Historical April 1991 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
The Times welcomes Majordomo, Ltd. as a new advertiser.
The concept has its roots in the same grand history as our neighborhood.
From the Middle Ages to the Victorian Era and now to the present day, the majordomo, or “chief steward of the household” has made life easier for homeowners.
In the traditional role, the majordomo coordinated the day to day operations of the household from housekeeping to child care and social arrangements. Now, here in St. Louis, Majordomo has been reborn with a ’90s style. Founders Laura Marren Guyton and Daniel Flynn have brought back the days of having someone manage your home, just as the manager of a department in any business would. “At the turn of the century, the majordomo was a symbol of status,” says Flynn, a former stock broker. “In today’s busy society, with two-income families, younger professionals and earlier retirees, it’s a necessity.” In the fall of 1989, Guyton, a former insurance agent, met Flynn at a meeting of a professional organization and started referring clients to each other, but soon realized that they had a mutual dissatisfaction with their careers.
Then Guyton and Flynn hit upon an idea—why try and compete with established companies?
They realized that a homeowner’s greatest frustration was in finding good services and the time it took to deal with a different company for every different job.
The result was Majordomo. Ltd., a company that minimizes the trouble of running a household, one phone number that consumers can call for any service from housekeeping to painting to catering. “We can engage any line of personal or domestic service,” said Guyton. “We’ve had calls ranging from historic rehabs to a lady who needed a live-in nurse for her cat.” The company is at the beck and call of their clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Guyton added, “Just the other day, one of our physician clients called us at 6:00 a.m. to say that a pipe had broken and the bathroom was flooding.
We had a plumber at his house in 15 minutes.
We take care of supervising the workman and making sure he’s paid so that the client could go about his day!” The company engages service providers on behalf of their clients using a list of independent companies that Majordomo has pre-qualified. “We found that there were no real standards for procedures or quality in most of the service industries, so we set up our own list of standards that each service company must meet before they can be one of the companies on our list,” said Guyton.
The standard requirements include checking on each with the Better Business Bureau and the Secretary of State’s office, as well as checking references and prior work.
The result?
A comprehensive list of four or five companies from almost every area of service imaginable. “Probably the biggest part of our service for our clients is when they have a project for which they want multiple bids,” Guyton stated. “We take care of finding the companies, meeting them at the home and delivering the bids to the client, as well as supervising whomever is chosen to actually do the work.” Majordomo doesn’t stop there.
They go so far as to guarantee the quality of the workmanship of anyone they engage for their clients and consolidate all of the bills for the client into one monthly, statement. “The biggest problem we have so far,” says Flynn, “is that since we are such a new concept, clients don’t realize that we can do everything.”
Original photograph caption
Dan Flynn and Laura Marren Guyton,co-founders of Majordomo. Photographer not credited.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, April 1991.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1991_04.pdf, printed page(s) 4; PDF page(s) 4.
