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DIVERSIFIED SERVICES GROUP INC.

The name of their firm was chosen very deliberately, say the owners of Diversified Services Group Inc.

With expertise in building maintenance, final construction cleaning, staffing, and event services and planning, the 12-year-old company strives to be a little bit of everything to a great number of customers, said Kristi Hines, president of the Petersburg, Mich., firm.

"We've found there is a need for these type of services and we want people to think of us for them," she said.

Ms. Hines was finishing high school when her mother, Karen Pilatowski, and her husband, Rich, founded the company in 1992. It was an outgrowth of Mr. Pilatowski's many years of working for construction companies, where he saw the need for quality clean-up crews on job sites, especially on new construction projects.

The company's crews have been trained to remove such new-building nuisances as sawdust and drywall residue and to carefully strip protective coverings on newly placed windows. "We go over things with a fine-tooth comb," Mrs. Pilatowski said.

That attention to detail is appreciated by Jim Brossia, the Toledo manager of special projects for Mosser Construction Inc. He used the firm to do the final cleaning on projects as small as 1,500 square feet to a 50,000-square-foot, multistory building.

"We usually come to Kristi with late notice and tell her 'to come in and get it done. The work they do is very pressure-oriented … but Kristi's done a great job for us," Mr. Brossia said.

The first employees of Diversified Services were all family members, with Lucille Lewis, Mrs. Pilatowski's mother, even lending a hand. "No one in construction had seen someone clean a site with a toothbrush like my mother did," Mrs. Pilatowski said.

Once Diversified Services had cleaned a building, many times it was asked to do the weekly or monthly cleaning, said Ms. Hines. Building maintenance is an area in which she wants to grow the business.

Carol Bowers, property manager of the 200-unit Copper Beach Town Homes in Bowling Green, said the company has done a great deal of work for her since the complex opened two years ago.

"They do a great job. They're very pleasant to work with and their prices are reasonable," she said.

Ms. Hines and Mrs. Pilatowski are the majority owners of the company, which more easily allows them to bid on work for the government.

The company has eight full-time employees, and staffing can grow to as many as 25 workers, depending on the jobs.

Mr. Pilatowski said he doesn't take a stand on the fairness of the downsizing and outsourcing that are sweeping a number of industries, instead focusing on what services he can offer to the corporations. "The only thing we're trying to do is capitalize on what's going on," he said.

With that in mind, the company is willing to work anywhere, with recent jobs in Cleveland and Fort Wayne.

The firm is pursuing a "green" certification, under which it promises to use environmentally friendly products, because that will help bids for work at schools and hospitals, Ms. Hines said.

Contact Mary-Beth McLaughlin at
mmclaughlin@theblade.com
or 419-724-6199.

Small Business Profile is a weekly feature on local companies. To be considered, send information about your company to Small Business Profiles, Business News, The Blade, P.O. Box 921, Toledo, Ohio 43697-0921.

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