Don’t let Maura Martinek fool you. This petite figure behind a desk is really a business dynamo. She may not move mountains, but she knows how to move you.
Martinek is the president and CEO of M&M Movers of the North Shore, Inc., which she operates out of her Lake Forest home. Together with her family, she’s been in the business for more than 30 years—handling jobs as small as moving a single piece of furniture from one room to another, to as large as entire residences or businesses within the state of Illinois.
It’s not often you’ll find a woman in charge in such a male-dominated industry. Martinek points to her experience working with two Highland Park firefighters in the moving business as the inspiration for starting her own moving company. She fought hard in her early years to gain a foothold in the community and as a result she’s now one of the most highly respected movers in the area.
“Thirty-plus years ago, it was a man’s world,” says Martinek. “I would show up for an estimate and be asked, ‘Where is he?’ and I said, ‘You’re looking at her.'”
What possessed Martinek to muscle in on the moving business?
“I really thought this was something I could do,” says Martinek, who emigrated from Ireland to the North Shore as a young woman. She named the company M&M after her initials. Enlisting the help of her kids and family as they grew, Martinek still does all the estimating for the company, with daughter Deirdre Picchietti serving as the company’s operations manager and son-in-law David also pitching in.
Martinek’s family is proud of their reputation of treating customers as it they are family.
“It’s a very personal type of business,” says Picchietti, with jobs that can be as delicate as moving an elderly person from the home they’ve lived in their entire life to painful divorce situations. “98 percent of our business comes from referrals. People are comfortable with us,” Picchietti says.
“We’ve wanted to stay small so we can really take care of our customers,” Martinek says, noting that often times, repeat customers will specifically request crew members from a previous move.
If there’s a move in your future, keep this North Shore business in mind—contact M&M Movers at 847-234-3730.
