H U M B L E A N D FO R TUITO US BE GINNIN GS FROM PORCH ENCLOSURES, TO WINDOWS & DOORS, THE ROAD TO BECOMING A LEADING MANUFACTURER IN THE INDUSTRY MAY H AVE HAD SO METHING TO DO WITH REN TIN G A PLA NE. What many may not know, is that PGT Innovations’ humble beginnings were in the form of a porch enclosure company known as Vinyl Tech, started in 1980 with just three employees out of Venice. “What’s fascinating is, even as a small porch enclosure company, our founders Paul Hostetler and Rod Hershberger really held to a simple philosophy: provide phenomenal customer care and on-time delivery,” says Jeff Jackson, President and CEO. “They realized early on that in the building product space, to be on time with custom-made products and to listen closely and react quickly to what our customers needed was a tremendous differentiator.” According to Jackson, Vinyl Tech went its first two years with zero backorders “which was kind of easy to do because we were this little company with little sales,” he admits. But shortly into year three, they were about to have their very first backorder because one window of an order was left back at the plant. “It just didn’t make it on the delivery truck, and the driver delivered the order to a customer on the east coast of Florida with one unit short,” explains Jackson. “It would have been our first ever backorder of the company. So, Rod and the Sales Manager - Herb Reberger, who was also a pilot – rented a plane from the Venice airport, disassembled and loaded the window into the plane, and flew it to this customer by the end of the day. He said the customer looked at them like they were nuts and said, ‘I didn’t need it today. Tomorrow would have been just fine.’ To which Rod replied, ‘No. We told you today.’” Many stories like this ultimately developed a hyper-loyal customer base that often inquired what was keeping Vinyl Tech from expanding from porch enclosures to making their own window products. “Porch enclosures didn’t have any glass,” says Jackson. “We didn’t know anything about glass, but we were getting such a demand.” So Vinyl Tech decided, instead of making its own windows, they’d purchase them from partner suppliers and offer them alongside their porch
enclosure products. Except, one of the very first major deliveries was backordered from the supplier. “We couldn’t rent a plane. We couldn’t do anything to make it happen,” says Jackson. “We burned a lot of customers on this very early order. And just out of being so upset about that, we said, ‘We can do better.’” Upon learning how to develop two styles of windows and a door, and entering the market in 1987, the company began to establish a dealer network from the short sightings of their competitors—converting many dealers to do business with them as a new player in the game that ‘said what they did, and did what they said’. “Always being on time, always taking that extra step to know that any interruption in the business is a really big deal and holding that with care, always listening and gaining customers’ input on how things are going or what they want to see,” says Jackson. “I think that’s really been the key piece of what’s allowed us to continue to grow and continue to be the number one player in this space.”
Now known throughout the world as PGT Innovations, the company is one of the largest employers in Sarasota County with approximately 1,700 team members spread across an extensive manufacturing campus in Venice, FL and 3,300 team members in total throughout its six U.S. production locations.. Its campus houses two massive assembly plants, a 4.1-acre glass processing plant, its own fleet of 50+ delivery trucks, product testing areas, and the newly-built iLab—an innovative extension of the business that serves as a product incubator and micro-factory to create products that require new and inventive features and custom needs. Led by Dean Ruark, VP of Design Engineering & Innovation, the new iLab operations include developing prototypes, producing initial product builds, and, if needed, assisting in setting up mass-production plans for products.
BRANDSTORY FEATURE | SRQ MAGAZINE | APRIL 2020
