Holitzner Homes founder Manfred Holitzner always believed the business would remain in family hands — even though both successors are his daughters.
Women in construction
The Holitzner family has been building homes in the Ottawa area since 1958. Business founder Manfred Holitzner always believed the business would remain in family hands — even though both successors are his daughters.
Today, sisters Carmen Fleguel and Heidi Laurysen are the president and office manager of Kanata-based Holitzner Homes. It’s a thriving business that develops and builds between 60 and 80 homes each year.
“We’re best known as a customized builder for townhouses and larger homes on lots of between 60- to 75-foot frontages,” says Fleguel. “For most of our projects we actually develop the deal from buying the land to the final sale.”
The company employs eight office staff and a core of six construction workers, with sales work contracted out.
As teenagers, both sisters recall joining their father on job sites. “When I was 16, I would help my mother sell homes,” says Fleguel. “I was the hostess and would greet people when the sales person was busy. I learned how to qualify people —to size up who was really interested in buying a home.”
Laurysen started with the company in 1979, eventually becoming manager of estimating and purchasing, then taking responsibility in sales, design and specifications, before deciding on accounting. Fleguel officially joined in 1985 at the suggestion of her husband, already a construction foreman with Holitzner — he’s now the construction manager.
“I graduated from the University of Ottawa as an accountant and I was ready to accept another position,” says Fleguel. “When I joined the business I already had the advantage of knowing who everybody in the industry was.”
Fleguel says she gets along with her sister because both of them understand their separate roles and stick to them. “You don’t work at building that kind of relationship in a family business,” she says. “Either it works right off or it doesn’t.”
She says that barriers in the male-dominated construction business were already breaking down in the 1980s, as opportunities for women expanded.
“Look at some aspects of the industry, where women are heavily represented in design, interior design and architecture, or in sales and marketing of properties,” she says. “But women are not yet equally represented in the trades or in land development, where women planners are still in the minority.”
Fleguel concentrates her efforts on sales and marketing and competitive analysis of other companies in the market. “I take a look at what everyone else is doing and I’m very proactive in translating the needs of the market to our own marketing,” she says. “I’m very much involved with our web presence because in today’s market, by the time they customer gets into the sales office, most of their research has already been done. It’s a way of helping a builder to pre-qualify the sale.”
For women who want to get into the homebuilding business, Fleguel recommends volunteering with the local home builders’ association. She’s served on the board of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association and been its treasurer.
“It’s a great way to learn about the industry, hear people’s ideas and to make new contacts,” she says. “You need to know who all the local players are.
“Still, it’s easier than it once might have been for women in the industry — my sister and I are in our early fifties and, to some extent, we paved a way for the younger generation.”
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