The History of Vinyl Windowsin America is the Story

of Entrepreneurs

Threepioneers started layingthefoundation for the industrywe know today more than 35 years agoBy David P. Pirwitz

In 1997,an estimated 14.5million vinyl window units willbe manufactured and sold in the United States. It wasn't solong ago, however, that it was uncertain whether vinyl win-dows could ever be a viable product.

In Europe in the early 1950s, post-War Germanyembraced this manmade material that would cut its relianceon dwindling natural resources, and vinyl windows soonflourished there. In America, however, wood and alu-minum windows were readily available, and the fickleAmerican consumer placed a stigma on this funny materialcalled plastic. Here is the story of how three entrepreneurstook on the challenge of introducing vinyl windows toAmerica, and laid the groundwork for many of the devel-opments of the' 80s and the' 90s and the industry aswe nowknow it today.

Vinyl storm windowsIt was the late 1950s. The economy was moving along

strongly on the heels of the post-war era baby boom, and a

Searching for a synthetic alternative to rubber,Dr. Waldo Semon of B.F. Goodrich formulatedthe first PVC polymer in 1926.

FENESTRlXrION JUNE 1997 93

Vinyl windows have a longer history in Europe.Trocal introduced one of the first commerciallyviable window models in 1954.

strong housing market created a good outlet for windowproduction, both new construction and replacement. Vinylwindows, while finding a receptive market in Europe at thetime, had not yet been introduced to North America.

While energy conservation hadn't become a big issue yet,people wanted to be comfortable in their homes. Aluminumstorm windows had been introduced sometime earlier andwhile they provided more protection from the elements thana window alone, they still were conductors of temperature,detracting from their performance.

"I had been selling aluminum extrusions to window fabri-cators, and in 1957 was seriously considering making alu-minum my career," explains David Weis, who startedModem White Mfg. in a Pittsburgh, PA, suburb in 1959.He went public with the company in 1968 and renamed itThermal Industries. "Someone showed me a piece ofKoroseal extrusion (a B.P. Goodrich trade name) and Iimmediately recognized a threat, becauseI knew all of theproblems of aluminum and saw that vinyl offered some ofthe solutions." After a couple of years of investigation, Mr.Weis made the decision to get into this exciting new prod-uct.

Paul Mancuso, who was no stranger to leading edgemate-rials, had also been watching this new product closely andfelt it would be a natural fit to his existing product lines.Mr. Mancuso remembers, "We started Fiberlux in NewYork State in the early 1950s making fiberglass products.At the time, there were a handful of fiberglass sheet manu-facturers, but we were among the first to apply it to build-ing materials in the-form of patio enclosures. We were alsomanufacturing aldminum storms at a sister company calledWestchesterWindow, so we were quite aware of the pitfallsof aluminum as a window material." So shortly thereafter,

he too was manufacturing the Goodrich vinyl storm win-dow.

Another wooed by vinyl's initial call was Leon Slocomb.He worked for DuPont at the time and was quite aware ofthe future of plastics. He had also watched for years as hisfather struggled with aluminum KD windows. "I knewthrough him," says Mr. Slocomb, "that aluminum was badfor windows becauseit was such a tremendous conductor."So he too signed up with Goodrich to make the Korosealproduct and started Slocomb Industries in Wilmington, DE.

Piifalls of early vinyl

It didn't take long, however, for the three to realize whatthey were up against. "Fools walk in where wise men fearto tread," Mr. Weis muses, "It was soon after I decided toget into the business that I discovered the pitfalls of earlyvinyl, but by that time, I was committed."

First was the American consumer's impression of plasticas a low-end product prone to breakage. "Plastic meanttoys and garbage cans to people," Mr. Mancuso recalls."They couldn't imagine a useful product like a windowbeing made out of plastic, and certainly it couldn't be lowermaintenance. Besides that, it was twice the price of alu-minum."

"We fought that battle for 20 years, and the wall didn'tstart breaking until the 1980s," Mr. Slocomb states. "Myhead got very tired from hitting that wall for so long."

Despite the public's initial perception of vinyl, selling thewindow was not the biggest challenge. "There were manypeople out there, who after a good presentation, couldunderstand why it was a' good product," Mr. Mancusostates. "The real problem was getting decent material in atimely manner." He continues, "Unfortunately, a large cor-

96 FENESTRATION JUNE 1997

poration doesn't often understand how to put a new productout on the market and when there's a problem, they don'thave the personnel in place to take care of it. Our salesmanwas the rubber goods salesman,the sameguy who sold rub-ber boots and you couldn't talk to Goodrich directly." Theproduct came in late and not within specification, and oftenshipments came in with missing parts, which meant no win-dows could be made. "It was a nightmare," Mr. Mancusostates.

