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Bespoke Contracting President Brian Kearns with his sons, Nolan and Joseph (Joey).

Bespoke Contracting specializes in high-end luxury homes, like this cottage house for Ivanka Trump at Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey.

A perfect storm led Brian Kearns to start his own company in 2008. At the end of a sports career in arena football and working full time at a mortgage company, Brian was also handling the financial and estimating end for construction projects with Ron Grillo, his best man in his wedding.

Laid off from his job as a union carpenter, the friend had put together a crew of six to seven people working construction projects. Fed up with a corporate environment, Brian decided to leave his job at the same time his friend got called back to work, so he took over the business and Bespoke Contracting was born.

Brian, who comes from a family of masons, and his crew had learned woodworking from his carpenter friend, as well as demolition, framing, drywall and finish work.

“It was a perfect situation to start out as a general contractor,” he says. “I had a Rolodex of people, and I started taking everything and anything that would come my way. No job was too big or too small.”

Whether it was building stairs, painting a bedroom, doing patch-up work or hanging doors, Brian was focused on making sure his crew had work every day. “By the time I looked up, we had a full schedule,” he says.

Eventually, the firm earned a reputation for its custom work in building high-end homes in northern New Jersey. Today, Bespoke Contracting, headquartered in Bergen County, New Jersey, specializes in preconstruction and consulting as well as construction management for custom interiors, design-build and custom woodwork for both residential and commercial customers. It has projects throughout New Jersey and in New York City.

Quality Workmanship

The adjective “bespoke” means custom-made, so it’s only natural that Bespoke Contracting is known for its custom work. “We are extremely attentive to the smallest details to ensure the job is perfect when complete,” Brian says. “Our Construction Superintendent Joseph ‘Joey’ LaCorte will inspect a job, and if the littlest detail is messed up, it gets redone. We’ve taken down a complete wall before because he didn’t like how a few tiles were placed.”

That precision has led the firm to be trusted with high-end luxury homes, from Ivanka Trump’s cottage house at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to an unfinished basement transformed into a high-end living area for the family of the Tommy Bahama clothing line. The company also has completed some memorable commercial projects, including the Beats Studio pop-up showroom and Nello restaurant, both in New York City.

With a crew of eight people on staff, Bespoke Contracting pulls from a large network of contacts in the construction business to meet client needs. Brian recalls a recent construction job on Madison Avenue, which started on a Friday afternoon and had to be completed by the following Sunday evening. “We worked around the clock, running shifts of 15 people at a time,” he says.

Bespoke Contracting is presently building a $3 million residence in Saddle River, New Jersey, one of the richest suburbs in the nation, known for its historic homes and newer mansions. “It has every high-end [feature] you can imagine, from heated floors to a steam room,” Brian says.

The company delivers its upscale projects with quality construction and materials. “The majority of our homes are structurally more solid than the average contractor. Typically, when a contractor puts in a door frame, they nail two two-by-fours together on both sides. When we put in door frames, we take a four-by-four post and notch it so it’s a solid 4-inch-thick piece of wood to create a more solid frame. We put in three lag bolts in every bay [even] when code doesn’t require it. We spend more money in our materials and labor, but in the long run, the product is what is important,” Brian says.

Word-of-Mouth Advertising

Because of its quality craftsmanship and attention to detail, Bespoke Contracting has grown by word-of-mouth. “We’ve never paid for any advertising. The best way to get business is when it’s a referral and people have seen your work. They talk about how quick we were, how clean we were. When a problem arose, we jumped in to correct it, no questions asked. We stick by our word, and that gets people talking and they become talking billboards for us,” Brian says.

This year, the company is tapping into The Blue Book Network for referrals for both customers and trades to assist on construction projects. “We’ve been able to take on jobs quicker due to our ability to find trades through The Blue Book. Our book of business is pretty full, but we’re always looking for additional projects, and The Blue Book is a good source for that as well,” he says.

The firm is also working to grow its property management maintenance work. “It helps pay the bills and keeps the lights on as we work to generate profits from building homes from the ground up,” says Brian, who had a full book of business for snow shoveling in his northern New Jersey neighborhood as a kid. “I’ve never forgotten how I could make money cutting grass or shoveling snow, so we decided to do it on a larger scale when I started the company.”

The maintenance division, headed by John Perna, handles snow plowing, landscaping and emergency services, which has opened the door to other maintenance jobs such as painting for property management firms. “We have created a one-stop shop for property maintenance companies and are currently responsible for more than 4,000 units spread out through the northern New Jersey area,” he says.

A Team to Trust

One reason for Bespoke Contracting’s success is the close-knit relationships within the team. “I get to work with a bunch of knuckleheads every day. It’s a lot of fun,” Brian jokes. “The majority of us grew up in Lyndhurst in northern New Jersey. We’ve been so close for so long, when we go to work, it’s like hanging out with your buddies.”

Brian says that team members such as Joey and John got to know each other through sports and wrestling during their high school years and have remained close since. John was a three-time state wrestling finalist and a one-time state champ, as well as a college wrestler. Joey, an all-state baseball player in high school who still holds an all-time batting average, played Division 1 baseball at West Virginia University. Joey and John are not just colleagues to Brian—they’re also friends.

“We basically work as partners. We don’t go by our job titles. We have a mutual respect for one another. Although I started the company, we’re all in it together,” Brian says. “Every day I go to work, I get to hang out with the guys and have fun. And when we’re done with a project, we can say, ‘Wow, we did this.’ ”

Brian says that their involvement in sports over the years and seeing the dedication of volunteer coaches gave them a sense of responsibility and an understanding of the importance of giving back. That’s why Brian and his co-workers volunteer their time with youth sports.

When Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, Bespoke Contracting pitched in to help homeowners who suffered storm damage, doing everything from removing carpet and debris to helping repair damaged homes. “After Superstorm Sandy, there were so many storm chasers who came taking advantage of homeowners. I thought, ‘Enough is enough,’ so we started helping people get generators, tear out debris, whatever we needed to do. Still, nine years later, we’re completing home repairs for some people,” Brian says.

Bespoke Contracting’s team members became experts in the New Jersey Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation Program, which allocated $1.34 billion in federal funds to help homeowners repair or rebuild their storm-damaged homes. “There is a lot of paperwork involved in getting grant monies,” Brian says, “and the average person who is not in construction wouldn’t know where to start. We help do the paperwork for homeowners and work with the state and its Department of Community Affairs, which administers the program, and we have become one of their more popular contractors.”

In 2017, Bespoke Contracting was nominated for a prestigious builders award by a customer. “It’s nice to know that people don’t take what you do for granted,” Brian notes. “When we first started Bespoke Contracting, we were looking to make enough money to pay our bills and go on vacation once a year. Over the years, the company has made many transformations, and we’ve changed our vision and goals. When we started out, our scope of work was that of what a handyman can do. Today, we can handle anything from the ground up. Now our goal is to be a household name when someone mentions construction.”