NineLine Roofing

The problem

The traditional residential roofing business runs on outbound. Door-knocking, cold-calling, paid-ad funnels feeding a sales team that closes one homeowner at a time. Margins fund the sales floor. Every quote is hand-built. Every estimate takes days. The companies that win in this model are the ones with the biggest sales rosters. The companies that will win the next decade are the ones who do not need a sales roster.

What we built

NineLine started as a direct-to-consumer residential roofing operation, built by Eian Kennedy before the studio was a studio. The brand persisted. The model evolved. Today NineLine is operated inside the Relay 1 portfolio by Arturo Espinosa, based in Killeen, Texas, and it is what residential roofing looks like when the front of the funnel is automated and the install crew is the only headcount on the ground.

We pivoted away from direct-to-consumer outbound. NineLine now serves B2B distribution: solar companies, real estate agents, and property management firms across the Texas Triangle. Those partners need a roof number on a property fast, and they get it from NineLine's instant estimator. They run the consumer conversation. We run the install.

The operating model is the thesis the studio runs on. No sales reps. Low overhead. Automated processes for intake, estimating, scheduling, and partner ops, with a real management layer holding the install pipeline together. Same operators, same OS, same weekly cadence the studio runs across every portco.

What we learned

NineLine taught us two lessons that now live in the studio's operating system.

First, do not over-automate customer touchpoints. The original NineLine tried to put bots on everything: voice agents on the phone, chat bots running scheduling, automated follow-ups. The system worked, technically. Then a customer told a CSR, "I hired you, not a robot." We took the bots off the front line. That moment is the reason Relay 1 Automations now leads with the rule that human moments stay human.

Second, the lever that scales a service business is not the sales team, it is the distribution channel. NineLine pivoted away from direct-to-consumer and toward B2B distribution because partners scale and sales rosters do not. The instant estimator exists because the partner needs a fast number, not because the homeowner does. The install crew is the human moment. Everything in front of them is automated. Everything they do is what the customer remembers.