Mr. Weis encountered similar problems. "The materialwas certainly unstable at that particular time," he recalls."Goodrich didn't have the extrusion technology to run aclose tolerance part, which was needed even for a stormwindow. Also the plasticizers they used were not as finelyhoned chemically, and it didn't take long before extrusionsstarted turning yellow. That combination of factors alonealmost knocked the product off the market."

Then there was the actual production. Since this productwasn't like any others on the market, there were no existingtechnologies to draw from. This first window was designedasa welded product and at that time welding equipment hadnot yet migrated from Europe. "So we made a welder byhand," Mr. Slocomb recollects. "We rounded up a bunch ofstuff we found around the house and garage. We used theelements from an electric range, bent a piece of stainlesssteel and attached that to a little slide connected to a footpedal, and there was our single point welder. It was reallysomething and we made thousands of windows like that."Mr. Weis and Mr. Mancuso both teamed with local tool-makers to custom design their welders.

Amid these problems, however, the three weathered thestorm and sold enough windows to make it worth theirefforts. While Mr. Slocomb toughed it out with Goodrichfor the better part of the '60s, Mr. Weis and Mr. Mancusoeach set out early in the decade to find a better mousetrap."Fortunately, there were other options," says Mr. Weis,"There were a couple of custom extruders in Ohio and weeventually hooked up with a company called Vinylast (nowWinter Seal). They were using European-style extrusion

dies, which provided extremely tight tolerances and theircompound was more stable than anything else we had seenup to that time."

Thefirst vinyl replacement windows

Thermal Industries soon designed a new and improvedstorm product and becausethey could now count on toler-anced extrusions, success came without the headaches."This successreally gave me the impetus to move ahead invinyl," Mr. Weis says, and by 1966, he had designed whatmany say was the industry's first prime replacement win-dow. "It was really a glorified storm window," he recalls. Itwas a single-glazed, double-hung design and was a sideloader with no balances. It had only a half inch sashand apressure seal on one side holding the sash in place and ahandle which looped into the holes in the frame. "It wasvery primitive, but we sold 25 to 30 thousand the first yearand it worked pretty well," he adds.

It was at this time he decided to get into extrusion, but hesourcedhis dies locally, which he attributes to "unconsciousincompetence." "I didn't know what I didn't know and itturned out okay," he says, "but when the market started ask-ing for an insulated product, it became obvious that thesophistication of our technology required a real quantumleap in terms of extrusion and maintenance of tolerances.These technologies were not well understood in the UnitedStatesand as a result, our dies were pretty primitive."

Concurrently, Mr. Mancuso and his Fiberlux group decid-ed to learn what it was the Europeans were doing right. "Ifworking with Goodrich taught us anything, it was that weneeded control of the extrusion," Mr. Mancuso notes. Heissued a challenge to the Italian extruder supplier who hadbeen hounding him for years to educate him. They cameback and showed him the latest technology in elongateddies with vacuum sizers. He understood and he was sold.

Mr. Mancuso's customers were also pushing him to devel-op a prime window. "We always stressedto our customersthat our storm product was not meant to be a prime window.But there was this builder in Buffalo that wanted to use it as

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such and said that he'd even make sureit got the proper approvals. He put uphomes using only vinyl storm win-dows and managed to get local FHAapproval." Fiberlux also installed thestorms into their fiberglass patioenclosures and Mr. Mancuso wouldoften get comments from homeownersthat it was warmer on their porch thannext to the windows in their home.

This gave him all the incentive heneeded to develop a prime replace-ment window, one that mimicked thealuminum window technologies of theday. It was screwed together insteadof welded, like the aluminum prod-ucts. Mr. Mancuso notes that wasdone primarily "to eliminate the clean-ing." It also was a single glazed unit,but quickly evolved to an insulatingglass unit.

EstablishingfabricatorsMr. Mancuso recognized that as a

smaller company, he could support theproduct itself in a local market, butsoon he needed a much broader mar-ket in which to sell his new foundextrusion capacity. "We started settingup fabricators," he explains, "and wedeveloped a program to help them pro-duce and sell products. It was onlynatural becauseit was what we didn'thave with Goodrich." Many in theindustry agree that his program wasthe model for similar future fabricatorprograms.

Most of the fabricators were from thealuminum replacement business andMr. Mancuso worked alongside themto develop their methods and markets."Vinyl was a totally different animalthan aluminum. It was a much slowerand costlier process than aluminum,and everything was manual whichmeant different types of equipment."This led Mr. Mancuso to team up witha local tool and die maker, whoapplied what he'd learned buildingfabrication tooling for the aluminumwindow business, and developed astandard package for Mr. Mancuso'svinyl customers.

