Going Solar? Choose the Independent, Locally-Owned Company With Eight Years in Business

By Erick O’Donnell

This month, we at SunSolar Solutions are celebrating the eighth anniversary of our company’s founding in 2015. Since then, we’ve helped over 9,000 Arizona homeowners go solar. The journey hasn’t always been smooth, but it’s been full of excitement. To mark this occasion, I sat down with Val Berechet, a co-founder and CEO. We looked back on eight years of challenges overcome and lessons learned.

As a milestone, what does this anniversary mean to you?

It shows stability; it shows that we’re here to stay. We’ve made it through the earlier stumbling blocks of building a business and sustaining a business, so that gives us confidence. And I think it gives the community confidence that, eight years later, we’re still here going strong. And we’re actually in growth mode. We’re looking to expand. We’ve been doing very well in Arizona. We’ve established a name for ourselves and established a certain credibility in the industry. Now, we’re able to take that to new markets.

As an entrepreneur in a very new industry, you must have come across some unforeseen obstacles. Can you tell me about those? Have you learned any valuable lessons from overcoming them?

There’s been no lack of obstacles. The industry is known for this—they call it “the solar coaster” because it just seems there’s constant ups and downs in this business. At the end of the day, we’re doing construction. There are a lot of construction companies, but solar is also tied into the utility side of things. So you’ve got a whole other layer of bureaucracy; not only do you have to deal with the cities—the permitting, the plans, and the building code, which is always changing—but you’re also dealing with the utility side. If it’s not one of them making changes, it’s the other. It seems as though it’s never really calm.

We started out as a sales company partnered with an installer, and things weren’t as volatile back then. But then, as solar became more popular, the utility companies looked to make changes, introducing more restrictions and making it harder for homeowners to go solar. Sometimes people want to wait, but we’ve seen that the opposite approach is wisest; the longer you wait, the more things change in favor of the utility companies.

We started off eight years ago, but 2020 is when we brought everything in-house. That certainly brought a lot of challenges, some of which we had seen coming but many of which we hadn’t. That was the year the pandemic struck, which made staffing and sales difficult. That subsided, and then we had to deal with tariffs on imported solar panels from China. We had never used nor do we use products made in China today, but the uncertainty around tariffs and taxes affected the entire industry, causing prices to skyrocket.

Then that subsided, but then other supplychain problems arose, partly because of Covid’s effect on the workforce. Small parts, such as an electrical subpanel or a certain kind of circuit breaker, became hard to come by. This caused a lot of delays in projects, which understandably frustrated many of our customers, so we were really stuck between a rock and a hard place. That really caused a lot of stress for everybody.

That has started to subside, but the latest thing is inflation. That’s now causing an increase in prices, which makes sales more difficult.

There has been challenge after challenge after challenge, but—going back to the original question about the eight years—I think what it has shown is that we have persevered through it all. At the office, we sometimes joke about all the challenges, saying: “You know, when things go back to normal, we’re going to be bored!”

SunSolar Solutions stands out for its independence. It’s privately owned and fully integrated, handling every step in the sales-and-installation process. Did you and your partners deliberately decide to stay independent?

Yes, that was certainly a deliberate decision we came to over time. We started off as a sales company with an installation partner. That was good for a while, but as both businesses progressed, we began to have a different vision from what our partner had in mind. We wanted to really control the customer experience, whereas our partner’s priority was growth. A focus on growth tends to come with downsides. If the sales outgrow the operation, it’s great at first—you have all this stuff going on—but then you have this problem snowball on the operations side that just keeps getting bigger and bigger. So we wanted to focus more on organic growth, with a slower approach to make sure that everything stays balanced. That was definitely one of the reasons why we wanted to go our own way instead of continuing to partner with another company: that way we could make sure that our priorities would not get watered down.

A major part of SunSolar’s success comes from its outstanding online reviews. How have you managed to get consistently positive feedback from customers?

It really goes to our culture. Often we’ll stop and ask ourselves: “Hey, what do we stand for? What is our mission here at SunSolar?” And the answer has consistently been to create an excellent experience for the customer. A common pain point in this industry is a failure to communicate with customers. That concept seems simple, but putting it into practice isn’t. So we make sure to touch base with our customers every single week. Even if we’re waiting on the city to approve a permit, we still call to say: “Hi, we’re just calling to touch base with you, Mr. or Mrs. Homeowner. We’re still waiting on the city. If you have any questions, definitely reach out to us.”

We have also deliberately decided against complete automation. A popular trend in many industries is to automate all customer contact. Of course, we use technology to be as efficient as possible, but we combine that with human interaction. We always ask our customers how they want to be updated— via email, text, or phone call. A lot of people love text messages, so we’ll contact them that way to update them about all the little developments. But for the big milestones in the project timeline, we’ll give them a phone call. That really helps with the process of keeping them informed, and that is one of the top things we see in our reviews. We see a lot of positive reviews, and almost everybody mentions how excellent the communication was; they always knew what was going on with the project.

In addition, we assign an individual—a “project specialist”—to each customer. That means you only have one point of contact throughout your whole project. They’re calling you, and you’re calling them with any questions. So when somebody calls in, we don’t need to look up your account. These projects take weeks, if not a few months sometimes, so you’re really getting to know that person on a personal level, which makes it more personal. It’s not just transactional. You’re not just the next item on the conveyor belt.

As always, the experienced professionals at SUNSOLAR Solutions are ready to help you take control of your family’s energy future. Call us today at 623-562-9009 to have a design prepared for your home free of charge.

Connect With

Upper Westsider

Get In Touch: 2550 W. Union Hills Drive, Ste. 350-9433 Phoenix, AZ 85027

888-313-7916 facebook.com/TheUpperWestsider

Advertising and Submissions: Contact the marketing department by phone at 888-313-7916 or email us at advertising@egpublishing.com.

Press release submissions and event listings are always welcomed at news@egpublishing.com.

Staff:

EG Publishing is a local, family-owned company.

Natasha & Brian Beal / Publishers

Sondra Barr / Editor

Shannon Carrillo / Production & Design

Erica Odello / Ad Design

Notes:

This publication is offered free of charge in an effort to keep our neighbors informed, as well as to support the local business owners who make up our community. Without their support, this publication would not exist. Please support their business, and let them know you saw them in this newspaper. Every effort is made to avoid errors, misspellings and omissions. If, however, an error comes to your attention, please accept our sincere apologies and notify us. myhyperlocalnews.com