You might have seen one of Gilkey Window Company’s TV commercials where founder Mike Gilkey is surrounded by a few of his grandkids. He’s enthusiastically preaching the virtues of the family product to his mildly interested young audience. It’s cute, it’s sweet, ending with Mike’s commitment “to building the best windows for you.”
If making great windows and convincing viewers to sign up is the main message, there’s also the idea of family and “We’re all in it together.” It’s not just lip service—the ranks of Gilkey employees are filled with family members. Not long ago, top leadership passed to Mike’s son Vince as CEO and his son-in-law, Augie Quirch (daughter Emily’s husband), as President. But they had to earn it.
Vince’s first job with the company began during summers in high school. “I cleaned the bathrooms and picked up cigarette butts,” he smiles. Eventually, he graduated to making screens, then went full-time after college.
The fact is, Vince Gilkey’s career path was predestined. It’s part of his family’s DNA stretching back to the mid-1940s when his grandfather John and great-uncles returned from World War II.
After the war, as the first baby boomers were joining the population, his great-uncle Joe saw an opportunity—all those growing families would need homes, so he and his brothers started businesses covering all facets of the construction trade. For Vince’s grandfather John, it was a concrete company.
One of those new baby boomers was Vince’s dad, Mike, who was hooked on the family business from an early age. “When I got into high school, I started working with my dad pouring concrete in the summer,” Mike says.
After working for his dad right after college, then for a large remodeling company, Mike started his own remodeling company in 1978, working out of his garage and then 2-year-old Vince’s bedroom.
“He had a phone, a desk and this humongous blueprint machine that took up half my bedroom,” Vince remembers, laughing.
At the time, Mike was selling windows produced by other manufacturers—but he wasn’t happy with their products. So, in 1986, Mike decided to start making his own.
He converted a former Ludlow brewery to his first factory and began manufacturing vinyl windows, introducing a key change to the process—rather than screwing the pieces together, Gilkey Windows began welding them together, preventing the leaks that often developed as competitors’ conventional assembly would start to loosen.
In the years since, the company has expanded in significant ways. In 1994, it moved to its current Sharonville site. Today, Gilkey has 90,000 square feet of manufacturing space and added sales offices in Louisville, Palatine and Chicago Ridge, IL.
There are 150 full-time employees, including a few who have worked for the company for 40 or more years. That includes family—in addition to Vince and Augie, Vince’s sister Debbie Scheidler is Payroll Director, his aunt Teresa Gedeon is HR Director, his uncle Cris Riel is Marketing Director, his cousin Kevin Hillebrand is General Sales Manager and Vince’s 24-year-old son, Matt, is the newest family hire, working on an installation crew. Vince’s mom, Sue, still helps out in the office.
It’s not easy to build that kind of company loyalty in a world where Americans change jobs on average 12 times during their work lives (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Gilkey’s formula for those who show interest and potential? Invest in them with training and opportunities to grow so they can discover what they’re good at.
Of course, the foundation for the family’s success is the windows they make and sell—and always looking for ways to do it better.
About 10 years ago, Gilkey began making fiberglass windows. “They just look better,” Vince says. “We use a laminate to apply color, which doesn’t fade.”
This addition has led to some interesting jobs. Although vinyl windows are not acceptable for use in restoring historic buildings, fiberglass windows are—their much sleeker, stylish designs allow them to look much more like the original windows on older homes.
To date, Gilkey has replaced windows in a historic restaurant in Louisville, a church school in Columbia-Tusculum and at the historic Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter in Chains downtown.
Perhaps the best sales pitch for this local family company can be experienced by merely stepping into the Gilkey Windows Sharonville showroom. Across from rows of samples is a wall of windows that looks onto the factory floor. It sounds like a low hum of activity until one of the windows is opened, allowing the clamor of machinery and workers to pour in, showing off their noise-blocking, insulating ability. Now that’s a sound endorsement.
Gilkey Windows | 3625 Hauck Rd, Sharonville l 513.769.4527 | Gilkey.com