Mr. Mancuso also recognized thatinstallers of the windows could betremendous allies or staunch oppo-nents, and paid them special attention."It became very important to train andbecome friendly with our customers'

FENESTRArION JUNE 1997

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installers, as they could have killed the product in the mar-ket," he notes. "They were usually paid by the opening, soit was only natural for them to dislike the vinyl window, asit took more care and time to install."

Mr. Weis, by this time, had taken a different approach tothe market. He saw aluminum doing well in the remodelingbusiness and decided to go after that market head on. "Werealized early on that the window was an accident waitingto happen and that if we were going to be successful onmore than a local level we would need good customer ser-vice. So we opened up branch warehousesin order to sup-

port the sales." Mr. Weis agreed with Mr. Mancuso in see-ing a big threat to the vinyl windows' success in theinstaller. "While correct installation was an ongoing prob-lem with all window types, vinyl had the most to losebecause of its potential to be installed out of square," hesays. "Use of a square or level by the installers was oftenforgotten in the interest of haste and at the sake of quality."

An industry emergesIn establishing fabricators for Fiberlux's vinyl window,

Mr. Mancuso was laying the groundwork for an entire

104 FENESTRPJION JUNE 1997

Onceit had extrusion capaci-ty, Fiberlux turned to estab-

lishing a network of fabrica-tors to expandsalesof its vinyl

window line.

industry. "We were really setting up our own competition,"Mr. Mancuso says, referring to his company's fabricatornetwork. "It's a big country and we knew no one companycould be out there alone and create credibility for a product.So we setup people in our own backyard. People won't buywhen they can't find a product to compare yours against.There's got to be competition."

Vinyl windows were already beginning to pick up a headof steam when the 1973 oil embargo hit, when two interest-ing things happened. First, people became suddenly awareof why energy efficient products were important. Mr.Mancuso recalls exhibiting at a large exhibition in NewJersey that year and getting a tremendous response.Second, the cost of aluminum skyrocketed, which broughtthe price of the aluminum replacement window in line withvinyl. At this time, there was a tremendous number of alu-minum fabricators in the market, and many began to scram-

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ble for new products. "This gave us the opportunity to showthese people that there was an alternative," Mr. Mancusostates.

Flood gates open

Through the balance of the 1970s, vinyl's growing accep-tance led to a large influx of new faces in the industry.Polytex Co. (now Chelsea Building Products) was the firstof several domestic extrusion companies to open shop andtarget window fabricators in the early '70s. The successoftheir Maynard design begat a myriad of copycat products.Mr. Slocomb, who had been riding the replacement wavewith Mr. Weis's product, was also among this new wave ofextruders in the '70s, setting up Acro Extrusion Corp.

Another of thesenew faces was Nick Cangialosi, who wasno stranger to the goings-on in the window industry. AnItalian immigrant, he got his start in the business in the mid

106 FENESTRATION JUNE 1997

1950s sweeping floors at a window company and quicklyprogressed through the ranks to management. In the early'60s, his storm window company had taken on the Fiberlux .vinyl storm product and had moved into the aluminumreplacement business later on in the decade. By the early'70s, he had grown his business to include five differentcompanies, each servicing some segment of the windowindustry.At this time, he too recognized a future in vinyl and came

out with a hybrid replacement product. "The frame was aPolytex design and we had the sashparts custom extrudedfor us in Italy," Mr. Cangialosi explains. His companies cuttheir teeth on this product throughout most of the '70s, buthe too longed for a better mousetrap. "Those early designall tried to copy the aluminum window, which didn't neces-sarily work for vinyl. The rigidity just wasn't there, so thesamewall configurations wouldn't work."Like the other pioneers, he also struggled constantly with

the availability and quality of material from outside ven-dors. As a result, he also designed an updated window andbegan selling extrusions to a massmarket of fabricators inthe Northeastern U.S. under the name of Vinyl BuildingProducts. By 1980,VBP would be introducing welded win-dow designs. "With my first products, I made the samemis-takes as everyone else at the time and made the comersmechanical," Mr. Cangialosi remembers. "But I learnedquickly and brought out a welded SH and DH program.From a quality standpoint, welded comers were less likelyto leak or fall apart and it gave our fabricators onemore fea-

