With professional videos produced every week and overwhelmingly positive reviews online, you wouldn’t be mistaken in assuming Gasper Roofing was run by someone with a marketing degree.

The company, which provides both residential and commercial roofing in the South Jersey market, earned $5.5 million in revenue this year. Customers are, by and large, satisfied with their work — the company has a 4.8 out of 5 stars from 451 Google reviews as of the publication of this article.

Given its success and the active social media accounts Gasper Roofing manages, it’s hard to believe that Gasper Roofing President Jason Jimenez knew next to nothing about marketing his company, let alone running it, when he became the owner in 2015.

Chasing The American Dream

From a young age, Jimenez’s father instilled an entrepreneurial spirit by running his own business. In 1998, his father passed away. Inspired by his father, Jimenez attended a trade school for woodworking. Three years later, the day he graduated, Jimenez migrated from Costa Rica to the United States, arriving in New Jersey to be with his two older brothers and uncle.

“There were a lot of barriers — the language, the culture,” he said. “The culture was a whole big barrier.”

His brothers worked in the roofing industry, so Jimenez helped out after school and on weekends. He took on every job he could, from picking up roofing debris to installation. Eventually, fueled by the motivation of supporting his mother, he dropped out of school to become a full-time roofer. At their peak, he and his crew subcontracted for around 60 companies.

“We did that for 15 years, and we were subbing from all these different companies that, in 2008, when the economy dropped, we got burned,” he said.

Jimenez set out to run his own roofing business. One of the companies he regularly worked for was Gasper Roofing, founded in 1972 in Merchantville, N.J. The owner, John Gasper, did much of the work himself. However, after two knee surgeries and 43 years in the business, Gasper was ready for a change.

In 2015, Jimenez purchased the roofing business, paying $30,000 in installments for the name and phone number.

Given his lack of business experience, he sought aid from his peers. He reached out to ABC Supply, where a mentor met with his team in Delaware to show them the ropes. In the meantime, he attended as many free trainings and seminars as possible to boost his knowledge.

“I came from the background of an installer, so I knew nothing from the business end of it — how you answer a phone, how you qualify the leads, what questions to ask, how do you do a contract,” he said.

Despite no background in marketing, Jimenez leveled up his skills, producing videos on a weekly basis to educate customers and contractors alike.

Evolving in the Business

Much like the previous owner, Jimenez took on the labor himself, ensuring each job was completed to his and the customer’s satisfaction. Running the business, however, required more than someone who could install roofs.

Jimenez, his brother Jorge, and his sister, Yeilin, divided the core responsibilities among themselves. With Yeilin handling administrative duties and his brother leading maintenance operations, the business grew, though not without challenges.

Working with family can be frustrating, such as separating work from life. Yeilin told Roofing Contractor it took some time, but the family has learned how to keep business from interfering with life.

“It’s good because we managed to separate — once we leave that front door and we go into lunch, it’s like, BAM, there’s no business,” she said. “We’ve managed to walk that fine line of being family and being in business together.”

Jimenez shared similar thoughts, saying it’s easier to manage the business when everyone knows which departments and responsibilities belong to them.

“[Jorge] has been in the industry longer than me, he’s been in the industry since ’98, so he knows about roofing and estimates and sales, and he’s pretty handy, so he’s like a fireman type of thing — wherever there’s a ‘fire,’ he can go do a repair or measure a roof,” he said.

The business slowly evolved, but Jimenez knew more could be accomplished if they could spread their name. At the advice of another contractor, he started his marketing strategy small, placing yard signs on every job he did — even if it was a simple repair. From there, he relied on common sense and trial and error.

“I was doing branding without knowing that was branding because I started making shirts," he said. "But I was making shirts with the Gasper Roofing logo, but I was making them different colors, and I realized, ‘No, they’ve all got to be the same colors.’ So now everything is red.”

This transitioned into wrapping his truck with Gasper colors and logos. Noticing how much attention it garnered, Jimenez realized he was onto something. Using his accumulated knowledge, in 2020, the company rebranded itself. This included redesigning the logo to be cleaner, drawing inspiration from American Sign Language by having a pair of hands create the shape of a roof over a house.

“When you put your hands together in this shape, that’s called a ‘house’ in sign language,” he said.

Videos became the forte of their marketing. After finding little success with traditional channels like radio and newspapers, the company discovered that the handful of videos they created were gaining traction. Jimenez focused marketing efforts on creating videos and boosting Gasper Roofing’s social media presence.

“Again, it’s common sense. It’s where we go for entertainment and we go for anything we need,” he said. “It’s trying to stand out from the crowd. There’s hundreds of hundreds of roofers around us, but most of our competitors that were older, they don’t do that stuff that I do, like Facebook. They don’t do video, they don’t do TikTok.”

The company produces videos every Monday and Friday. With content for both homeowners and roofers, Gasper Roofing covers everything from the difference between shingles to how to measure a roof. They even cover roofing events like the International Roofing Expo, which Jimenez and his team attended for the first time this year.

“It’s a new generation, the buying behavior is different, everything is different,” he said. “The way I describe it is you’ve got to stay in front of the wave. The new wave is YouTube channels.”

The company’s English YouTube channel has more than 800 subscribers, while its Spanish channel has over 1,000. There are even customer testimonials on the channels, serving as authentic commercials for would-be customers.

“It takes time, it takes money, but it’s an investment, it’s a long-term investment for your company,” he said of making video content. “That’s something that’s going to keep producing and working for you, even if you’re there or not.”

Gasper Roofing offers both residential and commercial roofing services along with extras like gutters, skylights and windows.

Leaving A Legacy

Although Jimenez learned a lot from other contractors, he has maintained one core value ever since his first job: take care of the customer. One of the company’s slogans is “one more happy customer,” with Gasper Roofing pulling out all the stops to ensure the satisfaction of its clients.

“I have returned checks to customers because they’re not happy,” he said. “If you’re not happy, we don’t want your money … I think that’s part of our success because we do what is right.”

It’s a strategy that continues to work. Gasper Roofing celebrated 50 years of business in 2022, a testament to Jimenez and his family’s efforts to continue a commitment to high-quality service Gasper started in 1972.

As many in the industry know, roofing can be a profitable business. As great as that is, Jimenez said he is less concerned about growing into a $20 or $50 million company and more about building a reliable one.

“It’s not, at the end of the day, about money, it’s more so, for me, it’s the legacy,” he said. “It’s why we stay the way we are as a business size, because I believe once you start growing, that’s when some of the stuff starts slipping through the cracks, and customer service is one of them, and I don’t want that.”

Outside of the roofing business itself, Jimenez has a passion project that is sure to leave a legacy. His goal is to travel to different countries and examine roofs around the world, documenting them to post on YouTube. He already started with a video of him reroofing a home in his native Costa Rica.

“I would like to see some of the roofs in Spain,” he said. “Some of the buildings have been there since the 1600s, 1800s. Some of that stuff is pretty different and we don’t get to see it here.”