The $500 billion industry remains dominated by clipboards and subcontractors, and the most aggressive AI adoption is not in software or finance. This is what’s happening inside a central Pennsylvania company that helps people remodel everything from couches to bathrooms. Its founder is the first to admit that technology still believes its EBITDA is measured in millimeters.
He’s still growing at 15% to 20% a year, and your remote modding habits have helped him quietly build a billion dollar business. That earned him a seat on the board of his favorite Pennsylvania potato chips.
Engineers turned their bathrooms into AI labs
BJ Werzyn graduated from Penn State University in 1999 with the intention of pursuing a career in aerospace engineering, until an advanced level of calculus convinced him that he was “not genetically coded” for a lifelong career in abstract mathematics. Instead, he took his engineering thinking – mapping systems, diagnosing problems, optimizing constraints – to a less-than-stellar area of the real economy: home renovation.
In 2006, after helping expand his family’s window and door business to Florida during the housing boom, Worthin returned to Pennsylvania, joined Staples, and bought telephones, desks, and computers. This was the beginning of West Shore Homes. From its inception, the company was built around the simple promise of tearing down bathrooms and rebuilding them in two to three days, providing homeowners with a service that was “fast, easy, and convenient,” rather than the horror stories the industry is known for. Over time, we mapped and codified every step of the way: measurements, permits, inventory, schedules, installations, etc., and began replacing paper parts with software.
Twenty years later, West Shore Home has more than 3,200 employees, including approximately 1,200 installers and 650 design consultants spread across dozens of markets. Over 334,000 installations completed. It generated total revenue of $933 million in 2025, according to financial records reviewed by. luckcurrently operating at a total revenue pace of about $1.15 billion, close enough for Welgin to talk about “billion dollar numbers,” but not enough to achieve a full billion dollar year. The company has also brought in private equity, with Leonard Green & Partners buying a 20% stake in 2020, with Welgin retaining the remaining 80%.
In other words, this is not a software company with a few pilots in the physical world. The company is a heavily traded, PE-backed company, but has quietly decided to become an AI-native operator.
Hawkeye and Felix: Computer Vision for Every Bathroom
At the heart of West Shore’s AI stack is Hawkeye. Hawkeye is a unique application built after Werzyn acquired a software development company that created custom digital tools for major companies such as Home Depot and Andersen Windows. Using an iPad with LIDAR and computer vision, a design consultant can walk into a bathroom and create a complete 3D scan of the space in less than a minute.
That scan is more than just a photo. Hawkeye turns your room into structured data: precise measurements, obstacles that need to be moved, existing equipment and machinery, and other conditions that may affect the installation. These data are entered directly into West Shore’s internally configured price quoting system (a tool called Felix). Measurements are automatically entered into quotes, eliminating transcription errors and ruler mistakes that have plagued the industry for decades. Hawkeye also flags potential issues to the company’s project review team, contributing to a measurable increase in first-pass yield, according to internal statistics. This allows more work to move from sales to scheduling without being held up due to missing information.
According to West Shore’s own calculations, all of its design consultants are trained in Hawkeye, and in 2026, approximately 70% of its home sales bookings generated Hawkeye scans. This number was even higher for bathroom-specific bookings, with about three-quarters of visits involving technology. Only a small percentage of customers (approximately 1,600 out of 136,000 sales appointments) refused to be scanned. For others, a bathroom remodel begins with a series of computer vision captures and AI-assisted decision-making in the background.
Supporting that infrastructure is a large technology organization for construction-related businesses. 115 employees work on West Shore’s proprietary systems, 23 of whom are dedicated to AI. They sit in very traditional-looking jobs: installers on the payroll, design consultants who drive door-to-door, call-center staff answering incoming inquiries.
The way AI is involved in almost every part of the process is what makes the company different.
Claude believes that EBITDA is measured in millimeters
Werzyn is unashamedly enthusiastic about what AI has brought to his business. The company’s technology team has studied Claude-like models “quite deeply” in everything from internal forecasting and five-year growth modeling to building a real-time scheduling engine that checks branch warehouse inventory, staff availability, and queries permissions databases the moment a customer toggles between product options on an iPad.
