When Bill Feinberg moved from Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale in 1979, the 20-year-old didn’t realize he was starting a migratory trend that would quickly catch on across the entire Feinberg clan. His oldest brother, Joe, arrived the following year. Then his younger brother, Robert, followed suit, and his older brother David came in 1983, completing the Feinberg superfecta. “Fort Lauderdale truly is an incredible place to live,” Bill says, and “one by one my brothers followed me down here.”
All four of the Feinberg kids had been working for the same South Florida remodeling company as salespeople when Bill decided to branch out and start his own firm with his brothers. When they launched Allied Kitchen & Bath in 1984, Bill estimates, only 10 employees were working out of the little duplex he purchased on Oakland Park Boulevard. Now, as the licensed residential general-contracting firm celebrates its 40th anniversary this year with family and a staff of 70, Allied Kitchen & Bath boasts not just excellent workmanship and design creativity but can sell quality materials and products to the public, designers, architects and builders from its flagship showroom on the original office grounds. Though the company’s scope and scale have grown exponentially over the years, its address and commitment to family and the community have proudly remained the same.
“I’m truly blessed to have a great family that I can do this with,” Bill says. “When I started out 40 years ago, we would do a little bathroom for $5,000 and today I do bathrooms for $100,000 — you can imagine the difference of what they look like!”
Entrepreneurial acumen seems to be an inherited trait in the Feinberg household. Their father had been a hairdresser who ran his own successful beauty salon for 30 years in Philadelphia. When Bill was only 16, he and his brother Joe started a rewarding window cleaning business that they later sold when they moved to South Florida. It’s still operating today. “My brother and I always did good and stayed busy and made money,” Bill recalls. “When I thought of opening up Allied [Kitchen & Bath], I knew that I wanted to make Joe my partner because he and I worked very well together as young kids and formed a bond early on.”
Allied Kitchen & Bath truly was conceived as a family company and remains one in practice all these years later. As its president, Bill has become the face of the company. Joe, as executive vice president, qualifies the company as the general contractor. Rob is the lead designer, and David is the facilities manager. “We all have our own role; we all do something different,” Bill explains. “Part of our success is that we all work well together.”
After the Feinberg brothers moved to Fort Lauderdale, their parents moved down, too, in 1985. For nearly two decades, their mother worked as the firm’s bookkeeper and their father worked as the permit runner. “He was the one who had all the relationships with all the building departments and knew everybody from Miami to Palm Beach,” Bill recalls of his dad.
Charity has long been a cornerstone of the Feinbergs’ business philosophy. For more than 25 years, Allied Kitchen & Bath has donated the salvaged appliances, building materials and other home accessories no longer needed after its remodels to Habitat ReStore, a nonprofit home improvement store that benefits affordable housing in the community. But his dad’s death to leukemia in 2003 motivated Bill to double down on this commitment further: In the past 20 years, Bill has served as a past chairman for Habitat for Humanity, past chair of the board for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and chairman of the board of the Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce. When Allied’s new 15,000-square-foot showroom debuted in 2009, it doubled as a space to host charity events for organizations including Lifenet for Families, the Boys & Girls Club and Broward Health Foundation. “My philosophy is to pay it forward,” Bill says.
Allied Kitchen & Bath’s commitment to the community has, in turn, endeared the company to its clients. Bill can recount countless stories of repeat customers returning for a remodel decades later. Most recently, he says, a Fort Lauderdale woman who had her kitchen remodeled 25 years ago called the company to not just renovate her kitchen a quarter century later but her floors and all three bathrooms, too — an anecdote that encapsulates the longevity and quality of not just the company’s work but the interpersonal relationships it has built over the years with clients.
“We have a lot of customers like that. We have some customers where we’re even doing their children’s and their grandchildren’s homes now,” Bill says. “It’s really amazing how the years fly by.”
