Clear vision for success Loewen Windows sticks to values of quality, community with 120-year anniversary on horizon Made in Manitoba
By: Aaron Epp Posted: 7:55 PM CDT Thursday, Jun. 20, 2024

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This article was published 20/06/2024 (481 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

STEINBACH — When Vern Rempel started working at Loewen Windows in 1990, he figured he would be with the company for five years. But other than a six-week stint during which he gave trucking a try, he’s been with the company ever since.

“I love the people I work with,” says the 57-year-old father and grandfather, whose daughter, Chelsea, works with him making cabinets in the Manitoba firm’s display department.

“I love working with my supervisors, my team leaders — it’s a great place to work. People hear me say that and they say, ‘You can’t really be serious.’ I am serious. It’s a great place to work.”

Todd LeRoy agrees.

LeRoy was fresh out of high school when he got a job loading trucks at Loewen Windows in 1982. He never envisioned it would become a career that would see him rise through several factory jobs to his current role as vice-president of marketing.

“My son worked here before he went to college, my daughter worked here before she went to college — that’s part of the attraction of Loewen: it is a family business. A lot of families work here,” LeRoy says. “I felt very comfortable with my kids working here and I think that speaks to the quality of the company.”

Rempel and LeRoy are two of almost 40 current employees who have worked at Loewen Windows for 25 or more years.

Each that has reached the quarter-century milestone has their picture displayed in the office of the manufacturer, which is based in Steinbach. In a nearby room, another 70 photos bear the images of retired employees who worked at the company 25 years or longer.

“We have a lot of long-standing staff here,” says co-owner and senior vice-president Clyde Loewen. “It really is amazing.”

Loewen’s grandfather started what would become Loewen Windows in 1905. At the time, it was a small lumber yard and sawmill where entrepreneurship, hard work and community were valued.

Today, Loewen Windows is a leading manufacturer of windows and doors catering primarily to high-end single-family dwellings.

Nearly 700 people work for the company. Of that number, 540 are involved in manufacturing, which takes place entirely at a 600,000-square-foot facility on Highway 52.

The company is committed to crafting made-to-order products, creating enduring designs using high-quality authentic materials.

“We get to do cool projects all the time,” Loewen says. “We get to sign NDAs because we’re working on so-and-so’s house …”

“… And everybody would recognize who so-and-so is because they are really good at moving a football around a field or they are on a movie screen,” interjects Neil Fast, president and CEO.

“The windows and doors for those homes come from this little Mennonite town in southeastern Manitoba,” Loewen continues. “Your humility gets put in check often because they’re homes that are hard to relate to (in terms of their size), but it works.”

Creating quality products while offering good jobs makes for a winning combination, according to Fast, who joined the company in 2023.

“There’s something great when you have a company with a culture and a product like we have,” Fast says. “There is a culture of collaboration and respect that you rarely see these days.”

Things may be rosy now, but it was a different story 15 years ago.

The 2008-09 financial crisis severely impacted Loewen Windows, which does a lot of business in the U.S. In a short period, the company had lost about 90 per cent of its business.

As sales plummeted, the Canadian dollar approached parity with the U.S. dollar; the money Loewen Windows was making was worth 30 per cent less than before.

The decline in revenue meant it had to cut its workforce from 1,700 people to 500.

“It was a distressing time, certainly,” Clyde Loewen says. “You’d never know when and where the bottom was going to be.”

It became evident the best move to save the company was to sell it. In 2010, the Loewen family sold the brand to VKR Holding A/S, a Denmark-based investment company.

“I would have to say they were excellent owners for this company,” Loewen says. “It was about as good as it could be.”

In 2013, Clyde Loewen, his older brother Charles and a few private investors bought the company back from VKR.

The next few years continued to be challenging for the construction industry.

Fast applauds what the ownership group was able to achieve.

Fast spent almost 20 years with Brock White, a construction materials supplier. He became familiar with the U.S. housing market when he spent seven years working for the company in Minneapolis.

“(The years) 2010 through … 2016 were still dramatically challenging days for anyone in the building materials industry with a U.S. presence,” Fast says.

“The fact that Loewen managed to survive that downturn, the correction, a sale to a private equity company, buying it back again and then rebuilding it … the fact that they worked that hard and pulled it through, that’s really an incredibly important chapter in the Loewen history.”

While the COVID-19 pandemic presented its own challenges, today Fast is excited about where Loewen Windows is and what lies ahead.

“The past five years saw a lot of businesses go away or change dramatically, and Loewen held very strong throughout that whole process,” he says.

The company does its engineering, product development, marketing and customer service out of its Steinbach headquarters.

It has sales offices in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria, and an extensive dealer network in the U.S.

Ownership continues to invest heavily in the business, which is preparing to launch new products into the market.

Co-working robots, or cobots, are being introduced to work alongside staff, not to replace humans but to do precise, repetitive work. The company is also recognized regularly for its commitment to employee safety.

Steinbach is no longer a small, predominantly Mennonite town. As the city has become more diverse, so has Loewen Windows’ workforce.

But the values that were key to its formation in 1905 — entrepreneurship, hard work and community — continue to be foundational today.

“There is a culture of collaboration and respect that you rarely see these days,” Fast says. “There is an earnestness.”

“When the group here needs to make a decision, they do it in a very thoughtful, respectful way and then we execute,” he adds. “That sounds kind of (obvious) — isn’t that how every business runs? And it’s really not.”

The company will mark its 120th anniversary next year, an accomplishment no one individual can take credit for.

“Everyone knows they have their role to (play) and that this is a team,” Clyde Loewen says. “We work together.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca