Minnesota Town’s Business, Employment on Rebound : Window Maker Opens Up a Path to Prosperity
Soaring demand for custom-made windows has proved a bonanza for this town on the Canadian border, creating hundreds of new jobs in Minnesota’s economically depressed northern tier.
In the past year, 20 new businesses and five churches have sprung up. Skyrocketing enrollment forced construction of a new high school. A new water tower was built, along with a second indoor hockey arena and several apartment buildings.
“Right now there are no empty buildings in town,” says City Clerk Dale Zaiser.
Behind Warroad’s booming success is Bill Marvin, the 69-year-old chairman and chief executive of Marvin Windows, one of the largest employers in the northern two-thirds of the state.
Business Has Tripled
“Marvin Windows has made Warroad into a boom town,” said Carol Kofstab, a deputy auditor for Roseau County, where Warroad sits on the south shores of Lake of the Woods.
In the past two years, the company has hired about 1,000 new workers and expanded its plant to cover 40 acres. In the past four years, the company’s business has nearly tripled.
Sales at Marvin, the nation’s third-largest manufacturer of wood windows, are expected to reach $160 million for 1986, compared to $111 million last year. That is up dramatically from 1982, when sales totaled $48 million and the plant operated with 18 loading docks and fewer than 1,000 employees.
Two plant expansions since then have brought the number of loading docks to 60 and the number of employees to about 2,450, about 650 more than the population of the town.
“Without Polaris (snowmobiles) in Roseau and without ourselves and without Reid-Rowell (a drug company) in Baudette, it would be a disaster up here, an absolute disaster,” Marvin said.
Low Unemployment
The boom had the unemployment rate in Roseau County running at 3.2% in September, the most recent figure. By contrast, in Lake County 170 miles to the east, the jobless rate stood at 22%.
Marvin Windows’ success is a result of its ability to customize windows, said Bill Marvin, who runs the company with his sons, Frank, the president, and Jake, vice chairman.
When the housing industry was depressed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the company expanded its round-top window operation and for the first time touted in advertisements that it could produce made-to-order windows on a grand scale.
“At first I didn’t think we were capable of it,” said Bill Marvin, who shuns neckties and wears high-top work boots around the office. “But it worked. We did the things that nobody else would do and that kept us going and kept us in business.”
He said his company was the only major window manufacturer in the country that avoided a layoff during the housing downswing. Its primary markets then were in Texas and California. Now the bulk of sales are on the Atlantic Seaboard, where there is strong demand for replacement windows on historic buildings.
Long Commute for Some
With farming in dire shape, Marvin is not short of applicants. Some workers commute more than 65 miles to the plant. Workers from Greenbush, for example, ride buses to the plant--a round trip of 80 miles.
Duane Fausher, personnel manager for Marvin, said the company has hired a relatively small number of people who lost jobs on Minnesota’s Iron Range when the bottom fell out of the taconite ore industry. Not all are willing to relocate for a job that pays an average hourly wage of about $7.80, which is less than union jobs in the steel industry paid, Bill Marvin said.
Like its larger competitors, Andersen Corp. of Bayport and Rosegreen Co. of Pella, Iowa, Marvin has no union. Marvin does have a profit-sharing plan, which has paid employees more than $23.6 million since 1957. Last year’s checks averaged more than $2,000 for plant workers.
The company’s biggest personnel problem has been luring top-flight engineers and other professionals, said Bill and Jake Marvin. The town’s remote location is to blame.
“We have to appeal to someone who likes to hunt and fish,” Jake said.
Deer Hunter’s Holiday
With that in mind, the company offers “Deer Monday” as one of seven paid holidays. No matter how busy, the plant slows down for the first Monday of the state’s firearm deer hunting season.
“Some of our customers don’t understand that,” said Roger Olimb, who gives tours of the plant and trains new workers.
The company was founded in 1904 when George Marvin, Bill’s father, opened a grain elevator. He replaced the elevator with a lumber company, and in 1939 Bill started making windows at the urging of an employee.
There was a time about 10 years ago when the family considered selling the business, but those thoughts vanished with the emergence of the family’s third generation and the recent success, Bill Marvin said.
“The business is inextricably tied now to the family unit,” said Jake Marvin. “We all have a stake. We all have an interest. We feel rather close to the area.”
