Today we’d like to introduce you to Lou Waters.
Lou, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was out of town during Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, and my house flooded when I wasn’t there to do anything about it. It turns out that the same story played out all over Houston, but especially in downtown, the Medical Center, and other key commercial districts.
I’ve started and built several companies since finishing Rice University in 1990, and so in the aftermath of Allison, I started FloodBreak with Paul Dishman, a friend from Rice, to develop and build automatic floodgates — systems that will protect buildings regardless of whether anyone is there to help.
Paul and I spent the first year driving all over Houston with a working model of our floodgate in the back of his pickup truck, showing our idea to building managers, engineers, and administrators. Our first projects were MD Andersen Hospital, the University of Houston, and the Bellaire City Police Department.
From those beginnings, we are now in fourteen countries worldwide and over half of the States in the US. We established an entirely new category in the flood protection industry — passive automatic systems — and we are considered a leader and innovator in the industry worldwide.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The first major challenge was to prove that our idea would work in a real-world flood.
When the operation of an entire building or campus — especially a major hospital system or university — is at stake, people are hesitant to bet on something that hasn’t been proven elsewhere. So it was critical to us that we prove ourselves to some key customers early.
The second challenge was the response from competitors. When we started to win business and to expose the risks inherent in “active systems” (flood logs, submarine doors, and other things that require people to act during emergencies), the old-guard competitors in the business jumped in to defend their market share.
We had some really difficult financial struggles in the first ten years of operation, but now we are well proven and financially very healthy, and we’re being called in by top engineering firms to help with projects all over the world.
FloodBreak – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Our business is passive, automatic flood protection. Our slogan is “No People, No Power”, and we specialize in protecting our customers against flood water regardless of when it comes or how high it gets. We provide 24x7x365 automatic protection for entrances to buildings and campuses, openings across levees and floodwalls, and other places where flood water needs to be stopped. There is always a risk that people may not be able to react quickly enough or power may not be available, and we eliminate that very problem at its core.
What we are most proud of is the fact that in our nearly 20 years in business, there have been many floods (including four in Houston) where our gates have saved our customers, and in all those cases, there has never been flood damage behind a FloodBreak floodgate. In addition to being the only floodgate company that has this distinction, we are set apart by our highly creative mindset — our entire product portfolio has been developed through problems that we have solved for customers.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
That’s a very good question. Of course, financial success is critical. A company has to make money to survive. But we put our people and our customers ahead of the pure profit motive. We look for healthy profits, but we also look for the growth of our team, success in developing new products for our industry, and a top reputation among our customers and partners.
One indication we’re succeeding is that our customers have always — always — called us back in for repeat projects. Once they see what we’re capable of and what we’ll do to make them successful, they know we’re a partner for the long term.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2800 Post Oak Blvd Suite 5850
Houston TX 77056 - Website: www.floodbreak.com
- Phone: +1-713-980-6610
- Email: info@floodbreak.com
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