Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenn Lassa.
Jenn and Marcin Matlakowski met in 2008 while working as landscape professionals in Chicago. They quickly realized their shared enthusiasm for beautiful design, the outdoors, and living life to the fullest, would make them perfect partners in business and in life! They decided to take their talents to the next level and launched Rooftopia in the fall of 2009.
A few years later in 2013, Jenn and Marcin were married in a picture-perfect farm wedding surrounded by family and friends. In 2016 they celebrated the birth of a beautiful baby girl and Rooftopia became certified as a Woman Owned business with the city of Chicago.
In 2017, Rooftopia expanded into a new and improved workshop and office, and received its first official award of excellence from Unilock. Rooftopia has seen a great deal of growth over the years, and now maintains several year round employees.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road has certainly been full of obstacles, but we’ve been able to overcome each road block and are stronger for it. Every difficult situation comes with stress, but it’s taught me to keep a positive outlook and persevere. If you can learn from a negative experience, I believe you can teach yourself considerable confidence to avoid situations that might become problems… put out the fire before it starts, so to speak.
Financially, it was tough to get started and pay ourselves a sustainable wage, since neither of us had an alternate source of income. We couldn’t afford groceries the first season and struggled to pay rent, we had many second thoughts about starting a business together, but it motivated us to try even harder to succeed.
We slowly built the business by investing our profits back into tools and equipment that we needed for growth, without taking out loans. Our first shop was a small unheated garage, and our first office was a room in our one-bedroom apartment, where we managed to host several employees every day!
After that, bought a house and created a bare bones office on our first floor and lived on the second floor as we gutted and renovated the house. Our employees that endured with us look back and laugh about how bare it was with no walls or insulation, exposed 2x4s and electrical wires, a few desks and a mattress leaning up against the wall. We rented shop space in a nearby building and have expanded three times. Thankfully, we were able to move into a new workshop this past summer, where we also set up a beautiful new office.
Navigating taxes, accounting and insurance as a small business is incredibly challenging and each of these arenas comes with a steep learning curve. I’d encourage new business owners to budget and immediately hire the right people to handle these matters, rather than trying to do it yourself in the midnight hours, after you work an 18-hour day.
Posting jobs, finding, interviewing and training employees has been a challenge. Our business is labor intensive, physically demanding, a little dirty and working outside is tough as we navigate extreme changes in weather. Thankfully our current staff are all dedicated, professional, strong, friendly and incredibly talented and we’re excited about an amazing 2018!
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Rooftopia – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
We are a woman-owned, design-build firm, specializing in rooftop gardens, urban landscapes, outdoor living spaces, custom outdoor furniture and garden elements.
We are at our best when we can transform an unusable or unappealing roof or backyard into a beautiful, inspiring living space that becomes an extension of the home and reflects the owners’ lifestyle. Each of our projects is a unique collaboration, personalized for our clients to match their style, whether they’re relaxing or entertaining guests.
We use new ideas, technology and high-end materials to design and install luxury outdoor living areas. It is our goal to exceed customer expectations with our communication and quality craftsmanship from start to finish.
We are proud to offer a wide array of services, so we can keep projects in motion and on budget, while providing high quality results and customer satisfaction. Our clients hire us to act as a general contractor to organize the entire project from design, through a demolition, during any necessary building repairs, through installation of each custom detail until the project is completed.
Offering full service attention and an original design for every client, sets us apart from others.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Each year we grow our business with additional tools for our shop and hire talented staff members. We are currently hiring for 2018 and have plans to expand our reach by partnering with other local makers and offering more customizable garden elements made of metal, as we expand our welding and fabrication capabilities.
Contact Info:
- Address: 4200 W Diversey Ave #11
Chicago, IL 60639 - Website: www.rooftopia.com
- Phone: 773-398-9486
- Email: info@rooftopia.com
- Instagram: @rooftopiachicago
- Facebook: @rooftopia
Image Credit:
All photos were taken by Jenn Lassa
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