Wallside Windows'
manufacturing
operation.

Despite the death of its founder, Wallside Windows keeps rolling.

BILL CARROLL

Special to the Jewish News

T

heir father started- out as a
"tin man," and now, thanks
to his devotion to his family,
business and customers, his
three sons are bringing in the gold.
That's the story of Wallside Windows
of Taylor, which does $60 million in
window sales a year, making it one of
the largest single-market window retail-
ers in the nation.
Wallside dominates the Detroit area
market, with strong name recognition
and a referral business created by a
catchy phrase in its advertising — "Most
preferred, most referred."
But just as important is old-fashioned
word-of-mouth advertising based on
customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Buoyed by that combination, Wallside
manufactures and installs about 800
windows in about 100 homes in south-
eastern Michigan — daily
At the root of that success is a Jewish
family, whose patriarch, Martin Blanck,
launched Wallside in 1970. Blanck died

of Parkinson's disease at age 79 last
January, leaving his three sons to carry
on the Wallside legacy. They are
Stanford, 49, of West Bloomfield, vice
president of operations; Fred, 45, of
Ann Arbor, vice president of corporate
strategy, and Smart, 53, of West
Bloomfield, VP of finance.
When Martin Blanck left the army in
1944, he became a "tin man," inde-
pendently selling aluminum siding door
to door, buying the materials and get-
ting others to install them in Detroit
homes. Born in America, the son of an
Eastern European immigrant fruit ped-
dler, Blanck had gone through the for-
malities of obtaining an accounting
degree, but he was restless and wanted
his own sales business.

Catching A Trend

Blanck noticed new trends emerging in
the home improvement industry By the
1960s, post-war homes needed to be
updated. During the oil shortage of the
1970s, government tax rebates — as
much as $3,000 — encouraged home-

home ... a 70,000-square-foot facility
owners to invest in energy-efficient
near Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
home products. Winyl windows were
By this time, the Blanck brothers had
deemed excellent insulators.
gone
through college, and Stanford and
"My father realized that the window
Stuart gave up other pursuits to get
business was the perfect — and most
entrenched in the business. Fred joined
affordable — place to start," said
the firm two years ago.
Stanford Blanck, "and it fulfilled his
The pioneering family moved from
desire to operate his own business. A
friend of his had a
business named
Allside.' So my father
said, 'I'll just switch the
Ca' to a 'w' and call
mine Wallside. The
business blossomed
through his hard work
and integrity."
Wallside was
launched in a modest
shop at Schaefer and
Eaton in Detroit, then
expanded to a larger
building on Schaefer.
But the company out-
grew that 23,000-
square-foot plant, and,
in 1992, Wallside
moved to its current
Fred, Stanford and Stuart Blanck carry on a legacy.

12/7
2001

103