Sealco

Ron Miglini, president of Sealco, founded the company as a small critical environment cleaning business in 1984 out of his garage. After 19 years working with NCH Corporation, Miglini wanted to be able to spend more time with his family; therefore, he made a change.

Miglini’s leap of faith served him well, as Sealco has grown steadily for almost 30 years. The company has established a name for itself, building a niche in today’s data center industry by providing cleaning, products and energy conservation services that keep highly sensitive equipment operational and efficient.

“Our business is pretty simple,” Miglini explains. “We perform environmental cleaning for data centers. We do over 4 million square feet every month. Energy and bypass airflow control has become the other half of the business. We started with cleaning, but we knew we needed to do some cooling efficiencies and energy conservation and we do that all over the country.”

Over time, Sealco has risen to meet the demand of an expanding sector in energy and airflow control services. Sealco’s AirSeal division was created to offer a full line of products, as well as turnkey service solutions, to help solve cooling and energy problems, which all show immediate and measurable results. AirSeal designs and installs hot and cold aisle containment systems, custom raised floor grommets, sub floor baffling systems and many other data center specialty items.

In order to deliver services that meet Miglini’s expectations, he maintains a highly qualified staff he couldn’t be more proud of. A team of 125 employees work out of the company’s main office in Richardson, Texas, as well as four additional offices in Houston, Atlanta, St. Louis and Kansas City.

A Diverse and Highly Qualified Staff

“This company exists because of its employees,” Miglini says. “I’ve just been fortunate enough to lead them. First of all, I’ve done all the work myself at one time or another. I understand it. The base of our company – all of our laborers, the people that do the work – come from other countries. Most of our team is made up of refugees who have come here looking for a better way of life.”

Miglini’s belief in the importance of family has influenced his hiring philosophy, as Sealco continues to provide a springboard for international refugees seeking work and a better life. “To take care of their families, they want to live the American Dream and are willing to do what’s necessary to earn it,” he points out. “We started with people from Vietnam and now have employees from Africa, Eastern Europe, as well as the Middle East and Latin countries.”

“It’s amazing how you can take people from all these cultures and once they get to know each other, they are the best of friends and they support each other,” Miglini continues. “These are hard working people and we want to give them opportunities that all people deserve who are willing to work. I sincerely mean it when I say the finest men and women anyone would want to be associated with are at Sealco. It is my privilege to lead them.”

Dedication to employees’ well-being has led Sealco to develop a thorough and safety-oriented training process. “We have a written training policy,” Miglini states. “We have two training managers and a safety manager. Everybody goes through a full background check; felony. We know who we have. They come in and they go through classroom training.”

The company does not take training lightly, as this is the base for Sealco’s success. “We have a 500-square-foot, raised floor, simulated computer room to train them hands-on where they do testing,” Miglini continues. “They are working in the classroom and then we send them out on field training. We always find a leader who is very bilingual. That person is a leader for that group. The employees quickly learn to take English and we pay for English as a second language class, as well as any community college courses.”

Building a Niche

Sealco’s target market is critical facilities, such as buildings that house data centers and mechanical equipment rooms. “All of our projects are interesting, it just depends on who owns them,” says Miglini. “We work for some major companies, performing work on just a single room up to 120,000 square feet. We can’t talk much about our clients, but I can tell you we work with 80 percent of this country’s largest financial companies. We perform everything in-house.”

Miglini prefers maintaining as many services in-house as possible. “These customers pay us too much to risk losing control over quality,” he says. “We work with minimal suppliers. Most of our needs are filled by trained labor. We have equipment we use and a few supplies, but for the most part we design what we need specifically.”

Like many businesses, Sealco faced challenges throughout the recession. With an unstable market, increased cost of doing business and changing tax structures and regulations, Miglini and his crew had to tighten up in order to weather the storm.

“We took the time to improve our process,” he explains. “We have focused on being as productive as possible and tightly managing our controllable expenses while still delivering a quality product.”

Due to an esteemed reputation, a majority of the company’s work comes through referrals. It seems as though relationships are Sealco’s forte, as employee tenure at the company is also impressive; over half of the staff has been with the business for between 10 and 25 years.

“Our employees get paid more for the same job the longer they are here,” Miglini notes. “That increases our expenses, but it also means that our customers are seeing the same faces year after year. Many of our people know these worksites very well. In the case of emergency, we are efficient and familiar.”

According to Miglini, the single largest indicator of success is the response the company receives from customers. “We don’t want to have any issues with our service,” he says. “Our goal is to consistently deliver a quality product at a fair price, resulting in positive exit interviews. We get letters all the time from customers who say they have never seen such a professional crew; they introduced themselves and checked in at the end of the day.”

As the business approaches its 30-year anniversary, Sealco is still growing. The team is moving into a new headquarters in the coming months and Miglini is always looking out for new growth opportunities. While he has no acquisitions lined up, he is open to the idea; as the technology industry grows, keeping growth steady is imperative. With his thumb firmly on the business, Miglini is looking forward to many years of continued service with Sealco.