I started Revamp in 2016 as a solo operation in my apartment, focused on utility‑scale renewable energy projects. Our first six years were marked by rapid, uninterrupted growth. By April of 2022, we hit 100 employees, which was a huge milestone for us. Clients were telling us to scale and the pipeline was enormous. We felt invincible. That feeling lasted about a week.

In April 2022, a trade complaint was brought by Auxin, a small U.S. module manufacturer, alleging that China was bypassing tariffs by routing through four southeast Asian countries. The industry was used to tariffs, but the nature of this investigation completely stopped module shipments from those countries while the lawsuit played out. Overnight, the majority of our solar module business disappeared. Our Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) client backlog evaporated. 80% of our revenue was suddenly up in the air.

Our first response was denial. Just like the pandemic, closing schools and businesses for months, this seemed impossible and unthinkable. But it happened. Even with the Biden administration putting a stay on all new solar tariffs for two years just to keep the industry moving, the damage was done. We went from being wildly busy to having nothing but time to look ourselves in the mirror and reflect.

While this was painful and terrifying, in looking back on it, I can see clearly that this was one of the most important things to happen to Revamp. This period of inactivity forced us to address uncomfortable things.

First, we took a hard look at the pipeline we’d been counting on. We realized much of the pipeline we’d trusted was more optimistic than concrete. Everyone in our industry was riding the wave of fast growth and optimism, but was it all real? With some perspective, we could see that it was not, and that we needed to change the way we built and solidified our pipeline. Over-reliance on a few huge orders from just one or two huge clients put us at risk. We have to trust our clients, but we also need backups. We needed to diversify. A diverse pipeline can handle swings.

In one way in particular, our timing was incredibly lucky; we had just started our civil engineering team, whose work at the time was focused on Developer/Owner clients, which actually increased significantly because of all the changes required because of the Auxin case. They became a lifeline, taking on a considerable amount of preliminary civil work for our developer clients and keeping money coming in.

Internally, we made some important changes as well. Previously, we had been purely organized in groups by skills sets (electrical engineers, civil engineers, etc.), and management load focused on too few individuals. We realized this was no longer serving us well and was creating inefficiencies, so we undertook a significant reorganization.

We stepped back and defined the things that make a business resilient over time: Employee Satisfaction, Efficient Production, Client Satisfaction, In-Demand Services, Quality + Innovation, and Brand Recognition. Once we had identified these six core things, we were able to turn that into three Centers of Excellence within the company. Design Services focuses on Employee Satisfaction and Efficient Production, Client Services focuses on Client Satisfaction and In-Demand Services, and the Technical Innovation group focuses on Quality + Innovation and Brand Recognition.

In addition to making us more efficient, this new organizational structure was designed to build a more consistent experience for our people and our partners–what it was like to work at Revamp and to work with Revamp. On top of this, we also moved to a matrix structure within the project execution side of the business and kept our employee-to-manager ratio under 6:1 to ensure our employees, who are 90+% remote, get the support they need day-to-day.

Through all of it, the most important decision we made was about our people. We had been conservative with cash from the beginning, in case of a situation like this. We knew we could keep everyone on at full salary, but only if we had the guts to use our reserves. We knew our real projects hadn’t died, they were delayed. We just didn’t know how long. So, we kept everyone.

At the start of 2023, when the pipeline came back, we paid full bonuses for 2022. We did this not because the year was good–it wasn’t. This decision sent a signal both internally and externally about who we intended to be when things got hard. We did it because our people didn’t waver. They stayed in, and they made us better. With our great team in the landscape that was emerging, we knew we had some good years ahead of us.

The shutdown ended up lasting just one year. From many perspectives, it was a very long year. But at the same time, it was the most important year we’ve had. The changes we made positioned us for this next phase of growth. And a few seeds were planted during this period that didn’t see the light until more recently.

When I announced the creation of our Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) last September, I said it was a commitment. It was a commitment that Revamp would always stay Revamp. I made the commitment to my team and to our clients, that we’re going to do things our way for the long term. We are going to work on projects that help this planet, putting our people and project success ahead of short-term profit, and treating everyone fairly.

The reason we chose to do this now is because we see an extraordinary opportunity over the next decade to grow this company into something even more special. Along with that comes substantial share value, and I wanted the whole team to be part of that. I wanted them to have ownership in what this company becomes and the value it creates–to own the future of Revamp.

I believe deeply that if you take care of your people, they will do incredible things. In scaling a business like ours, that is everything. Our people’s time is our product. We do not take a minute of it for granted.

In the four years since this crisis, business has been great. We’ve nearly doubled in size, while meaningfully diversifying our pipeline. It’s been an incredible run. But we cannot get complacent. Challenges are coming. They always are. And we need to be ready to see them as opportunities when they do.