Having started in the plumbing trade in 1973, Mark Carpenteropened his first business, Mark’s Plumbing, in 1976. For several reasons the business closed 12 years later. He then worked for other plumbing contractors until the year 2000 when he opened Mark Carpenter Plumbing.

Carpenter’s parents and grandparents grew up in Clovis, N.M. — where the company is based — and he has lived there all but a few years of his life. Because he has a great reputation for doing quality work and many customers already knew him, he decided to use his name when he started the business 15 years ago.

Carpenter was 47 when he opened Mark Carpenter Plumbing and is now 62. Brian Carpenter, Mark Carpenter’s son, joined the company in 2008 at the age of 32. He is now vice president and co-owner, running the business from an operational and marketing standpoint.

With 35 employees, the company has five service vans, all newly wrapped, and eight trucks in new construction, in addition to several support vehicles, covering Clovis and Portales, N.M. A member of Service Roundtable and Service Nation Alliance, the company does plumbing service, plumbing new construction, and water and sewer main line installation.

The five service vans include: a 2006 Chevrolet box van with a supreme body; two 2007 Chevrolet box vans (one supreme body and one express body); and two 2005 Ford E-350 box vans with KUV bodies (pictured above). Four are wrapped in the company’s colors: green, with a streak of white and purple, for the local school colors. The fifth is wrapped in a camouflage print. Both wraps feature the company’s logo as well as its service hours.

Brian Carpenter worked with Gary Tucker of Signs on the Go in Lubbock, Texas, to design and wrap all the vans. “We wanted to have a wrap that incorporated our company logo and had our dominant company color of green, which could be recognized and seen from afar,” Carpenter says. “All our vans are at least eight years old and many people thought we had purchased new vans because of how good our wraps look.”

 Carpenter came up with the camouflage design after watching a Service Roundtable webinar. “We wanted to support the servicemen and women who are part of our community, so we decided to have a military-themed wrap,” he explains. “Ten dollars from every call completed in that van goes to a military support organization specific to Cannon Air Force Base personnel and their families.”

The company’s slogan — “When you need a plumber, call a Carpenter” — is also an attention grabber. “A sales rep who I was buying some drain treatment product from said it to me and it stuck,” Brian Carpenter explains.

In addition to its “mobile billboards” and general advertising, Mark Carpenter Plumbing supports the high school summer basketball camps. All the kids receive their camp T-shirts with the company logo on the back.

“We see those shirts all over town — even the ones from previous year’s camps,” he says. “The shirts and the wraps help with the top-of-mind awareness we are always striving to achieve with our customers.”