Jan 12
13
What you need. When you need it.
Our tagline is pretty simple. It’s not much different than the message that many other companies are communicating. So why do we include it on all of our packaging, our e-mail signatures, and all of our marketing pieces?
It’s because that tagline is truly what we live by, and it shows in the service that we provide. We work very diligently to keep our warehouses stocked with the products that you need, and to get them out on time, every time. We strive to answer your questions thoroughly and completely, so there is no question that the product/service you are receiving is right for you.
“What you need. When you need it.” is more than just a tagline for us. It’s a mantra that we embrace internally so that you can experience it externally.
-Ryan
Dec 11
5
Wind-lock’s 2011 Holiday Party
The first weekend of December is always a special time at Wind-lock. The turkey has been eaten, the Fall weather starts turning to Winter, and our annual Holiday Party is finally here!
Every year we celebrate the holiday season with a super-fun holiday party at the office. Some of our more festive photos can be seen below. You can find the rest of them here.
-Ryan
Santa made a special appearance at our party!
Wind-lock Family & Friends
A competitive game of dancing on the Wii
The girls talking strategy before playing the Wii
Oct 11
31
Happy Halloween 2011
Christmas and New Year’s are okay. July 4th and Thanksgiving are decent. But at Wind-lock, our favorite holiday is Halloween.
There’s nothing better than dressing up in the scariest costumes we can find for a fun-filled day at the office. Just like last year, we filmed a video to show our customers just how much fun we are having. This video is Ron-man and CB approved!
-Ryan
Oct 11
20
The History of Wind-lock®
A few weeks ago, our marketing department (myself included) was working on a new print piece and wanted to add the year in which our company was established to it. In so doing, a light went on and an idea was hatched; to utilize our blog to recount the history of Wind-lock®. It would be fun for both customers and employees alike, to chronicle our company from start to present!
So, I decided to go straight to the source; the guy who has been with the company since 1992, had sold Wind-lock® products back when the business began, and has led our company for over a decade – Ron Chelli.
Ron educated me on how Wind-lock® has evolved over the years, from its incredibly humble beginnings, to developing into an extremely well-respected international supplier of a wide variety of building products.
Wind-lock® was founded in 1985 as a company centered on the Wind-Devil® fastener (our flagship EIFS product to this day is the Wind-Devil® 2, a younger, refined brother of the original). Wind-Devils® are a revolutionary alternative to adhesive for mechanically attaching EPS insulation to a variety of substrates, including wood, lite metal, steel, and masonry. They offer tremendous positive attachment and superior negative wind-load resistance, effectively locking the insulation in place; hence “Wind-lock.”
With EIFS still relatively youthful, Wind-lock® fast became the industry’s most reliable accessory company by the late 1980s. In addition to the popular Wind-Devils®, a growing number of labor saving tools were discovered and/or developed to help make contractors more productive and profitable on the jobsite, as well as enhancing the aesthetics and workmanship of this ever-popular wall system.
Early on, sales were primarily found in the major metropolitan areas of the US and all shipments originated from our warehouse in the Philadelphia area. By the mid 1990s, however, we were shipping orders throughout virtually all of North America and to many countries abroad – word had definitely spread about Wind-lock®!
With this success came challenges. So in the late 1990s, management recognized the strong necessity to diversify, while maintaining Wind-lock’s® roots within the EIFS industry. After much due-diligence, Wind-lock® embarked on a rather aggressive program to promote its value as a one-stop-shop, with a large breadth of products to the ICF (insulated concrete forms) and SIP (structural insulated panels) industries. This led to both significant growth and the birth of our next major flagship product – Foam 2 Foam®.
The diversity strategy continued in earnest. In 2001 we purchased an apparel (and promotions) company and immediately renamed it Black Lab Apparel® (in honor of Ron’s favorite breed of dog, the loyal and faithful Labrador Retriever). Although seemingly a far stretch from construction, the need for apparel and promotions, within the industries we served, was significant in both their respective offices and jobsites alike.
As we continued to expand our product line, we took advantage of an opportunity to exclusively distribute glass fiber reinforced gypsum (GFRG) access panels. And, what had begun as an accessory product soon became a steadily growing line. Named Stealth in 2005 because of its virtual invisible appearance, the product continues to garner additional market share to this day.
