the California-based manufacturer of sustainable building materials
that is preparing to restore production next month at the former
Kensington Windows plant in Vandergrift.
That facilitys
future appeared to be shattered only three months ago when its parent
company, Ohio-based Jancor, closed it permanently as part of a debt
restructuring. Now the plant is being prepared to return to production
in late February. “And were on track; it’s looking like we will
actually beat those expectations,” says Sandra Vaughan, the chief
marketing officer for Serious Materials, a fast-growing Silicon Valley
startup, whose high-R-value, energy-efficient windows continue to fly
out of its plants in spite of the general slump in the national housing
market.
We are sold out of our Colorado plant and so doubling
capacity there and also expanding production at our plant in
Sunnyvale,” Vaughan says. “And the Kensington Windows plant will add
dramatically to our manufacturing capacity.”
Former Kensington Windows employees numbered 150 at the time of the closing. For the restart, about
20-30 will be called back immediately, and then Serious Materials
intends to ramp production upward as demand increases–with the intent
of putting as many people back to work as possible.
While the
takeover eases constraints on production elsewhere, it also places
Serious Materials closer to East Coast markets, where the company is
already seeing new opportunities through the eyes of the Kensington
Windows dealer network, “which enjoys a very good reputation,” she adds.
“We
bring the intensity of a very well funded, aggressive, typical
high-tech Silicon Valley startup to a pretty sleepy building-materials
industry,” Vaughan says, “and we’re trying to put it on its ear with
the types of products we’re trying to bring to market. We’re heavily
investing in R&D and very focused on saving the planet by saving
energy.”
Source: Serious Materials, Sandra Vaughan
Writer: Joseph Plummer
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