Building A Strong Foundation; Analyze Details: Bob Toll keeps luxury home developer Toll Bros. booming.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: JED GRAHAM

For years, before Toll Bros. got way too big to do it anymore, Bob Toll brought in all his top managers for a weekly meeting to make sure they learned from each other's trials and errors.

The home-building maverick kept a pitchfork symbolically displayed to remind everyone why he or she was there -- "So you didn't have to pull the pitchfork out of your own behind, since someone had already done that for you."

Having forged a management team determined not to make the same mistake twice, Toll steadily built systems and established a corporate culture that are the envy of the industry.

That foundation, built over several decades, has enabled Toll to succeed in a corner of the market -- mass-producing luxury homes -- in a way others haven't come close to replicating. That is, except for Toll himself. Having blazed a trail across his home turf of the Northeast, Toll began expanding his footprint across the nation a decade ago, putting those systems to the ultimate test. They've passed with flying colors.

Toll's industry-leading pretax profit margins have held above 10% since the early 1990s and have averaged more than 15% for the past four years. While times have been great for the industry, Toll has separated itself from the pack, expanding its market share among public home builders from 9.8% in 1997 to 21.5% in 2004, according to brokerage Raymond James & Assoc. Its average home sales price of about $660,000 is almost twice that of any other public builder.

Yet Toll might have stayed planted behind a desk at one of Philadelphia's top law firms.