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By Christine Graf
Commercial electrical contractor T&J Electrical Associates has moved to a newly-constructed, 15,000-square-foot headquarters in Clifton Park.
The $2.2 million building is located at 419 Route 146. T&J Electrical was started by brothers Tony and Joe Sestito, out of Tony’s home, in 1977.
During the early years of the business, T&J Electrical performed residential and small-scale commercial work. Over time, the company focus shifted toward large commercial jobs. The company has grown to 80 employees and no longer performs residential work. Tony retired from the business several years ago.
“The scale of jobs they were taking on became larger and larger and they became a union contractor,” said Nick Sestito, son of Joe Sestito, who joined the family business in 2009. He worked his way up to partner and now manages the company along with his father, who is semi-retired.
“They performed a lot of retail work for companies like CVS, Price Chopper, and Shop Rite. Forty years later, we still have a lot of those customers,” he said.
Sestito has spent the last several years growing the company’s electrical lighting and maintenance division which represents approximately 25 percent of its revenue. The remaining 75 percent is generated by the new construction and remodeling division.
“When I came into the office in 2015 with the intent to grow that, we had one service van on the road,” he said. “We now have a fleet of over 20 and we cover the entire northeast. We repair anything electrical or lighting related.”
It was the growth of the service fleet that prompted the need for a new building. The leased space in Clifton Park that T&J occupied , on Ushers Road, was not large enough.
“We got out of the lease four years early because we took up all the space,” said Sestito.
T&J Electric covers a large service area that extends throughout New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Vermont and New Hampshire. The majority of the company’s employees are in the Capital Region, but a small number of technicians live throughout the extensive service area. T&J Electric does not use subcontractors.
“We are a little bit of a niche contractor,” said Sestito. “We have a large coverage area, and we perform all of the work inhouse with our employees. That saves the customer a lot of time and money. A lot of other companies may cover a region or even the nation, but they don’ self-perform the work. They sub a lot of the work out, and that adds another layer of cost and time to get things done.”
Although business declined at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has rebounded.
“In the beginning, when the initial panic came about, it pretty much halted us. Luckily, we do so much for essential businesses. We do a lot of supermarket work for pretty much every chain around here—Price Chopper, Aldi, Shop Rite, Walmart, Target. They still had their doors open, so we were able to complete a lot of projects,” he said.