But when he talks about technology, he doesn’t sound like someone who believes it’s foolproof. “Yeah, so you’re always having little hallucinations,” Welgin added. “I was having a conversation with Claude this weekend and it was a pretty in-depth conversation about our five-year model and growth forecasting and modeling.” He and Claude “got deep into this conversation,” exchanging relevant feedback and jumping around adjusted EBITDA numbers. “Then you say, ‘Oh, so in fiscal 2028 we’re going to have EBITDA of 260mm.’
“It’s obvious it’s dollars,” Welgin said, still surprised that the model was able to understand the context and change it back to the wrong unit.
This anecdote isn’t the only glitch he’s witnessed. On the customer side, West Shore has developed a conversational, agent-based SMS tool to follow up with leads. This is a type of text-based outreach that can turn cold inquiries into scheduled appointments with a much higher response rate than phone inquiries. The system has performed well in tests and has already generated about 10% of all issued reservations. But Welgin’s AI chief has had to contend with a cautious stance about deploying AI more broadly.
His argument is simple. If even 10% to 15% of customers who interact with a fully autonomous SMS agent have an unpleasant experience with a wrong appointment, a missed quote, or a hallucination in a otherwise smooth process, that’s far too high for a business built on trust, especially in a category where projects cost tens of thousands of dollars. The benefit of scaling faster is not worth the reputational risk. So the company decided to keep humans in the loop every step of the way, and only “leave” the process when a feature has proven itself.
In practice, this means the AI crunches numbers, fills out forms, displays options, and even suggests installation dates. But a human still visits the home, checks the scan, reviews the estimate, and presses “schedule.” AI is everywhere, but AI alone cannot close the loop.
Increase revenue without doubling headcount
The tension between dependence and distrust is not just philosophical. This is reflected in Vergin’s way of thinking about work.
West Shore employs more than 3,200 people, including 1,209 installers, 657 design consultants, and hundreds of corporate and call center staff. Over the past three years, the company has added approximately 600 net new jobs. These workers work in what economists call a “K-shaped” environment. So while asset owners are benefiting from rising markets and pandemic-era gains, middle-income households continue to feel squeezed by rising interest rates and rising prices.
The housing market remains frozen by most indicators. 30-year mortgage rates are far above what homeowners locked in during the boom years. Sales of used homes are sluggish. And the normal remodeling cycle that comes with a move (new owners buy a home and immediately upgrade the bathrooms and kitchen) has stalled. Vergin sees that dynamic in his own pipeline.
Asset-rich consumers who maintain the status quo invest in improvements. Middle-income and low-income households are more cautious. But instead of collapse, he sees change. Homeowners who don’t move are doing the renovations anyway and are less likely to attempt the work themselves than in previous cycles. Weekend hardware store operations are being replaced by what Worthin calls “do-it-for-me” service. That means contractors will show up, tear down the rooms, rebuild, and leave the house intact by Monday.
In that environment, he sees AI as a way to scale up production without increasing salaries one-for-one. Given the company’s current total revenue of just over $1.1 billion, which would require 7,000 employees without automation, he believes that could perhaps double to $2 billion with around 6,000 employees. Installers, plumbers, and technicians who perform last-mile work are not replaced. The overhead required to support them is streamlined.
“There’s no one else to do the last mile of a home remodeling project for you,” he says. Robots may eventually appear, but he thinks that’s far off the horizon. Currently, AI handles repetitive, data-heavy, and human error-prone tasks (such as measuring, estimating, scheduling, and inventory checking) while humans handle the creative, physical, and relational parts of the job.
For Vergin, that equilibrium now extends beyond the bathroom. In 2024, he joined the Utz Brands board of directors, giving him a front-row seat to another long-established company as it grapples with new technology and changing consumer habits. It’s a fun perk, he said, noting that Pennsylvania is the “snack food capital of the world,” with its wide selection of pretzels and chips.
Welgin added that he is proud to have been born and raised in Pennsylvania, attended Penn State University, started his own business and served his community. It’s “a pretty cool story,” he agreed, to be on the board of the snack food company he grew up eating. He noted that West Shore University not only donated to Beaver Stadium’s renovations and acquired the naming rights to the field, but also that the university is a major pipeline for computer science and AI talent. “We probably have Penn State interns in almost every department of the company.”
