Keep Craft Alive: Nick Schiffer, Builder and Business Owner
This builder's committed focus on craftsmanship and quality leads to work of the highest standards.
“ Stop trying to give me your best price. Give me your best product.”
– Nick Schiffer, Builder and business owner, Boston
Take a look at the portfolio of NS Builders, the full-service Boston-based home-building company started by Nick Schiffer, and you will get a clear sense of the caliber of construction he and his team are executing. The designs are high-end, contemporary, and imaginative. The work is tight and exacting. You’ll see the kind of projects many want to work on and most want to live in.
Nick started his company with a committed focus on craftsmanship and quality that has only strengthened as his business has grown—a business which now has 14 full-time employees and a full companion cabinet shop. Early on he adopted a tearout mentality as a standard to which he holds his work. If the execution isn’t good enough, he’ll tear it out and start over, no matter the cost to the business or the complication. This principle has been readily adopted by each new hire and has driven a company ethos centered on individual skill, talent, and care over speed and budget. As a result, NS Builders has gained a reputation for the exact type of work they want to be doing in the very way that they want to be doing it—in which the end result and the experience of the process are paramount for all involved.
“I want to be building distinctive, creative homes and working with partners and homeowners who all want to express their creativity, and I want to build a business with people who love what they do,” Nick says. “We’re all going to give 100%, and we’re all going to have a good time. It’s that experience that’s incredibly important, especially for clients. We want to leave them with the feeling that they’ve gotten everything they’ve asked for and more. Anything short of that is just not good enough.”
As a kid in trade school, Nick wanted to be a carpenter who would build the coolest projects and create something great. This raw love of design and construction is ever-present in his business and shared with the world through his social media feeds, podcasts, and events. Behind all of that, there’s a guy working as hard as he possibly can to build homes he loves in the way he’s always dreamt about building them, and taking those who share that same joy along for the ride.
—Rob Yagid, executive director, Keep Craft Alive
Photo: Todd Wilson, courtesy of NS Builders
From Fine Homebuilding #293
