On the fence

Entrepreneurs and Kevin and Theresa Dermody were in high sprits on a Friday in July 2011, after they closed on a deal to buy a Sarasota fence contracting business.

By Monday those spirits were squashed.

Turns out the business the couple bought, Florida Fence, had some unforeseen financial issues, according to Theresa Dermody. There were debts to suppliers, in addition to some angry customers with partially completed work, says Dermody, who along with her husband, Kevin, owned a successful contracting business for 19 years in Chicago. The couple also ran a farm in central Missouri before they relocated to Florida in 2011. “A fence company made sense to us,” Theresa Dermody says, “because it would allow us to get back into construction.”