When I talked with Joseph Pigliacampo, president of Joseph Machine Co., in depth at an industry event last year, his enthusiasm for “zero scrap” was contagious. I told him I would definitely set a time to learn more, and that time came this past Tuesday when I traveled to the company’s plant in Dillsburg, Pa.
I [...]

At times, companies are closed mouthed when it comes to their competition, while others put it all out there, so to speak, and let their competition know they are coming after them. This was the case with two insurance giants, according to an article I read in Advertising Age from February 2011.
The writer got right [...]

Are there really reasons to be merry this holiday season? If you’re a worker at certain Pella, Milgard, Schield Family Brands, Andersen, Jeld-Wen, or Champion Window plants, to name a few, you may not be in the holiday spirit. All of these companies have closed plants in the last three months, putting many employees out [...]

Want some optimism and some encouraging ideas? Check out my highlights from the Association of Millwork Distributors (AMD) Annual Convention held this week in Nashville.
Good News for Wood
A few people I spoke to at the show reported that the wood business is doing fairly well including Mark Rieser, president of Windsor Windows and Doors.
“It seems [...]

Diversification. It’s something you hear a lot about as companies struggle to stay afloat. For example, I’ve written stories recently about residential companies moving into the light commercial market as a way to gain market share. We also hear often about window dealers that have expanded outside of windows, into areas such as gutters or [...]

Last week I shared some observations from GlassBuild, and today I have more insights to share based on what I heard from both attendees and exhibitors. In the end does it really come to this: The market is what you make of it? You decide. As always I’m interested in your thoughts. Post a comment [...]

As the eyes and ears of the industry everyone always asks me at a trade show such as GlassBuild America, what did you see that was exciting? So here are my insights from today’s visits with exhibitors and attendees here in Atlanta.
Spent some time with Serious Energy president who was here to present at the [...]

Last week when I was looking through the Inc. 5000 list for door and window companies that made the ranking, I was pretty easily distracted. And this doesn’t happen to me often–especially when I was just on vacation for five days and incredibly behind. But I will admit that browsing the 5,000 company names (the [...]

When Standard & Poor’s (S&P) took the controversial step on August 5 of downgrading the long-term debt of the United States from AAA to AA+, my immediate thought was “Why weren’t they this overly cautious when they were giving all those junk mortgage securities AAA ratings?” The question many people are asking now is, “What [...]

While I wasn’t exactly sure what to write about in today’s blog (I had a few ideas circling around), that certainly changed this morning with a big news story and a few important tidbits here and there.
1. First, check out the news that Onex Corp. is upping its investment in Jeld-Wen. In May the company [...]