April 26, 2004
Sunny side up | Manufactured sunrooms are the key to growth for a Kennebunk entrepreneur
By Sean Donahue
Jim Lang was making a comfortable living as a replacement window and siding dealer when he decided to take a big gamble with his Kennebunk-based small business. While strolling through a national remodelers convention in Boston in 1995, he came across a manufacturer selling pre-made patio enclosures and sunrooms ˆ glass and wood or aluminum structures that turn an open deck or patio into a three-season, weatherproof indoor/outdoor living space.
He'd noticed the popularity of similar patio rooms years before, while living in Ohio, and wondered why the products hadn't caught on in Maine, where big backyards, decks and patios are common. Sensing a potential market, he began asking friends and colleagues why they thought sunrooms were rare in Maine. The most common guess was that Maine's short summers made the idea of a sunroom laughable.
In Lang's mind, though, Maine's short summers were exactly the reason he believed homeowners would bite. "Our summers are only four or five months long, but by installing a sunroom you might get seven months of use out of your deck. Plus, even when it's nice out, we're in a buggy part of the world," says Lang. "So the reason people would [buy sunrooms] is precisely the reason people thought they wouldn't."
Lang's been proving his theory since the mid-90s, when he signed up to be a Betterliving Patio Room installer and renamed his company Maine Window & Sunroom (it had been known as Maine Window & Siding). The first year, he sold 17 sunrooms; last year, he sold more than 300, making him the third-largest Betterliving dealer in the country. Sunroom sales, which make up two-thirds of his business, helped drive the company's revenues above $5 million last year, and inspired him to open Maine Window & Sunroom's second location, in Brewer, last June.
Lang's success has mirrored a nationwide trend that's making sunrooms an increasingly popular niche in the remodeling world. Across the country, more than 500,000 sunrooms were added last year, making them the fifth most common household remodeling project in 2003, according to the National Association of the Remodeling Industry. Sunroom manufacturers attribute that growth to several factors, from owners of older homes looking to add usable space to keep up with ever-larger new home construction ˆ in 2002, the average size of a new home was about 2,300 sq. ft., compared to about 1,900 sq. ft. in 1987 ˆ to the fact that manufactured sunrooms have become a higher-quality product since the introduction of new regulations in the 1990s.
Principles of prefabrication
As his sunroom sales have taken off, Lang has also taken steps to diversify Maine Window & Sunroom's operations to create a more sustainable business. In addition to geographic expansion, he's also recently added new product lines intended to keep his staff of 70 busy year-round, and to solidify his company's niche: helping homeowners turn unused or underused space ˆ decks, patios and basements ˆ into usable rooms, through a combination of premanufactured components and local, skilled labor.
"This will probably be a growing trend, as remodelers take a page out of the homebuilders' book," says Kermit Baker, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. "Homebuilders have really gone to prefabrication and building everything they can off-site, to limit the amount of on-site labor. Remodelers have been slower to adapt, sticking with the traditional notion that every job is a new one. But more and more we're seeing remodelers saying 'what can we do to use the principles of prefabrication.'"
Sometime this year, Lang expects to install his 1500th sunroom in Maine. Each enclosure is custom-designed and manufactured, typically providing a three-sided expanse of glass or screened-in windows. But since those rooms can be built on top of existing decks and patios, under the roof of an existing porch or as completely new additions, the cost of the projects varies widely. Customers also can choose from a range of window types, roofs and siding colors; ultimately, the typical project falls in the $12,000 to $18,000 range, says Lang.
As Lang suspected a decade ago, customers find a sunroom makes their outdoor space more user-friendly. Four years ago, Melissa and Stephen Kasperzak hired Maine Window & Sunroom to replace a deck on their Kennebunk home that Melissa says "looked nice, but was not very functional." Instead, she added an 11x14 sunroom connected to her family room by a sliding glass door. "This time of year, the sunroom heats up during day and I open up the doors to help make this part of house nice and bright," she says. "We eat dinner out there; I had a baby shower out there recently; my husband and I read out thereˆ we basically use it a lot."
Besides being happy with the product, Kasperzak says she was impressed with the professionalism and conscientiousness of Maine Window & Sunroom's installers ˆ so impressed that she's since hired the company for other jobs, including installing new vinyl decking outside her sunroom.