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An associationformed

With more companies entering the market, as well as hisown firm's efforts at establishing new fabricators, Mr.Mancuso saw a need for an industry-wide association totruly give vinyl credibility with consumers and code agen-cies. So he approachedthe Society for the Plastics Industryin the late '70s and requestedthat the vinyl window compa-nies be incorporated into the group. "They lumped us inwith the vinyl siding group," he recalls, "and eventually wegot shuffled to the custom extruders group, and when wefinally had more window members than custom extruders,they dubbed us the Vinyl Window and Door Institute."It was a triumph, but hard work laid ahead. The group

tackled design and code issues and after a time they gotHUD approval. "This was really when vinyl seemed tocome into its own," he adds. "Finally the window industryrecognized us and the consumers recognized us." In theearly 1980s, AAMA (which at that time stood for theArchitectural Aluminum Manufacturers Association, andnot today's more generic American ArchitecturalManufacturers Association) also began to take note of vinylas a credible product. Its efforts also helped vinyl gaingreater market acceptanceas the '80s progressed.

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108 FENESTRATION JUNE 1997

After modestbeginnings inNorth America, someof the

European extruders, such asVeka,developedinto large

industry suppliers.

Plastics, had spentall of his professional career in theplastics industry. In 1980, he coupled with one ofEurope's leading profile manufacturers,-Kommerling, to introduce the Komcraft line of win-dows to America. "But we just didn't understandtheAmerican mentality," he explains. "TheEuropean market is technology driven, you coulddesign and introduce a product that was a superior

performer and it would do well becausethat's what peoplewere looking for. The American market, on the other hand,is market driven, and you have to come in with productsthat are physically appealing and low-priced."Geoff Card of Spectus Systems, who had faced similar

product incompatibilities when the Germans began to mar-ket windows in England in the late '60s, agrees. "The win-dows were too expensive and had the wrong sightlines. Itwas the unwillingness of the German to adapt their designs

and through the' 80swas the introduction of European win-dow designs. With vinyl gaining acceptance here, manyEuropean extruders, which had been trying to enter the U.S.market for some time, decided the time was right to makethe move. "The early European sales techniques wereprimitive," remembers Mr. Weis. "The Germans thoughtthat if you had quarter-inch walls and a window that wouldlast 5,000 years, people would line up around the block forit. They didn't though and that forced ~=...,."...~a lot of them to adapt their products.The most successful ones were able tofind the right combination of qualitydesign, thinner walls, and low price."Sigi Valentin, who was among this

first group of Europeans agrees. "Thewindows weren't in line with the mar-ket requirements. They were veryheavy commercial models far abovewhat the market required." Mr.Valentin, who is now with L.B.

With the influx of Europeansuppliers in the '80s camegrowth in the use of weldedcorner construction, a trendcovered in early issuesofFENESTRATION.

While muchof the early vinyl windowactivity

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that forced us to come up withour own." Mr. Card had beeninvolved in the introduction ofvinyl windows to England in theearly '70s and was among thethe European who began court-ing the North American marketin the '80s.

Other European extruders,like Trocal, Rehau, Veka, andL.B. Plastics, all had similarawakenings upon entering theAmerican market. UnlikeKomcraft (which eventuallysold out to L.B. Plastics), anumber of these companiesadapted their products andbecame forces in the market.While Komcraft did find alimited market, the productswould never succeed in themassmarketplace. "We soldto people with European con-nections and somelight com-mercial work, but it was notenough," Mr. Valentin adds,"and like other Europeanextruders who entered the

market here, we had to go through two or three generationsof products before we were in tune with the market. Andeven after we 'Americanized' them, we were still on thehigh end."Despite their difficulties in adjusting to the U.S. market's

demands, the Europeans did come at the right time. In1980, vinyl still had a long way to go in terms of the win-dow market. According to the AAMA Ducker Research,only about 600,000 vinyl windows were sold in the U.S. in1980. It grew slowly for the next couple of years until1984, when activity started to pick up, and vinyl achieved10 percent of the remodeling and replacement market.Even bigger gains came in the following years and by theend of the decade,vinyl salesreached nearly 6 million.

Vinyl in newconstruction"One of the biggest reasons for vinyl's huge successwas

the introduction of the vinyl single hung for new construc-tion," statesMr. Cangialosi. "We brought that product tomarket in 1983." Prior to that time, the builders were quitereluctant to open their arms to vinyl, he notes. "While theSPI did a good job with standardsin the late '70s and early'80s, they were materials people and didn't understandwin-dows," he continues, "AAMA was the group that wasacceptedby the builders and remodelers as the authority onwindows and until they began to recognize vinyl, they (thebuilders) wouldn't go for it."Product design was another issue, according to Mr.

