“I’ve Gotta Have That!”
The scent of sawdust hangs in the air outside the Marvin plant in Warroad. Inside, employees fashion windows of every type and size: awnings, casements, bays, gliders, double hungs, tilt turns, and elegant round tops.
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Town and Company Pull Together If you live in Warroad, Minnesota, you can hitch a ride on a Marvin plane to the Twin Cities, so long as there’s a seat available. The company will suggest that you make a $100 donation, but your money doesn’t go for fuel or maintenance or airport taxes or the Marvin Companies’ bottom line. It goes to Warroad’s fire department, library, or hockey program. That’s been the case for about 30 years. Employees built Marvin’s success. In return, the Marvin family has a long history of giving back to the community. The family, the company, and the town pull together, Susan Marvin says: “It’s a one-for-all, all-for-one kind of thing.” Her mother, Margaret Marvin, cashed in her stock in the family’s original lumber company to build the town a library. Her father, Bill Marvin, sold stock to build the high school pool. The Marvin family contributed generously to the town’s hockey arena. And this fall, a new 140,000-square-foot, $22 million senior living center will open in Warroad—funded by the Marvin Companies. Today, if you’re a high school student in Warroad, you have a good chance of earning a college scholarship, thanks to the $15 million William S. and Margaret W. Marvin Warroad Scholarship. Criteria for the scholarship emphasize community service and school activities over academics. “There is a strong belief in my family that it’s important to be a good corporate citizen and to volunteer,” Susan Marvin says. “That was drilled into us as kids. There are so many people who have become so important in society because of their character. So my parents wanted to emphasize—and reward—kids who give. It’s pretty cool.” —P. K. |
In 1939, when the company was just a local lumberyard, yard manager Harry York asked for a DeWalt saw so he could make sashes for barn windows in the slow winter months—and Marvin’s window business was born. In 1979, Marvin reintroduced the round-top window to the residential and commercial marketplace, thanks to the ingenuity of a factory employee who also was a boat builder and knew how to bend wood.
“A lot of the people we hired were either farmers or commercial fishermen,” says Susan Marvin. “And these were very independent people who were used to figuring things out on their own. If one of their machines broke down, they couldn’t call maintenance; they’d fix it themselves!”
Today, Marvin says, her company is counting on its homegrown ingenuity even more to carry it through hard times. “There’s not a lot of business out there, and we’re never going to be the lowest bid,” Marvin acknowledges. “And if you can’t be lowest bid, then you’ve got to be best value. And best value comes in the form of features and innovation and those things that people look at and say, ‘I’ve gotta have that!’”
Her company’s biggest recent introduction—the Ultimate Casement—has “gotta have that” appeal, she says. “There are maybe half a dozen features that come together to make that window a ‘wow’.” She calls one an industry first: The window can swing inward 140 degrees, not just outward, so you can wash the outside while standing inside. “Customers really respond to that,” Marvin says. Another “wow” is scale. The window can be ordered in any size up to 40 inches wide and 92 inches tall. “It looks larger than most doors,” Marvin says, but “you can crank it open, smooth as silk.”
Other distinctive Marvin products include picture windows that look stationary but push open, transparent screens, and French doors and swinging patio doors that have low-profile sills (important for people with disabilities). Dozens of product features are aimed at enhancing energy efficiency, views, and ease of installation. Energy efficiency is a must-have these days, Marvin says, especially given new federal tax credits for replacing windows and doors, part of the economic recovery act passed by Congress this year.
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