Camelot Moving and Storage Celebrates 30 Years

 Camelot Moving and Storage has a truly remarkable 30-year legacy that includes relocating Siegfried and Roy’s white tigers, collectible automobiles, an NBA Hall of Famer, and members of Hollywood’s élite.  However, the company’s true mark of success cannot be contained in a list of famous clients, unique moves or a financial report.  It is the company’s continued dedication to the very elements that nurtured its growth: family and community.
Co-owner and co-founder Billy Kornfeld explains his philosophy of family: “In addition to my wife and kids, family includes my employees and my customers.  My guys know that if the customer’s happy – if they’re part of the Camelot family at the end of the day – that’s success.”
Even when Camelot was just an idea in the minds of young Billy and Carolyn Kornfeld, it was born from a focus on family.  At the time, the Kornfelds were raising their kids in Newhall, where they still live today.
“I had been working as a contracted driver for a large van line for about 10 years,” Billy recalled, “and I was gone for three to five weeks at a time, missing my wife and my children as they were growing.  That kind of life was challenging for a husband and father.”
Motivated to get Billy off the road, the Kornfeld family saved and planned meticulously for years before launching their local moving company, Camelot Movers, in 1986.  For a short while, Billy continued driving long distances to fund their company at home, often leaving Carolyn to man – er, woman – the home front, providing in-home estimates, selling boxes out of their garage, and dispatching from the office upstairs.  With only one truck, they scheduled two moves a day and regularly worked late into the evening to grow their clientele.  And it worked.  Before the first year was out, the Kornfelds bought another truck, and Billy finally left the van line.
Why Camelot Movers?  “We had been searching for something that would stick in people’s minds,” Billy recalled.  “One day my wife was reading The Once and Future King, and my sister-in-law glanced at the book and said, ‘What do you think about that as the theme for your business?’”
The name Camelot well communicated the family’s dedication to integrity and high standards, as well as the dignity they accorded each family’s belongings.  The brand had meaning and would remind the entire Camelot family – employees and clients – of the company’s motto: “Because everyone’s home is their castle.”  Each truck, emblazoned with a knight in shining armor, is given a character name and corresponding personalized license plate, from Merlin to Archimedes.  Daily, families watch those trucks pull up and drive away, reminded of a company with the steadfast values of an older time.
Building on their foundation of family, Billy and Carolyn Kornfeld have created and maintained a happy, close-knit environment at Camelot Moving and Storage.  Many in Camelot’s moving team have remained with the company for 15 to 20 years, a commitment well above the industry standard.  All the Kornfelds’ children have worked at the company in some capacity, as well as nieces, nephews, grandparents and more.  As intentioned, the feeling of family that exists within the company extends to clients on a daily basis.
“In more than one instance, we have moved up to three generations of the same family!” Billy said.  “That’s really something.  You get to know the whole family and watch the kids grow up.  One of our guys, Junior, has built such a relationship with a couple we moved to the East Coast, that when he’s in their area, he stops by with his wife to visit.  They even have a room that’s ‘Junior’s room.’”
Focusing on community and family might not be a traditional route to business success, but it certainly has fueled Camelot’s success.  Billy explained, “So often today, you run across businesses who consider the bottom line a critical thing, but anyone who looks at my habits at work would be surprised by how little I pay attention to the numbers, but rather to standards of equipment and workmanship.” Presently more than 90 percent of Camelot’s business is referral-based.  Many are repeat customers and request team members by name.
“When I realized our business was almost entirely referral-based,” Billy recalled, “I thought: ‘Okay, we’ve conveyed the right values to our team, and they’re carrying it on to our customers.’”
Camelot’s dedication to the needs of its clients has always been the push behind its expansion.  For example, by 1989 Camelot had experienced so many requests for interstate moves from its local family of clientele who did not want to leave the Camelot family when they left the state that the company acquired interstate licensing, a rare move for a local moving company that refused to use contracted drivers.
“We were continually asked to go further, so we expanded our services geographically,” Billy said.  “I just didn’t want to use contracted drivers like other big-box companies.  It had to be our guys, our trucks.  That’s the only way we can maintain our standards despite any amount of growth – and always be someone our customers can trust.”
In 1994, a new demand for Camelot to expand its services developed as they became vital in the response to the Northridge earthquake.
“So many homes were yellow-tagged or red-tagged, and people were calling us up. They had nowhere to go, much less a place to store a lifetime’s worth of belongings.  We quickly assessed the situation and decided to obtain some warehouse space.  After that, we were Camelot Moving and Storage.”
Today the company utilizes 20,000 square feet of state-of-the-art storage space in the Santa Clarita Valley, and since its inception, Camelot has grown more than 100-fold in volume, serving 20,000 clients over its many years.
Throughout its history, Camelot has volunteered trucks, teams and time to help with anything from a local non-profit’s move to storage for charity auction items.  They have even stored an entire “forest” worth of trees each holiday season for the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Clarita Valley’s Festival of Trees signature fundraiser, since the event started.  Long before that, they were helping out with the non-profit’s summer fundraiser.
Camelot also serves other non-profits on a regular basis, providing storage for Single Mothers Outreach; moving services for the Domestic Violence Center of Santa Clarita Valley safe house when it changes locations; transporting large donations to the Assistance League of Santa Clarita thrift shop; stage and equipment setup for Relay 4 Life; trucks for the SCV Senior Center’s Touch a Truck fundraiser; and a walking team for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.
Camelot even sent out two teams and two 18-wheelers packed with donated goods to Hurricane Katrina relief camps following the national disaster in 2005.  If not for the donation of pallets of water, an affected elementary school would have been forced to delay its reopening.
When asked why Camelot has dedicated time, resources and dollars to its community, clients and staff, Billy responded, “Some people need a helping hand.  Others are able to help.  We can, so we do.”  With Billy and Carolyn still at the helm of Camelot, the company has remained focused and will continue to focus on the basic tenets it had at its birth: family, community and high standards of service.
For more information about Camelot Moving and Storage, please call 661-255-3112 or visit www.camelotmovers.com. 

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