Complex Simplicity

One of the best parts of my job is visiting industry members. In mid-April, vice president, sales, Emily Thompson, senior sales consultant Chris Hodges and I visited several companies. We saw research and development, toured manufacturing floors, and saw first-hand how, as one source put it, “We manufacture a very simple product in a very complex way.” Only, once you look at it, you realize a window is anything but simple.

Vitro led us on a tour of its research and development facility in Cheswick, Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh. The building is full of engineers, physicists, scientists and more. Incredible work is done there every day that influences the buildings in which we live, work, play and heal. Glass sits in various testing chambers to evaluate its performance against high heat, humidity, salt spray, dry conditions, freezing temperatures and more. Microscopically thin silver coatings are evaluated to ensure no blemishes exist.

Quanex’s Cambridge, Ohio, facility manufactures its spacers. At first glance, they appear to be rather simple. But after touring the facility and getting some hands-on time with the product, I see it’s multi-layered and each layer plays a vital role in a window’s performance.

GED puts its machinery together in its Glenwillow, Ohio, location, with so many intricate parts that it makes putting even the most complex K’nex system together look like child’s play.

Veka North America, headquartered in Fombell, Pennsylvania, extrudes incredible amounts of raw material for windows and doors.

This issue further demonstrates the complexity of our industry.

The annual Top Manufacturers report and list takes a 30,000-foot view of the construction and manufacturing industries before diving into fenestration specifics. 

The list, however, looks a little bit different this year. Rather than organizing the list by gross sales ranges as we have historically done, the Top Manufacturers are listed by national and regional manufacturers. We know how much manufacturers value their privacy in this industry, and we hear you that it’s a big ask to provide us with even a broad range of your gross sales. Our team has researched as best we can where companies don’t volunteer that information. With a busy M&A market and more companies going private, this has become harder each year.

Window + Door has the dual responsibility of providing a comprehensive list of fenestration manufacturers and organizing it in a verifiable, factual manner. This new structure allows us to concretely place manufacturers within the list, ensuring we provide a list that meets Window + Door’s editorial standards. Companies that opted to provide their revenue range still have that information in their listing.

It was my honor to hear from so many of you to learn more about what you’re seeing on the front lines, celebrate your successes and problem-solve challenges.