Cangialosi. "Wood windows were predominant in new con-struction at that time, so we included a beveled framedesign modeled after a wood window." At first the builders

FENESTRATION JUNE 1997

Vmyl's PenetrationIncreasing in New

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Vinyl windows enjoyed a certain amount of demandin the new construction market during the '80s,but, as FENESTRATION reported, growth acceleratedsignificantly as the '90s began.

were a bit skeptical. "They wanted to know what made meso smart that they should try this product no one else wasmaking. But we convinced them to try it and find some-thing wrong with it. They couldn't and it was extremelysuccessful after that."

CodedevelopmentsWhile vinyl's increased market penetration in new con-

struction had been fairly gradual, one area of the country

Circle 51 on Reader Service Card

116

where it got jump-started early was in the Northwest. In1980, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana hadformed a joint governing body called the Northwest PowerPlanning Council to provide more public oversight of theregions' utilities, explains Paul Warner, president of MikronIndustries. This council established energy conservation asa new alternative for utilities to adding new power generat-ing capacity to meet expanding energy needs. Its activitieshave also put the Northwest on the leading edge of devel-opment of energy conservation standards, including energyefficiency requirements for windows, he points out.In a market where single-lite aluminum windows were

common, thermal testing and U'-value requirements beganto appear. Soon, window manufacturers in the region wereintroducing thermally-broken frames, insulating glass, andinterior storms panels. In this environment, Mikron was oneof the first extruders to focus on developing vinyl windowsfor the new construction market. "When thesevinyl framesbecame widely available in the Northwest, thermal-breakproducts simply couldn't compete," states Mr. Warner."Most manufacturers gearedup to work with vinyl instead."As the '80s progressed,more extruders began developing

new construction products, particularly single-hung win-dow models that could appeal to the price-consciousbuilder. As Larry Irwin, president of Veka, noted in a 1989edition of FENESTRATION,"There will be continued growthin the replacement and remodeling sector, but the areawiththe most significant potential is in new construction prod-ucts. That businesswill grow at a much faster rate."Looking back at the '90s, that certainly proved to be true.

In 1990, about 500,000 vinyl were sold in the new con-struction market, according to AAMA. By 1996, that fig-ure was expected to have increased to over 6 million, withprojections for it to top 10 million by the year 2000.Many developments reported on in FENESTRATION

throughout this decade contributed to vinyl's gains in newconstruction. The National Fenestration Rating Councilemerged, accelerating the development of energy perfor-mance requirements for windows and the shift of many alu-

/'

FENESTRATION JUNE 1997

minum window manufacturers to vinyl, particularly in theWest. The cost of aluminum rose as well, providing anextra incentive for turning more production to vinyl.Vinyl's own gains of market acceptancein the replacementmarket had also laid the groundwork for quicker acceptancein the new construction market in regions where codeshadyet to become a factor.Another major development that contributed to vinyl's

growth came in 1990, when the spotted owl controversyemerged in the Northwest and environmentalists succeededin limiting the amount of federal forest land that could beharvested. In 1991, FENESTRATIONreported on a NationalWood Window and Door Association meeting where a tim-ber industry representative advised wood product manufac-turers to consider alternative sources of raw materials fortheir windows and doors as the grades of wood they trad-tionally used would not be available at the same volumesand costs as they had in the past.Led by Weather Shield Mfg., the list of wood window and

door manufacturers that have added vinyl product lines hasgrown steadily in the past six years.

Thegrowth in the vinyl windowbusinessin thepast 20yearscan beseenin the expandingextrusioncapacitiesof such companiesasMikron. It not only has increasedthe capacityand capabilitiesof itsoriginal plant, shownabovecirca1980,but it addeda second,highcapacityfacility in Kentucky toservethe still-growing needsof themarket.

Today, theAmerican vinyl window comes in many shapesand sizes. The early American designs, the initial Europeanimports, and the later generations of products which mightbe dubbed truly American have been melded together toform something unique for the American window con-sumer. And the vinyl window will continue to evolve.Many in the industry believe the introduction and continu-ing mainstream use of composite vinyl materials may againchange the face of our industry.And while the earliest pioneers are all but gone from the

industry (Paul Mancuso retired from Fiberlux 10 years agoand Leon Slocomb and David Weis have recently sold theirbusinessesand verge on retirement), their legacy of innova-tion and perseverancewill live on in some shapeor form,for many years to come. [fl

-:

David P Pirwit; is sales managerfor Urban Machinery, thesupplier of vinyl welding and corner cleaning equipment.He is a frequent contributor to FENESTRATION.

,./

118 FENESTRATION JUNE 1997