Shutter Control

Shutter Control

strategy by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Relinquishing control can be a struggle, an entrepreneur discovers as he develops new strategies. But projected 20% sales growth in a down economy helps ease the pain.

Bill Spindel likes to be in control of just about every aspect of his 18-employee, $3 million, high-end hurricane shutter company.

From choosing the nails used in a one-window panel job to personally solving customer complaints to holding an office two feet from the front entrance of the company's headquarters, no matter is too small for his hands to be on.

No big surprise, then, that Spindel thinks he can control the outcome of the current economic malaise crushing everything connected to the housing industry on the Gulf Coast through sheer will.

"I was raised with the belief that I can control my own destiny," says Spindel. "There's still money out there. This economy could still work."

And if sheer will doesn't work, Spindel is in the process of spinning a few strategies together to survive, even thrive, possibly, during the remainder of the economic downturn - no matter how long it lasts. Indeed, Spindel is projecting his Sarasota-based company, Windshutters, could grow revenues by as much as 20% in 2008. New jobs, he says, are currently booked out six to eight weeks.

Spindel, who declined to release specific annual sales figures past being more than $3 million, adds that the company's growth rate is greater than it was during the hectic days after Hurricane Charley in 2004, albeit without the same volume.

The business is growing in other ways, too: It recently added two people to its sales force, created a new position to run the manufacturing and installation divisions and is starting to look for a few more technicians and installers. What's more, Spindel could begin looking for land to build a new company headquarters and showroom in the next six months.

Windshutters' growth strategies aren't hard to duplicate and some aren't industry-specific. Instead, the simple and well-traveled ideas are essentially a business consultant's dream. In fact, one of Spindel's strategies was to hire a business consultant with experience in the hurricane products industry to oversee the company's growth and offer him guidance on issues such as employee compensation and motivation.

The other strategies revolve around being proactive, if not outright aggressive, in searching for new customers. For instance, Spindel is studying for Florida's general contractors exam, which would allow him to take on more and bigger jobs. Currently, Spindel is licensed as only a general building contractor.

Spindel is also taking the company into new markets, both geographically and philosophically. In the former, new projects include some homes in North Carolina and a Department of Defense building in Columbus, Ohio. The latter is the company's move into wholesale markets, as opposed to being strictly retail and selling directly to homeowners and commercial property owners.

The company's revenues are 99% retail-based, Spindel says, and again, it's no big surprise that his biggest challenge in growing the wholesale division is relinquishing control. Says Spindel: "I want to make my wholesale products the same way I do the retail."

A quality roll

Windshutters' core retail product is a hurricane roll shutter that can be installed on virtually any window or door to block out weather elements, from raindrops to powerful hurricane winds. The roll shutter is generally considered the most expensive window protection product in the industry because it's controlled electronically, as opposed to traditional shutters that are manually operated.

The company's roll shutters can are custom made for each client and can be set up to operate by remote control or a timer. In addition to roll shutters, the company manufactures and installs accordion shutters, which are less expensive than roll shutters and used mostly on patio and balcony doors, as well as standard storm panels.

The majority of Windshutters' customers are waterfront home and condo owners in the barrier islands off of the Sarasota and Bradenton coasts, such as Longboat Key, Casey Key and Manasota Key. The company has only taken on a new home construction job once. "Our model is everybody and anybody," says Spindel, "but we tend to have purchases from higher-end consumers."

The main challenge in consistently penetrating that high-end market is twofold: The first part is that the general hurricane products industry has some image and reputation issues, which fits nicely to the second part: quality of the actual products and installation. During the multiple storm seasons of 2004 and 2005, for instance, dozens of two-man, one-truck operations in the shutters industry popped up frequently statewide, even though the owners had little or no experience in actually selling and installing shutters.

Many of those businesses have since disappeared, says Spindel, as most didn't have the staying power to survive hurricane-free seasons, the sinking housing market and now the slumping economy.

On an individual scale, Spindel fights the industry's sometimes-sour reputation by personally looking into nearly every customer complaint. "A complaint is an opportunity to learn," he says. "It should be taken as a way to do something better."