The company's approach to customer service is also the reason it has been named one of Betterliving's top-ten dealers for the past eight years, says Debbie Stone, director of marketing for Craft-Bilt Manufacturing in Souderton, Penn., which manufactures Betterliving sunrooms. Stone notes that Lang tries to send each of his salespeople and installers to Pennsylvania for training sessions at least once a year, and that she doesn't have a single complaint against the company in her files. "One reason Maine Window & Sunroom does as well as they do is the integrity level," says Stone. "Let's face it: Home improvement companies don't have that great a reputation, but Jim Lang sets high standards and has fabulous people working for him."
Going to the basement
Lang agrees that finding ˆ and keeping ˆ good workers is crucial to maintaining his company's quality and customer service standards, saying that his decision in 1996 to make all his installers salaried employees, with full health and 401k benefits, was one of the most important decisions he's made in his 15 years in business. Customer service concerns also helped him decide to open the Brewer showroom, even though his company had been serving northern Maine from its Kennebunk headquarters for years. "The only way we were going to be really successful in the Bangor region was by having a local presence, with local people and a local branch," says Lang. "I wanted customers to know we were committed to the area."
Expanding the company's presence ˆ and its sales ˆ in the northern half of the state is also part of Lang's five-year plan to double the size of the business, making it a $10 million company. To help achieve that goal, Lang intends to continue spending heavily on television advertising and direct mail marketing ˆ last year, the company's marketing budget was about $750,000. The plan also may call for further regional expansion, with Lang considering opening a showroom in the seacoast New Hampshire area.
But as he tries to double the company's sales, Lang knows he must also find ways to keep his 70 employees busy year-round, and not just in the spring, summer and fall when sunroom, window and siding installations are most common. To that end, last year he began offering a new product from Owens Corning, the Ohio-based insulation maker, that turns unfinished basements into finished family rooms using prefabricated, insulated and finished interlocking panels.
As part of his five-year plan, Lang hopes to grow the basement finishing business to account for 30% of his company's sales. Within those sales, though, he also sees the potential for longer-term growth. Lang notes that the typical customer for a finished basement tends to be a family with young children, while his typical sunroom customer is an older couple, between the ages of 50 and 65 ˆ which means that Lang sees each basement customer as the potential sunroom customer of the future. "We look to find quicker, easier, low-maintenance ways of doing things. Replacement windows that don't require you to tear your house apart, basements that can be finished off without wood studs and drywall, pop-it-on decks," says Lang. "There's a common theme among all those products that we've seen people really enjoy, so we see a good way to build on our existing customer base, which is continually growing."
He'd noticed the popularity of similar patio rooms years before, while living in Ohio, and wondered why the products hadn't caught on in Maine, where big backyards, decks and patios are common. Sensing a potential market, he began asking friends and colleagues why they thought sunrooms were rare in Maine. The most common guess was that Maine's short summers made the idea of a sunroom laughable.
In Lang's mind, though, Maine's short summers were exactly the reason he believed homeowners would bite. "Our summers are only four or five months long, but by installing a sunroom you might get seven months of use out of your deck. Plus, even when it's nice out, we're in a buggy part of the world," says Lang. "So the reason people would [buy sunrooms] is precisely the reason people thought they wouldn't."
Lang's been proving his theory since the mid-90s, when he signed up to be a Betterliving Patio Room installer and renamed his company Maine Window & Sunroom (it had been known as Maine Window & Siding). The first year, he sold 17 sunrooms; last year, he sold more than 300, making him the third-largest Betterliving dealer in the country. Sunroom sales, which make up two-thirds of his business, helped drive the company's revenues above $5 million last year, and inspired him to open Maine Window & Sunroom's second location, in Brewer, last June.
Lang's success has mirrored a nationwide trend that's making sunrooms an increasingly popular niche in the remodeling world. Across the country, more than 500,000 sunrooms were added last year, making them the fifth most common household remodeling project in 2003, according to the National Association of the Remodeling Industry. Sunroom manufacturers attribute that growth to several factors, from owners of older homes looking to add usable space to keep up with ever-larger new home construction ˆ in 2002, the average size of a new home was about 2,300 sq. ft., compared to about 1,900 sq. ft. in 1987 ˆ to the fact that manufactured sunrooms have become a higher-quality product since the introduction of new regulations in the 1990s.
