FRDT Foundry · A FRDT LAB Build Program · Detroit

Your trucks are booked.
Your website is losing the next ten years.

Custom-built websites and search infrastructure for Detroit home services companies — HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing. Coded from scratch. Built to be found by humans and machines. Owned by you.

Get your teardown See the packages
150+custom sites shipped
17 yearsof build experience
$100M+client revenue influenced
Detroitrooted & run
The Problem

The work didn't change.
The way people find you did.

Metro Detroit runs on trades. Furnaces in January. Flooded basements in July. Panels that can't hold an EV charger. The demand is real and it's urgent — and it's won or lost in the thirty seconds someone spends searching.

01

Your site was built in 2016. It shows.

Template theme. Slow load. One services page doing the work of forty. Every well-run shop we look at has the same gap: a million-dollar operation behind a website that whispers.

02

Google isn't the only front door anymore.

People now ask AI who to call. If your business isn't structured, marked up, and machine-readable, you don't exist in that answer. Not penalized — absent.

03

The big platforms rent you everything.

Tracking numbers, landing pages, sometimes the website itself. Cancel, and years of investment evaporates. That's not marketing. That's a lease with no equity.

The Shift

Campaigns fade. Infrastructure compounds.

Authority is becoming machine-readable. The shops that win the next decade won't be the ones spending the most on ads. They'll be the ones whose websites are built like infrastructure — fast, structured, legible to humans and intelligent systems alike.

YEAR 1YEAR 2 YEAR 3YEAR 4
Ad campaigns — rented reach Owned infrastructure — compounding value
What We Build

A website that works like a machine.
Because it is one.

Coded from scratch

No page builders. No templates. Every site is engineered — which is why they load fast and hold up under real traffic.

Built for speed

Speed is a ranking factor, a conversion factor, and a trust factor. We treat it like one.

Local architecture done right

Service-by-city page structure that maps to how people search — without the thin, copy-pasted location pages that get filtered out.

Visible to AI search

Schema, entities, structured answers. When someone asks an AI who to call in Ferndale, the answer should be you.

You own everything

Your domain. Your site. Your content. Your data. Walk away tomorrow and it all stays yours. We build equity, not leases.

Measured in revenue

Calls, bookings, jobs — tracked back to the pages and searches that produced them. You'll know what the machine is earning.

How It Works

Build the machine.
Then the machine builds momentum.

01

Sense

We tear down your current site, your market, and your competitors. You see exactly where the leaks are before we talk about anything else.

02

Structure

Architecture before aesthetics. Services, cities, search intent — mapped into a site structure built to rank and convert.

03

Build

Custom-coded, fast, machine-readable. Typical build: six to eight weeks from kickoff to launch.

04

Measure

Calls and bookings attributed to source. Reporting you can read in five minutes, tied to jobs — not vanity metrics.

05

Compound

Content, local signals, and AI visibility that build on each other month over month. The asset appreciates. That's the point.

Packages

Three ways in. One standard of build.

Every engagement starts with the teardown — a paid audit, credited toward your build. Pricing follows the facts: scoped to your shop, delivered in writing, before any work begins.

01 · The Build

Foundation

One-time custom build · scoped after your teardown
  • Custom-coded website, no templates
  • Service × city page architecture
  • Schema & AI-search markup
  • Speed-engineered, mobile-first
  • Call & form tracking installed
  • You own 100% of it
Start with the teardown
02 · Build + Grow

Signal

Monthly program · includes the Foundation build
  • Everything in Foundation
  • Local SEO — maps, citations, reviews architecture
  • Monthly content built for real search demand
  • AI-visibility upkeep as search shifts
  • Monthly revenue-tied reporting
Start with the teardown
03 · Full System

System

Monthly program · the whole growth machine
  • Everything in Signal
  • Paid search management & landing pages
  • Budget shifted to what's producing jobs
  • Quarterly strategy with Amanda
  • One team. One invoice. One system.
Start with the teardown
Receipts

The work, with the numbers attached.

Real rebuilds. The visible part is the design. The part that actually moves revenue is underneath — the data humans never see and machines read first.