And on a broader scale, Spindel recently became a board member of the International Hurricane Protection Association, an industry trade and lobbying group, based near West Palm Beach, that aims to promote the industry's stability and reputation.

Spindel's control issues have actually benefited him somewhat in the sales area, as his dedication to the manufacturing and installation side has allowed the company to develop a stellar reputation in the lucrative high-end market, which relies significantly on referrals for work. On installation, for example, Spindel still checks his crew's work and measurements on about 95% of the jobs, and if necessary, he will fix any problems himself.

It's a balance that the consultant Spindel hired late last year, Bob Curry of suburban Orlando-based RSC Consulting, is well aware off.

"Bill is very persnickety," says Curry, who is about five months into a yearlong contract with Windshutters that includes a second year of checking up on the progress. "He cares more about the quality of the product then he does about making a profit."

'Managing chaos'

Spindel wasn't making much of anything, be it profits or roll shutters, when he first got into the business in 1989. He opened his own Sarasota-based shutter installation business back then, after working for a few years on the east coast of Florida with his uncle and cousin in their shutter business.

He targeted the condos on Longboat Key for work, placing advertisements but he never got any calls, so he decided to just knock on doors to find work.

His first job though, was decidedly un-Spindel like. "I went there with a nine-inch cordless drill and a not a clue what I was doing," he says. "It took a day for a project that one of my crews could do today in 30 minutes."

But Spindel says he has an engineer-like mind, so he taught himself the intricacies of the products and how to fix installation issues. He grew the company slowly through 1998, when he bought a small Sarasota-based shutter company that was having some financial issues. While growth came a little quicker the next few years, aided by the area's housing boom, it was nothing like what was to happen after August 2004.

That's when Hurricane Charley changed everything.

After the storm swept through a large portion of the Gulf Coast, Windshutters went into survival mode - not the kind many businesses face today in the slumping economy, but the kind where the company ended up trying desperately to keep up with customer demand without curtailing service. "Sales people became order takers," says Spindel. "I wasn't running a company. I was managing chaos."

In the now three storm-free years that followed, Spindel made a commitment to bring in outside help to him grow the firm so that it could better handle the next hurricane-induced business deluge. While his intentions in hiring Curry are well meaning - many entrepreneurs and small business owners struggle with giving up control during growth periods - the execution has been trying at times.

Spindel has yet to curtail his practice of double-checking his crew's work after a job, for instance, although Curry has spoken with him about the need to shift the focus to bigger-picture issues facing the company while not completely foregoing quality control issues. Besides, there really is little reason to worry: Spindel already puts his crews through a rigorous training schedule and most technicians work side-by-side with the boss for as long as eight months before going out on their own.

"I have a hard time trusting people to do their jobs," Spindel says, "unless I have seen them do it."

Executive Tip

Business owners seeking to boost morale among employees through providing bonus pay for exceeding goals should stick to percentages - not straight up dollars.

So says Bob Curry, an Orlando-based business consultant working with Windshutters, a Sarasota-based hurricane shutters company with 18 employees and more than $3 million in annual sales. Curry's most recent job prior to Windshutters was for a larger hurricane products business on the east coast of Florida.

That company had set up a bonus system for installation crews in $100 increments: If a crew completed $11,000 in jobs in one week, each installer got a $100 bonus; $13,000 in jobs was worth a $200 bonus; and $15,000 in jobs called for a $300 bonus.

The 62-employee company used this bonus plan for about nine months, says Curry, and the owner thought it was working, since crews were regularly hitting the $15,000 benchmark. Turns out the crews were hitting the benchmark and stopping there, no matter what day of the week it was, as there was no additional bonus for going past $15,000 in installations.

Curry suggested the owner change to a percentage-based bonus plan: Offer 2% of the each installer's salary for hitting at least $20,000 in installations a week.

The switch, says Curry, worked: In three months, average weekly installations more than doubled, from $15,000 to $34,000.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business: Windshutters, Sarasota

Industry. Hurricane products, construction

Key. Company is expanding into new products and markets to generate revenue growth, which could be as high as 20% in 2008.