Insulation and energy efficiency have always been in Wind-lock’s® DNA. So it was with this in mind that, in 2005, we committed to stock only Dow® spray foam insulation and weatherization products. By 2008 we had become Dow’s® largest RED DIAMOND distributor. Today, it represents approximately 30% of our annual revenue and continues to realize tremendous growth each year.
Wind-lock® was extremely busy during the mid to late 2000s. And by significantly improving service efficiencies, we were successful in enhancing our value to our customers throughout the US and abroad. In addition to our early expansion of warehousing in the West, satellite locations were established in Jacksonville, Florida; Peoria, Illinois and Dallas, Texas, extending our strategic warehouse locations to five. We are now proficiently fulfilling orders from multiple locations throughout the country, and staying true to our mantra of “What you need. When you need it.”
2011 marked yet another milestone for Wind-lock®, as we leveraged our true strength, or core competency, to launch a full line of drywall tools in January. We currently stock over 2,000 SKUs of drywall tools and accessories and have experienced the fastest rate of growth for any product line in the history of the company.
Wind-lock® has grown tremendously over the past twenty-six years. What started as a small company offering one major product and a few hands full of tools, now offers over 4,000 SKUs, to a wide variety of customers; supporting a wide assortment of building types and industries. We yearn to always have fun and are dedicated to exceeding our customers’ expectations each and every time they need us!
Only one thing is certain here at Wind-lock®. We will continue to evolve, search for and discover fresh opportunities and improvements to our customers’ overall experience. And, we will always appreciate our roots and respect where we came from, but never stop trying to improve and get better at what we do. It is within our core and it truly is who we are!
-Ryan
Sep 11
30
Social Media Etiquette
Social media is great. I think we can all agree on that. Currently, Wind-lock focuses on the big three, and I think we’re pretty good at it. Almost daily I’ll come across a style of sharing that inspires me to try a new approach, like the increasingly popular #FBLT hashtag on Twitter. Other times, I’ll see some things going on that make me scratch my head and wonder “what were they thinking?”
As there are unwritten rules with everything else in life, there are certain things that anybody actively participating in social media for business should know. You certainly don’t have to follow these rules to a T, but you’ll probably find more success if you do.
- Stop hijacking pages. There’s really no need to post on another company’s wall promoting your own products/services. This is social media hijacking, and just makes you look foolish. If they want to learn more about your products, they can do so on their own.
- Posting everything you post on Twitter to Facebook is a big no-no. Using third-party applications like TweetDeck and Hootsuite are great ways to organize your social media feeds, but very annoying to Facebook users. Keep your Facebook updates to one or two a day.
- Easy on the quotes. We all like to think of ourselves as a great philosopher, but I don’t need to see your favorite Yogi Berra quotes ten times a day. Keep it to yourself, or share via your personal profile.
Avoid DM’s at all costs! There’s nothing more impersonal than a cookie-cutter auto direct message asking you to “check out our website”. If you really want to thank somebody for following you, shoot them an @ mention and say something worthwhile. It shows that you’re actually there.
- Self-promotion can be self-detrimental. Whenever I see a new follower, I’ll check out their profile. If every single one of their posts has their website and/or phone number, there is zero chance of me following them back. Put that information in your bio if it’s that important.
- Relevance is key. With over 200 million registered users, Twitter can be a bit overwhelming. If you’re not tweeting relevant information to your followers, you can bet they won’t stick around too long. Focus on useful content that will keep your followers interested and engaged.
- Stop putting periods in front of your @ mentions. I know I’ll probably get some grief about this one, but it’s one of my top pet peeves. For those that don’t know, adding a character before an @ mention makes that tweet visible to all of your followers. The issue with this is that 99% of the time, your tweet to so-and-so doesn’t matter to me in the least, yet you went out of your way to make sure it ended up on my timeline. Stop it!
YouTube
- Quality content. Anybody with a smartphone can upload videos to YouTube. That’s great for videos of your cat that you share with your friends, but not necessarily for business. If you really want to get the most out of your YouTube channel, invest a couple hundred bucks into an HD camera and some editing software. You don’t have to be the next Spielberg to make a quality video on YouTube.
- Don’t beg for subscribers. If you ever go to a top YouTuber’s channel, you’ll notice that nearly all of the comments are begging for a sub. I’m not sure of the success rate of this tactic, but I would be willing to bet that it’s almost non-existent. Just like Facebook, if somebody wants to learn more about you or your business, they will find you. No need to comment on their channel or send them a private message.
