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The Intelligencer: September 2006
Timberlane shutters uses a bigger facility in Montgomeryville.
Timberlane shutters has taken up residence in a new, 57,000 square foot factory and headquarters facility
in Montgomery Township, a move that gives the fast growing company the room it needs to meet demand for high-end custom shutters.
The new space is nearly triple the size of Timberlane’s former Upper-Gwynedd digs.
“We’ve been out of space for about five years”, said CEO Rick Skidmore.
Skidmore founded Timberlane in 1996 after a brief career as a district manager for MetLife Insurance.
“I got frustrated working for a big company,” Skidmore said.
The Doylestown resident also noticed that shutters on older houses in borough – his included – were in bad shape.
“There were lots of homes with rotted shutters and lots of homes with no shutters at all,” Skidmore said.
He started making his own shutters in his garage workshop, but Skidmore also started talking to builders, who told him there was a need for a custom shutters. He opened shop in Warrington, where he quickly outgrew his space. Timberlane moved to Upper Gwynedd a year later.
The company is growing about 25% to 30% a year, Skidmore says, and has made the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies three times. The company is completely self0funded. Skidmore says he drained his Met Life 401)k) and didn’t take a paycheck for a few years to get his company on its feet. Most profits are reinvested in this operation.
Timberlane has sold custom shutters to Bill and Hillary Clinton, to the White House conference center, and to the Joseph Ambler, Inn., among many others. It also sells to private residences nationwide, and has supplied shutters to homes featured on the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and This Old House TV shows.
Timberlane has gained a reputation in the building industry for quality and service, says Brian Vaughan, principal at Jarrett Vaughan Builders, of Doylestown.
“We buy their products exclusively for the houses we build or the houses we renovate,” Vaughan said. “They’re made so well, the quality they offer is great, the styles they offer are great.”
Timberlane does face stiff competition in the customer-shutter industry but beats its competitors with superior quality and service, Vaughan says.
Skidmore is a self-professed business-process nut. He takes a very active interest in how his factory is organized, in its safety features and n its employees. He includes shop-level workers in discussions about the company’s finances and performance.
“Our employees are very engaged in the business,” Skidmore said.
About 40 of Timberlane’s employee’s work on the shop floor. The company employs about 10 salespeople. The remained 20 work in administration.
Timberlane is a vertically integrated, meaning it handles all aspects of building shutters itself. Raw lumber is sawed into basic shapes and sizes by tools that are machined on site. At subsequent workstations, shutter parts are milled down to exact size, assembled by hand, sanded and, in some cases, finished with primer.
“It’s a little bit of a ballet,” Skidmore said.
The company also sells hardware, included custom-crafted hinges and decorative pieces: “The stuff you can’t find at Home Depot,” Skidmore said.
Hardware sales make up about one-quarter of Timberlane’s business, he says.
The company takes hardware orders online, but all shutter orders are completed with the help of a salesperson trained to talk customers through the measuring process. A typical pair of shutters costs about $275, but once hardware and installation are factored in, the prices reaches about $500, Skidmore said.
Skidmore says Timberlane’s new building gives him the room to expand his offering by adding new styles of shutters and new shutter accessories and extensions. But he has no plans to expand into other types of home products.
“We don’t want to be a jack of all trades and a master of none,” Skidmore said.
He receives frequent calls from companies looking to buy Timberlane, but Skidmore says, selling is “not part of my plan.”
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