Principles of prefabrication
As his sunroom sales have taken off, Lang has also taken steps to diversify Maine Window & Sunroom's operations to create a more sustainable business. In addition to geographic expansion, he's also recently added new product lines intended to keep his staff of 70 busy year-round, and to solidify his company's niche: helping homeowners turn unused or underused space ˆ decks, patios and basements ˆ into usable rooms, through a combination of premanufactured components and local, skilled labor.
"This will probably be a growing trend, as remodelers take a page out of the homebuilders' book," says Kermit Baker, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. "Homebuilders have really gone to prefabrication and building everything they can off-site, to limit the amount of on-site labor. Remodelers have been slower to adapt, sticking with the traditional notion that every job is a new one. But more and more we're seeing remodelers saying 'what can we do to use the principles of prefabrication.'"
Sometime this year, Lang expects to install his 1500th sunroom in Maine. Each enclosure is custom-designed and manufactured, typically providing a three-sided expanse of glass or screened-in windows. But since those rooms can be built on top of existing decks and patios, under the roof of an existing porch or as completely new additions, the cost of the projects varies widely. Customers also can choose from a range of window types, roofs and siding colors; ultimately, the typical project falls in the $12,000 to $18,000 range, says Lang.
As Lang suspected a decade ago, customers find a sunroom makes their outdoor space more user-friendly. Four years ago, Melissa and Stephen Kasperzak hired Maine Window & Sunroom to replace a deck on their Kennebunk home that Melissa says "looked nice, but was not very functional." Instead, she added an 11x14 sunroom connected to her family room by a sliding glass door. "This time of year, the sunroom heats up during day and I open up the doors to help make this part of house nice and bright," she says. "We eat dinner out there; I had a baby shower out there recently; my husband and I read out thereˆ we basically use it a lot."
Besides being happy with the product, Kasperzak says she was impressed with the professionalism and conscientiousness of Maine Window & Sunroom's installers ˆ so impressed that she's since hired the company for other jobs, including installing new vinyl decking outside her sunroom.
The company's approach to customer service is also the reason it has been named one of Betterliving's top-ten dealers for the past eight years, says Debbie Stone, director of marketing for Craft-Bilt Manufacturing in Souderton, Penn., which manufactures Betterliving sunrooms. Stone notes that Lang tries to send each of his salespeople and installers to Pennsylvania for training sessions at least once a year, and that she doesn't have a single complaint against the company in her files. "One reason Maine Window & Sunroom does as well as they do is the integrity level," says Stone. "Let's face it: Home improvement companies don't have that great a reputation, but Jim Lang sets high standards and has fabulous people working for him."
Going to the basement
Lang agrees that finding ˆ and keeping ˆ good workers is crucial to maintaining his company's quality and customer service standards, saying that his decision in 1996 to make all his installers salaried employees, with full health and 401k benefits, was one of the most important decisions he's made in his 15 years in business. Customer service concerns also helped him decide to open the Brewer showroom, even though his company had been serving northern Maine from its Kennebunk headquarters for years. "The only way we were going to be really successful in the Bangor region was by having a local presence, with local people and a local branch," says Lang. "I wanted customers to know we were committed to the area."
Expanding the company's presence ˆ and its sales ˆ in the northern half of the state is also part of Lang's five-year plan to double the size of the business, making it a $10 million company. To help achieve that goal, Lang intends to continue spending heavily on television advertising and direct mail marketing ˆ last year, the company's marketing budget was about $750,000. The plan also may call for further regional expansion, with Lang considering opening a showroom in the seacoast New Hampshire area.
But as he tries to double the company's sales, Lang knows he must also find ways to keep his 70 employees busy year-round, and not just in the spring, summer and fall when sunroom, window and siding installations are most common. To that end, last year he began offering a new product from Owens Corning, the Ohio-based insulation maker, that turns unfinished basements into finished family rooms using prefabricated, insulated and finished interlocking panels.
As part of his five-year plan, Lang hopes to grow the basement finishing business to account for 30% of his company's sales. Within those sales, though, he also sees the potential for longer-term growth. Lang notes that the typical customer for a finished basement tends to be a family with young children, while his typical sunroom customer is an older couple, between the ages of 50 and 65 ˆ which means that Lang sees each basement customer as the potential sunroom customer of the future. "We look to find quicker, easier, low-maintenance ways of doing things. Replacement windows that don't require you to tear your house apart, basements that can be finished off without wood studs and drywall, pop-it-on decks," says Lang. "There's a common theme among all those products that we've seen people really enjoy, so we see a good way to build on our existing customer base, which is continually growing."
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