So there you have it. My top rules for the top three social networks. If you follow all (or most) of them, you’ll be alright with me. Otherwise, I’m not sure we can still be friends (okay, maybe we can).
-Ryan
Here at Wind-lock, we don’t just sell great products; we use them, too! So when our Leesport, PA warehouse required a new bay door, of course we chose to use Dow’s Froth-Pak to seal and insulate. With a two-man crew of Donny (spraying the foam) and Ryan (filming Donny), we have created the video below for your enjoyment.
As always, if you have any questions about our products, please feel free to give us a call (800-872-5625) or visit our website.
-Ryan
You’re probably starting to see these odd little squares in a lot of places. Do you know what it is? It is a Quick Response code, better known as a “QR code” and it can be read with your smart phone.
While research suggests that this has had a slow adoption rate, QR codes are quickly finding a place in marketing. They can be found on packaging, ads, emails, etc. US Airways is even using them for boarding passes.
This is where marketing is going. At Wind-lock, we are putting QR codes on the business cards of our sales representatives and management team. When scanned with a smart phone QR application, you’ll see a video introducing the person on the business card. And this is just the beginning….we’re sure to find more clever ways to use these!
Are you using QR codes? How? What would you like to see Wind-lock do with them?
-Ashley
Jul 11
8
Mystery Pic #5
I may be small in size, but the job I have is in tall order. I won’t leave you suspended, but without me your wall and ceiling won’t work together.
What am I?
Click here for Mystery Pic #2.
Click here for Mystery Pic #3.
Click here for Mystery Pic #4.
As more and more B2B companies are flocking to sites like Facebook and Twitter, it becomes increasingly more difficult to stand out in the eyes of customers. How do you compete with hundreds of thousands of other accounts flooding the social media world? We like to think that you do this by being unique.
We like to focus our efforts on the big three; Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
We use Facebook to bridge the gap between social media and our website. Typically, anything being updated on our website (from videos to press releases to catalogs) is relayed immediately to our Facebook page. We make it easy for fans of Wind-lock to interact with our company by commenting on any and all of our updates.
We use Twitter primarily to engage in conversations with other companies, whether they are current / potential clients or not. We spend more time interacting in a friendly way, rather than constantly “selling” to our following.
YouTube is where we share our unique product offering and company culture. In less than two years, we have gone from zero to 100,000 views, most of which spread virally.
But, how do you measure the success from this mix of online channels? Does a large amount of Facebook “likes”, Twitter followers, or YouTube hits make you successful, or does it go deeper than that?
We strongly feel that the success of our social media efforts lies in the conversations we spark. Although we appreciate all of our followers equally, many will choose not to interact with us. Therefore, we value the conversations we do have, as they gain us exposure, credibility, and new friends in the social media realm.
How do you measure your social media success? Is it all about numbers, or do the interactions you have define the progress you have made on behalf of yourself or your company? How do you expect to improve your followers’ experience interacting with you as time goes on?
-Ryan
Unfortunately, cancer will touch most of us in some way or another in our lives. The good news is that we have events like Relay for Life to raise money for research and treatments to help those who have been touched by this awful disease. Wind-lock is fortunate enough to have several wonderful employees who step-up and take the initiative to fight back against cancer by raising money and creating awareness.
Pam, Rachel, and Shelee all raised money and participated in the Relay for Life event this past weekend. Their team, the Dragonflies, have raised an impressive $6,800 this year, which is ahead of their progress this time last year! In addition, these ladies won the banner decorating contest, earning their team an additional $250.
To help support Team Dragonflies, we held our annual Relay for Life car wash in our parking lot on Friday. Our executive team volunteered to wash cars for most of the day, with all proceeds going directly to Relay for Life. It was a fun way raise money for a great cause, and we look forward to it every year. You can check out some of the fun we had by watching the video below.
I, along with the rest of Team Wind-lock, have a tremendous amount of respect for Pam, Rachel, and Shelee, as well as all other contributing members of Relay for Life. I feel honored to work alongside these ladies who continue to push themselves every year to support the American Cancer Society’s efforts.
If you would like to make a donation to Relay for Life, please click here and choose “Dragonflies”.
-Ryan
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