Window company makes mark in history

NEVADA, Mo. -- Everyone has heard of Murphy's Law, which states that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. This law frequently haunts people starting new businesses, causing them many problems; but Rob Morris, president of Quick Vent Windows, which manufactures custom made windows for commercial and government buildings, said that since he opened his manufacturing company here about one year ago, Murphy's Law has never been a problem.

In fact, his Nevada-based start-up has had a degree of serendipity that is almost unbelievable.

A building of the appropriate size just happened to be available at the right time, a machine shop in town closed its doors and just happened to be auctioning off much of the equipment that he needed to set up operations and business has taken off far more rapidly than he could have ever hoped for.

"At this time I would have expected to have about 10 employees with about a $250,000 backlog of work to ship out," Morris said.

Instead, he has 50 employees and a $4 million backlog of work and is planning to hire another 20 employees in the near future. In addition to the production workers they have another 20 outside sales people scattered around the country.

"We have enough work to keep us busy through December," he said. That's why he is looking to add some production workers -- so they can keep their turn around time for orders at six to eight weeks.

"We picked a few customers to start with and gave them great service. Some of these customers have switched 100 percent to our products," he said.

We have tried to take the vendor- customer relationship and turn it into a partnership, he said.

Part of their success has been an effort to automate as much of the process as possible.

"I used to think of this as the heart and soul of the company," Morris said while walking through the largest section of the plant, which is filled with pieces of the metal frames of the windows and one piece of equipment, operated by one person that does all of the cutting and shaping of the sections that make up each window.

"This is about as automated as a window manufacturing company can be, and it lets us make a better product," he said. Quick Vent manufactures two styles of windows, one the traditional type of window that raises to open and the second that tilts to open. Many of their products have been used in a number of projects to convert warehouses in New York City into lofts and for numerous other projects, including restorations and projects in historic structures. Both types of windows are certified by the U.S. Department of the Interior for use in historic renovation projects.

Morris said that one of the first things they did was to spend the time and money to gain that certification, so that anyone wanting to use their product in a historic restoration could do so with confidence that the product will be accepted.

The certification is important, because these projects, which are frequently expensive to do, are eligible for historic preservation tax credits, that can be used to help finance the project.

One of the things that Morris, who has a degree in history, said that he likes about this business is the opportunity he gets to tour some of the historic buildings that are being restored using the company's windows.

Morris says that another important aspect of doing business is good customer service, and offering a consistently highquality product. To assure that their products have as few problems as possible, they test at least one of every 10 windows they manufacture for a customer; when it's possible, they try to test five out of 10.

"This is my assurance that the product is a good product," he said.

"We test them to strict standards for leaks and breakage. This saves from having any type of quality problems. More than once this testing has caught a problem during the manufacturing process so it could be corrected in the plant, rather than having to pay a crew to make the repairs on site," he said.

"It's cheaper to fix it here than in the field," he said.

Morris said that when they first opened the plant, the intention was to eventually move it to Fort Scott, where he is from; however, the company has since decided to remain here.

Morris said that he has a staff of good employees and he tries to make Quick Vent a pleasant place for them to work by including things like company barbecues. While many companies do not allow husbands and wives or parents and children to work for them, Quick Vent welcomes them. "We have several married couples working here," he said.

"We have gotten several good employees from recommendations from relatives," he said.

Before opening this business Morris and his partner Dale Snyder, who is the company's sales manager, had worked in the replacement window industry for several years at other companies. The plant manager, Tom Matheny, has 23 years of experience in the window manufacturing business.