LOCATION: 11400 W. Oklahoma Ave., West Allis, WI 53227
WEBSITE: www.weathertightcorp.com
Year founded: 1986
Product or service offered: Replacement windows, siding, roofing, gutter protection, doors, sunrooms, pergolas, attic insulation
Projected 2009 revenue: $16.3 million
CEO, President/Owner(s): Tod Colbert, president and owner; Todd Schulz, vice president and co-owner.
Leadership team: Michelle Vincent, director of marketing; Eric Folsom, David Fulbright, Matt Windisch, sales managers; Mikki Campbell, production managers.
Target clientele: Residential homeowners
Business organization memberships: NARI, MBA, Remodeling BIG 50, BBB
What has fueled your company’s growth?
Our growth has been fueled by our strategic planning and communication of expectations. Every person in our company knows exactly what is expected of them on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. Our managers spend a great deal of time measuring the success of our employees and staying on top of performance goals. We adjust goals regularly to make sure we are communicating down the line when something changes.
What is the biggest obstacle to your company’s growth?
The biggest obstacle we’ve faced is learning to slow down. We tend to be impulsive when coming up with a brilliant new idea, then trying to implement it immediately without fully planning for the implementation. We have worked hard to develop processes to fully examine new policies and procedures and limit ourselves to just one or two projects fully developed at a time.
Do you plan any changes in your company in the upcoming months?
We are adding an in-house web designer to be more active in our internet marketing campaigns, and we are planning to broaden our in-store kiosk divisions to increase staff year-round. We are also looking to add 1-2 new product lines by the start of 2010.
Who are the business people, locally or nationally, whom you admire? And what traits do those people exhibit that make you admire them?
We participate in several industry roundtable groups, and there are many participants who are really at the top of their game. What we admire most in them is the systems and discipline they’ve developed so that they can produce consistent results, not dependent on the habits of individuals but fully implemented procedures and a company culture that promotes success.
What is the outlook for the business conditions of your industry over the next several months?
We hear a lot of doom and gloom in the remodeling industry, but personally we seem to have recovered for the most part. After a slow start to the year due to the economy, we are seeing record numbers now. We are expecting to make up a lot of ground after the major late-summer/fall remodeling push. We are expecting record-breaking numbers to finish the year and hit our target volume.
What is your company’s key strategy for rising out of the recession?
We made the decision after seeing the economy collapse last fall that we would redesign our game plan for 2009 to focus on what we do best. Sun rooms are a struggle for us, from getting the lead to setting the appointment to making the sale, so we decided to minimize the efforts in that division to focus more on windows, our top product that is easiest to generate, set and sell. We also knew that the sales side would struggle most with financing problems and people tightening their belts, so we put more emphasis on the marketing side to generate enough appointments to keep the revenue up despite the smaller sales. Our belief was that only through greater efficiency would we be able to overcome other obstacles, so that is where we’ve devoted our efforts. We plan to continue that strategy and keep our numbers growing despite the recession.
