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Home < About < Our Story

Our Story

From the addition of new services and locations, to becoming one company, we’ve grown a lot over the last 50 years! See how Modernistic became Michigan’s #1 Cleaning and Restoration company.

1973

Bob McDonald starts Modernistic out of his garage in Troy, Michigan. The concept was a "Mobile Carpet Cleaning Unit," and his pitch to customers early on was that they should "Demand the Best!" for their homes and businesses. He hires friends and neighbors he trusts to do a great job.

1975

Bob’s secretary goes on maternity leave, and he asks his wife, Kathy, a dental hygienist at the time, to fill in for her for "two weeks." That temporary arrangement lasts for the next 25 years with Kathy spearheading all aspects of appointment scheduling and accounting.

1979

Bob purchases his first (truck-mounted hot water extraction) unit! This investment, paired with his growing reputation for quality work, allows him to achieve many major commercial accounts across Metro Detroit. His first large commercial account is Detroit Edison! Bob continues to focus on relationships and shortly after, brings on The Silverdome, The Palace of Auburn Hills, Joe Louis Arena, Ford Field and most of the major hospitals in Metro Detroit.

1985

Lee and Katie Hitow, good friends of Bob and Kathy, purchase the first Modernistic franchise, and start it out of their garage in Richland, Michigan, serving the West Michigan area. The Hitows believe in the McDonalds commitment to world-class service. Their passion is for delighting customers and they quickly build a base of raving fans.

1987

Loyal customers begin to count on Modernistic in their time of need. All over Michigan, customers begin to think of Modernistic as the go-to for flooded basements, broken pipes, sewage back ups, and more. The powerful suction of the truck-mounted extraction units used for carpet cleaning are a powerful force against water damage. Bob and Lee lead their teams to learn everything they can about the restoration industry so they could offer science-based extraction and drying services to customers with property damage.

1990

Modernistic quickly outgrows Bob's garage and many other commercial rentals around town, so Bob decides to build his first commercial building for Modernistic on Rankin Drive in Troy, Michigan. This 4,000 square foot building, designed by Bob to meet all of our needs, did just that - and two short years later, we outgrew our Rankin building too!

1992

Bob continues to focus on the science and technology behind the service, working with inventors and engineers around the country to ensure Modernistic is utilizing the most advanced equipment and specialized products on the market.

1996

Lee pitches Bob a catchy tune to start incorporating into radio advertising. And thus, the Modernistic jingle was born and has been stuck in the heads of Michiganders ever since! Learn more about the notorious Modernistic Jingle.

2003

Bob and Lee decide to meet in the middle to open up shop in Lansing, Michigan, to serve the State Capital region. Soon after locations open to serve Flint and later, Mt. Pleasant and the Tri-cities area. With these pins popping up on the map, Simple & Quick service is now available across the majority of the lower peninsula.

2005

With concerns about Allergies on the rise, Modernistic onboards a new service to make their customers’ homes & businesses even cleaner and healthier: Air Duct Cleaning! The phones ring off the hook with customers concerned about Indoor Air Quality.

2005 & 2008

Bob’s daughter Jill and Lee’s daughter Rachel start working in the family business. Jill and Rachel, friends since childhood, find themselves talking into the wee morning hours about their ideas for the business, delighting in each other's shared passion for all things Mod. Until this point, the locations across the state had operated largely independently from each other, but Jill and Rachel begin to see opportunities to collaborate.

2010

Jill and Rachel are inspired by each others’ energy, insight, and perspectives and want to share this spark with their teams. They begin to analyze the business to see where they can pool efforts and get their independent teams working together as one. It starts with marketing, a shared website, unified branding, and eventually custom software.

2019

Jill and Rachel are astounded by the talent of their individual teams and begin to feel that any challenge or opportunity is better met with both teams at the table. They believe in this concept so much, they gather their parents around the table and pitch the concept of a merger.

2020

Believing in the power of a unified Modernistic, Bob and Lee make the merger official! This is just in time for the statewide teams to ban together to weather the storm of the Covid-19 pandemic. Like all family-owned businesses, the company faced many hurdles through this crisis, but pivoted quickly to meet the challenges of the moment.

2021

Traverse City location opens and plans are laid to eventually make this vibrant community by the bay the official headquarters for Modernistic!

2023

Modernistic celebrates 50 years of Simple & Quick!

The Story of the Mod Jingle

Let’s set the stage. The year is 1996. Lee Hitow and his wife Katie have grown their Modernistic franchise from one to twenty trucks out on the road each day. When they started their business, Katie would answer phones and schedule appointments for customers while Lee would go out and clean the carpet, day and night!

Through a commitment to over-the-top, wow-worthy service that people couldn’t stop talking about, the business grew and grew. So much so, that Lee couldn’t keep up with maintaining all twenty trucks himself. He had worked out a deal with a local car dealership where he would sometimes take vans to be worked on.

One day, Lee went to pick up a van from the shop when one of the dealership salesmen stopped him and asked to show him something. Always up for making new friends, Lee obliged and the salesman explained that he had worked on a little something with his garage band that he thought was worth a listen. They climbed in the van and he popped in a cassette and played a recording of the Jingle for Lee.

Catchy, sure, but was it the right move for the business? Lee asked to take the cassette tape home to show Katie. After a weekend of listening to the Jingle, and not being able to stop singing it themselves, Lee and Katie decided to give it a whirl. They called down to the local radio stations and had them switch all of their spots out for 30 straight seconds of the Modernistic Jingle.

The phones rang off the hook! But not just with customers scheduling appointments. The radio stations also called to say they were receiving calls from listeners threatening to boycott the station if they didn’t stop playing the Jingle. This rattled Lee & Katie, as their commitment is first and foremost to customer delight, but the results were undeniable. In only a few years, their business doubled in size again. The other Modernistic locations across the state started playing the Jingle too!

The Jingle was an undeniable earworm that made people remember to schedule their carpet cleaning! When the Hitow children got on the bus each morning, the kids sang the Jingle the rest of the way to school. When Lee or Bob would run into fellow Michiganders on their travels around and even out of the country, people would sing the Jingle. To this day, when Modernistic vans are stopped in traffic, customers roll down their windows for a spontaneous sing-along.

The Jingle represents the American Dream – with hard work, focus, creativity, and fun, anything is possible. Thank you for sharing in our nostalgia for this very proud moment in Modernistic History!

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