Universal Growth

Universal Window Solutions turned customers away for much of its history.

For good reason, too: The Bradenton-based firm, founded in 1981, could afford to do that because business was so good.

“We would have people walk in off the street wanting to buy a door or window from us and we'd just send them away; we were too busy doing new construction,” says Bob Smith, the company's CEO. “We just weren't set up to handle them.”

But even as development and homebuilding business streamed in the door, the owners discussed expanding to consumers.

So in 2005, Smith and his business partner and brother, Rocky Smith, devoted 800 square feet of its headquarters to showroom space. Two years later the firm expanded the showroom space to 1,300 square feet, and created a new remodeling division. And two years after that, in 2009, the firm opened another location, on Longboat Key.

The Smiths hoped the investment would allow the company to sell more directly to customers using a retail model. The pair also wanted to market its products more effectively to its existing commercial clients.

It took a while, but the strategy has worked.

Today, consumer sales make up 50% of business at Universal, which had $8 million in 2011 sales. Furthermore, using a specialized lead tracking and accounting system called ACT, the company found a consumer that visits one of its showrooms increases the chances of a sale to 80%.

As another bonus, Bob Smith says the company found that using showrooms to make sales, allowed the company to offer fewer discounts and incentives.

“We found that historically whenever the consumer is engaged and educated we won,” Smith says. “The other advantage is in the end they make a good decision and end up happier; there's less buyers' remorse.”

Having customers make the buying decisions in the store also led to more natural opportunities to upsell.

Universal, with 25 employees, isn't done expanding. The firm, which recently spent $50,000 to double the size of the showroom again in its headquarters, recently bought a new building to replace it. It paid $900,000 for the 22,584-square-foot building, a former heating and air conditioning facility off U.S. 301 in Sarasota, and has earmarked an additional $200,000 for renovations.

The company plans to create an 8,000-square-foot showroom in the new space, which will be nearly triple the size of its current one. It plans to hire new sales and administrative staff to aid the growth.

Although the company's revenue dipped from $8.5 million in 2009 to $8 million in each of the past two years, Smith says the business' new retail focus allowed it to expand its margins. It also was able it to stretch the size and complexity of its jobs.

Smith projects annual revenues at the firm will increase 15% in the new building, which would amount to about $1.2 million more in sales. It expects to have fully moved in to the new building by September.

“I think we're positioned better today than five years ago,” Smith says. “We're certainly more diverse. We've added more product categories and we're healthier today than we were before the crash.”