FLAGSHIP REBUILD

DIY Door Store — Shift4Shop to Shopify

Same catalog, rebuilt from the data up. A dated template hiding broken product data became a search-first store that Google Shopping could finally read.

Product titles fixed958981 were duplicates — 54% of the catalog
Images at Google's spec27% → 73%1,203 rebuilt to 1500px
Shipping weights set1,639every one was 0 lb — shipping was guesswork
Products categorized1,778from uncategorized to Google-mapped
Reviews imported3,5854.93★ average — none were shown before
Redirects preserving SEO1,765old URLs that would have 404'd at cutover

The storefront got prettier. But the invisible fixes — titles, images, categories, weights — are what let the store actually get found.

REBUILD

Taylor Door

Before
  • Aging WordPress template
  • Slow, cluttered, dated layout
  • Reputation the site didn't match
After
  • Custom static build — fast by design
  • Structured for local search
  • A site that finally matches the workmanship
REBUILD

Service Pro Industrial Door & Dock

Before
  • Legacy WordPress site
  • Thin structure, weak search footing
  • Industrial credibility gap online
After
  • Custom static rebuild
  • Speed and machine-readable structure
  • Built to be found, not just seen

Live before/after walkthroughs available on request.

The Operator

Twenty years building growth machines.
Now building them for Detroit's trades.

Amanda Friedt, founder of FRDT LAB

Amanda Friedt walked into a search agency in 2010 as a specialist and left a partner. As CMO, she led her agency to nine consecutive Best Integrated Agency titles — the most decorated run in the category's history — then ran growth in-house for a national e-commerce portfolio, rebuilding product catalogs into AI-discovery machines and deploying working AI agent ecosystems where silos used to be.

Now she builds through FRDT LAB — her own creative intelligence lab, rooted in the city that taught her the difference between decoration and structure. Detroit, born of the rebuild. Former gallery owner. Mom of three boys. She reads the human before the data — then checks the data anyway.

20 yearsbuilding growth engines
9×consecutive Best Integrated Agency titles led as CMO
6×PPC Hero Top 25 most influential in paid search
AuthorSearch Engine Land & MarTech · mainstage at SMX Advanced & brightonSEO
"Marketing no longer sits on top of the system. It runs through it. I build the through."
The Teardown · $750

See what your website is costing you.

A hand-built audit of your site, your local rankings, and your AI-search visibility — measured against the shops you actually compete with, delivered in plain English within five business days. Not a free sales call. A paid teardown, and the full $750 is credited toward your build if you move forward. If the numbers say your site is fine, we'll tell you that too.

Delivered within 5 business days · credited toward your build · built by hand, not by software.

Questions

Asked by every shop owner.
Answered straight.

Who actually does the work?

FRDT Foundry is a build program of FRDT LAB. Strategy, direction, and accountability sit here in Detroit with Amanda. The engineering is handled by our senior build team — the same crew behind 150+ custom sites over 17 years. One contract, one invoice, one person answerable to you.

Do I own the website?

Completely. Domain, code, content, tracking data — all of it is yours from day one. If we ever part ways, everything keeps working and everything stays with you. That's the difference between infrastructure and a lease.

What does it cost?

Every shop's situation is different — a two-truck electrician and a forty-truck HVAC operation don't need the same machine. So every engagement starts with the teardown: a $750 hand-built audit, delivered in writing, that scopes exactly what your business needs. If you move forward, the full $750 is credited toward your build — so serious buyers pay nothing extra for it. No rate card. No surprises.

How long does a build take?

Six to eight weeks for most home services sites, from kickoff to launch. Larger multi-trade builds run longer. You'll have a real timeline in writing before anything starts.

Why not one of the big home-services marketing platforms?

They're good at scale and bad at ownership. Their tracking numbers, landing pages, and dashboards live on their infrastructure — cancel and the equity walks out with them. We build the opposite way: everything on your infrastructure, compounding for you. You should be the one who owns the machine.

Is my current site salvageable?

Sometimes, yes. The teardown will tell you honestly. If a rebuild isn't warranted, we'll say so and show you the smaller fixes that matter. We'd rather be right than be hired.