You might have seen one of Gilkey Window Company’s TV commercials where founder Mike Gilkey is surrounded by his little 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 back in high school. “I cleaned the bathrooms and picked up cigarette butts,” he smiles. Eventually, he graduated to make screens and then went fulltime 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, and then for a large remodeling company, Mike started his own remodeling business in 1978. Back then, he was 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 of 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 focus on windows and start making his own.
He converted a former Ludlow brewery into 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. In addition to Vince and Augie, several long-time Gilkey employees are also family: Vince’s sister Debbie Scheidler is the payroll director, his aunt Teresa Gedeon is the HR director, his uncle Cris Riel is the 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 sleeker, stylish designs make them look more like original windows, especially in 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 in Downtown Cincinnati.
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 long wall of windows that looks down onto the factory floor. It sounds like a low hum of activity until you open one of the windows, allowing the clamor of machinery and workers to pour in, showing off their noise-blocking, insulating ability. Now that’s a sound endorsement. Gilkey.com
“I wasn’t afraid of starting my own business because my dad and my uncles had done the same.” –Mike
“From a young age, I knew I wanted to be in the family business.”– Vince