How do you respond to a recession? These Columbia brothers started a now-thriving heating and cooling business

Growing up in Columbia, brothers James and Sam Cassell said they always wanted to work together.

Trouble was, one or the other always had a job that was too good to give up, they said. Until the Great Recession hit.

James, or Jamie as many in Columbia know him, was working in the air-conditioning business for a local conglomerate after running his own small air-conditioning company for several years.

And Sam, or Sammie, as he is known by longtime friends, was working for another local company in air-conditioning outdoor sales, after putting years in the business in Charleston and Greenville.

The economic tumult of the recession screamed loudly enough in late 2007 that the Cassell brothers decided to return to their roots.

“New construction ended, basically, about October 15, 2007,” said James Cassell, 61, the elder brother. “2007 looked like a good year on paper. But it really quit about the end of November.”

This is how the Cassell brothers adjusted.

They opened Cassell Brothers Heating and Cooling in a tiny, one-garage-door, 800-square-foot building in Irmo on Broad River Road in November 2008. They had three employees: themselves and Sam’s son.

By 2010, the business had grown so much that they moved up the road into a 4,000-square-foot building (warehouse space included) that they purchased and remodeled themselves. The location was good for them. Four years later, the business employed 27 people and operated in the same location.

“That building was our dream,” Jamie Cassell said, reminiscing. “But there were four people – four desks – in my office and it was very crowded. We were actually running into each other in the parking lot.”

Last month, Cassell Brothers Heating and Cooling, now with 56 employees, moved directly across Broad River Road in Irmo into a gleaming, new 10,000-square-foot facility on 5.3 acres with good warehouse space and plans in the works to construct another new warehouse, the elder Cassell said.

“After 27 years of working in this community, it was pretty clear what we had to do,” Cassell recalled. “It would have been difficult to go out and start looking for another job in your mid-50s, saying ‘I’m going to start a career.

“We were part of the community and loved it – and had a lot of goodwill already built up in this area. It was the natural thing for us to do,” Cassell said.

The Great Recession, as it turns out, was a great time to start a business for the Cassell brothers. But the goodwill and growing business they have built up in the community over time is not coincidental.

The two brothers and their younger sister, Ginger, grew up in a neighborhood behind the Dorn V.A. Medical Center on Garners Ferry Road. They all attended Lower Richland High School.

Jamie graduated from USC in 1977 with a sociology degree, and Sammie, 58, attended the university for two years. Ginger is employed by USC.

The siblings grew up in the church and, they said, their faith very much instructs how they operate their business.

Most of Cassell Brothers business is residential. For the Cassell brothers, it begins by understanding how much people care about their homes, how particular they are about who they allow to come into their homes, and being respectful of their time, the brothers said.

Many homeowners owed more on their homes than they were worth during the recession, and they sought to get the most from the dollars spent on repairs or new equipment, James Cassell said. That was fertile ground for a young start-up company with little overhead to make a lasting impression.

“We decided we’re going to be on time. We’re going to work on weekends, we’re going to try to meet their schedules, we’re going to work after 5 p.m., we’re going to try to be places early. All those things really made customers tell their friends about us,” Jamie said.

Kerry Powers, Greater Irmo Chamber of Commerce president, said the town, which is a gateway to Lake Murray, is growing by leaps and bounds. The town also sits at the edge of the area’s busiest mall, Columbiana Centre, making it ripe for business.

The Cassell brothers, Powers said, are well-known in the area for honesty and integrity, and they do honest work on top of it.

“We know that personally from them over the years,” Powers said. “Both of them are firmly rooted in their faith and I believe that those principals bleed over into their work lives and how they handle their customers and how they do business with people.”

Kerry also said the Cassell brothers, both of whom are married parents, are firmly entrenched in the community and the school system of Lexington/Richland District 5. “They started kind of small out there on Broad River Road in that small little building, and I believe they have grown because they have done good, honest work.”

The Cassell brothers have done work for the Chamber, Powers said, and personally on her home and a rental property.

In the heating and air-conditioning business, there are two bad business conditions to deal with: days when there is too much work to get done, and days when there is too little.

Most people don’t know their air-conditioning is broken until they come after 6 p.m., Sam Cassell said. So, if you call Cassell Brothers, the phone will be answered by a person 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he said. The company has 14 technicians who can work until 11 p.m., if needed.

In that past eight years, Sam Cassell said, his company has completely cleared the daily workload every day with but two exceptions. “If it’s a service call and you don’t have air conditioning, we’re coming that night, even if you didn’t call us until 7,” he said.

“We decided we were going to do something,” Sam Cassell said, “so I quit (the outdoor sales job) the day after Thanksgiving (2008), and we have just been blessed every day since. The good Lord gave us a job every day since that day. It’s like manna from heaven.”

This story was originally published May 28, 2016 at 11:42 AM with the headline "How do you respond to a recession? These Columbia brothers started a now-thriving heating and cooling business."