective, what our competitors are offering and charging, and how our customers’ expectations are evolving.

I tend to demonstrate a collaborative operating style and think in terms of impact. Currently, I’m focused on building a comprehensive model that allows our team to understand our cash and growth projections. With the data gleaned from this model, we could start refining our existing strategies and implementing new ones that work.

We appreciate our vendors and we’re not afraid to show it.

We recently did vendor summits in the Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis markets. We brought all of our key vendors together for one night of appreciation. At these summits, we reviewed what we had done in terms of performance in 2021 and we also considered what we are forecasting in the way of renovated properties and homes turned over to our Resident Service Division for 2022. We take a deep dive into the numbers to show our vendors the opportunities that they will have here at Imagine Homes.

Aside from that, we treat them to an afternoon or evening of such events—Top Golf, which is a fantastic venue to host and show appreciation to our vendors. That organization offers a top-tier destination for family events and corporate outings where you can take a group of individuals to enjoy golfing. They have a scoring system, making it easy for everyone to compete with each other. The food and beverages offered at the location is also nothing to scoff at.

During the summit, one of our vendors wanted to show their appreciation for working with us and they decided to donate to the cause as a way to offset the expense of the event.

That was a highlight for me because for a vendor to be willing to do that for us, it goes to show what kind of partnership we have formed and established with our vendor community. It illustrates how much our vendors appreciate the relationship that they have with Imagine Homes.

Imagine Homes invests in our neighborhoods and communities.

At Imagine Homes, we are big on providing clean, safe, and functional housing to our communities through our rentals. We propagate being best-in-class when it comes to what we put into our rental properties and how we treat our residents.

In fact, we have a Best-in-Class Committee that is focused on highlighting excellence in Imagine Homes. We hold true to our core values and find initiatives that demonstrate them through action.

As a member of the Best-in-Class Committee, I get involved in events that allow us to give back to the community. I’m currently working with Sherwin Williams to give back to the less fortunate through community service in one of our markets. We like helping people in need, and a way I feel that we can do that is in assisting homeowners with fixing up their homes, and providing materials and labor to help facilitate home restorations.

We are still contemplating if that makes sense to us as a community service. But right now, it’s in consideration as one of the initiatives that we’re going to take on for the remainder of this year.

All of us at Imagine Homes appreciate our leadership team.

Everyone at Imagine Homes appreciates the executive management team that Jon Frank, Dan Andresen, and Adam Pry have assembled. I have the fortunate experience to report directly to Jon Frank. He’s one of the most unique and outstanding individuals that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working for. He’s extremely smart and well educated, but he is still a down-to-earth and approachable person.

I appreciate that he prefers to lead by example and is certainly willing to roll up his sleeves and dive into anything at any level. In my opinion, the company is poised for success and growth over the next decade because of Jon Frank. And I couldn’t be happier to be here.

Interested in working with us? Let’s talk.

We’re looking for passionate vendors who would be interested in growing their business by helping us deliver best-in-class service, homes, and overall experience to our residents. If you think your organization fits the bill, let us know! We’d love to have you on board.

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