Top-rate workmanship and energy-efficient products
Woodbridge Home Exteriors is a family-owned and operated company that has been installing premium, insulated vinyl siding, doors, windows, and other home improvement and replacement products, such as soffits and fascia, since 1989. Mitchell Spector, Woodbridge’s CEO and founder, started the business after working at his father’s siding company. “I had worked for my father for about 12 years,” he explains, “and I realized very early on that I was always going to be his son and when it came to business decisions, he was always going to be the dad, and make the decisions he wanted to make. It was a great experience – those 12 years with him – but I decided if I was ever going to spread my own wings, I needed to open my own company. So I did.”
According to Spector, his new company began as a vinyl siding business, like his dad’s, but over the years, it moved more and more into another part of the home replacement market. “We still like the siding and trim end of our business,” he says, “but the opportunity was really in windows and doors.” Today, those items make up about 80 to 85 percent of the company’s sales volume. Woodbridge’s main location is in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, with a branch in Wichita, Kansas, and another in Amarillo, Texas. Its 140 employees service an area that covers Kansas, most of Oklahoma, and Texas, north of Austin.
In an area that big, Spector says that his company can compete effectively based on the quality of its products and services, and its fair pricing. In addition, the Woodbridge sales and marketing team, which makes up almost half of the company’s workforce, devotes a great deal of time and energy to proactive marketing. “We take advantage of direct mail, all print media, lots of shows and events, and canvassing, as well as a little bit of radio,” he says. “And I think the area that we’ve grown the most is what people call ‘make marketing,’ where the customer may not have yet made the decision to make the improvements, but you’re able to encourage them to become a customer, today, even though when you first met, that may not have been their thinking.”
Spector says that Woodbridge is adding showrooms to its office locations in order to create more of its own marketing events, closer to home. “We do own all of our real estate,” he admits, “so we have, just recently, built a showroom in Wichita. In Dallas, we’ve got remodeling plans to get a showroom installed in 2016 – as well as in Amarillo.” The company has also updated its website. “We are aware that the future is on the internet. We invest heavily on the technology side because it allows the homeowner to get a very good look at us and know how well we can service them – which is an advantage relative to some of the distances that we travel. On the operations side, that transparency also allows us to deliver the highest quality products and service. That’s an area that we’ve come a long way in the last five years.”
Spector says that another one of his company’s goals is to grow by double digits in each of the next five years and that being a great marketing company is as important as being able to install a quality product. “As long as you have the ability to market successfully, and, of course, it has to be profitable, as well – that’s real key – you can continue to make customers,” he claims. “That’s the advantage of ‘make marketing.’ From 2008 to 2013, during the Great Recession, we did not really have any growth; we were pretty flat. But we didn’t take many steps backwards. As we came out of it in ’14 and ’15, we were able to get back to our double-digit gains.”
Even though business has been getting better every year, Spector is adamant that Woodbridge will not consider expanding until it meets some well-defined criteria. “Our goal is when we hit a certain amount of revenue, that’s when we would consider another branch expansion,” he says. “But we have so much opportunity where we’re at today. We can grow by approximately 35 to 40 percent, right now. Once we do that, as we realize our double-digit growth goals each year, expansion will be on the horizon.”
Spector believes that sticking to the basics and doing what it is good at is what is going to allow Woodbridge to realize its objectives. “We’re good at sales, marketing, and installations,” he maintains. “We’re not a distributor; we’re not a manufacturer. We don’t want to be distributing siding products; we don’t want to fabricate window products. We’re able to have exclusive products in arrangements with suppliers that allow us to take some of the higher end and most energy-efficient products in the marketplace, to market.
“Our goal is not to be the largest company in the marketplace; our goal is to be the best company in the marketplace. So, we have a lot of key performance indicators that we keep a very close eye on, relative to how we are performing as a company. We try to spend a lot of time relative to the satisfaction of our customers and measure that, because we work as a fact-based company. Rather than looking for opinions, we’re looking to manage based on facts. First and foremost, is our customer satisfaction in putting out a great product and providing that proper value.”
Finally, Spector points out that people are his company’s greatest asset. “We have a culture that allows for great training programs,” he says. “The best part of my job is identifying talented people and giving them opportunities to help us grow. More than anything else, it’s all about our people.”
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AT A GLANCE
WHO: Woodbridge Home Exteriors
WHAT: Seller and installer of home siding, doors, and windows
WHERE: :Headquarters in Dallas, Texas
WEBSITE: www.woodbridgeclassic.com
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