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The year was 1984.
The oilfield wasn’t looking so good and Georgia native, turned Bayou Blue resident Robert Dervan needed work in a hurry.
“I done lost three jobs and I had a house note due,” Dervan said. “So I had to do something. I decided to start doing repair work right here in the backyard. That’s where it all started.”
Close to 30 years later, Dervan’s backyard project has blossomed into a full-fledged family business.
Robert’s Repair, Rental and Retail is serving the Tri-parish area from its Bayou Blue storefront location.
Both Dervan and his wife Kathy tout the key to business is simple – learn the craft and treat employees with respect.
“If you want to learn something, there’s one simple way to do it – show up to work six days a week and get to work,” Robert Dervan said. “We’ve come a long way, but we have great employees, too. We’ve been blessed with some people here who have a lot of knowledge. Finding people who have a good understanding of what you’re doing is pretty tough in today’s world.”
“This store is not just about Robert or Kathy,” the wife said to add to her husband’s comments. “We would not be here today without every, single one of our employees. They matter and they count and they are a huge part of our business.”
In the beginning, Dervan said he operated a simple repair business.
“All we repaired was torches, regulators and a few other things – that’s all we repaired in the beginning,” Dervan said.
But as the repair business flourished, it eventually outgrew the Dervan’s Bayou Blue home and a storefront was needed.
Robert’s Repair was originally on the Terrebonne Parish side of the multi-parish local town.
They were forced to move after Mother Nature intervened in the store’s day-to-day operations.
“During Hurricane Andrew, we got hit by lightening down there, so it fried the building,” Dervan said.
From there, the business moved back into Lafourche Parish and into the First Baptist Church’s old rectory building.
After staying there for a short while, the Dervan’s built Robert’s new, permanent location at 4919 La. Highway 182 – the place they have called home since 1999.
With more work, Dervan said he needed new workers to keep up. From there, the store hired a slew of repairmen to keep up with the load within the business.
Some of those workers have been with the business for more than two decades. They brought with them new skills that enabled Robert’s to blossom even further.
“Some of these people we hired knew how to do things that I didn’t even know how to do,” Dervan said. “With them, we were able to grow and do more things. Pretty much any kind of a hand tool now, we can deal with it.
“If you can pick it up and bring it in, we’ll consider it a hand tool and we’ll repair that.”
But if one walks into Robert’s Repair today, it is easy to see that the business doesn’t solely do repairs.
Dervan said in the early days, people used to ask him to keep a stock of supplies necessary to do certain jobs.
He complied and his business became a repair store and supply shop. The business has grown even further in recent years and Robert’s also does rentals, as well.
“People always told me things like, ‘Man, you know if you had a torch tip at your place, we wouldn’t need to go down the road to get it,’” Dervan said. “Or they’d say, ‘Robert, if you sold gloves, I wouldn’t have to go down the road.’ So we started carrying those small things. And then as time went along, vendors took notice and they started pushing their products and asking us if we wanted to sell their products. They came to us, we didn’t go to them. But we said yes and we were happy to get involved with that.”
So with a 30th year anniversary looming, Robert’s is continuing to push forward into the future.
Inside the store, employees are knowledgeable, but laid-back, often carrying friendly banter with customers who pass through.
It’s all about the people, both Dervans said.
They are who keep Robert’s in business.
“We have great people around here – both in our store and in our community,” Dervan said. “We’ve come a long way. We’ve been here 29 years, but it feels like a lifetime. We’re going to keep going strong as long as we can. We’re proud of how far we’ve come so far.”
Robert and Kathy Dervan pose at the store’s Bayou Blue location. Robert’s Repair, Rental and Retail is going on 30 years of servicing the Tri-parish area. The store’s owners tout that taking care of customers and employees is the key to running a good business.
