Company is riding on vinyl railing

by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
July 2006

The first time a salesman introduced Luke Curtas to vinyl, he dismissed the material as “junk.” That opinion didn’t hold, however. Today Curtas and his wife, Kim, own Mid-Atlantic Vinyl Products, a leading supplier of vinyl railing, decking and porch columns.

The Fredericksburg company ranked 34th on the 2006 Fantastic 50, an annual list of Virginia’s fastest-growing companies. Last year, the company’s revenues reached $8 million, a 210 percent jump from the previous year. It opened a distribution center in Atlanta during the year to help meet rising demand.

Vinyl has improved greatly in the last 20 years, Curtas says. “It’s really far superior to wood,” he says. “Our product is at least twice as strong as wood; it has protective compounds in it that keep it from fading, rotting, staining or warping, and there is no maintenance. And unless you get right up on it and know what you’re looking for, you can’t tell if it’s wood or vinyl.”

Curtas knows a little something about wood, too. He started his career helping his father sell louvered windows, and his first profitable business was a fencing company that largely built three- and four-rail paddocks for horse farms.

Initially, Curtas used vinyl as an alternative fencing material but eventually moved into installing vinyl decking. When he couldn’t find suppliers of vinyl deck railing, he began making his own. “We’re very production-oriented here, so we’re really out on the edge in being proactive in the development of the product and in our service,” he says.

The company ships most orders to customers in less than a week and also has pick-up service available for builders and homeowners.

Mid-Atlantic Vinyl Products gets most of its revenue from sales of do-it-yourself kits of deck and porch railing. Last year, the company, which has 40 employees, extended its product line to include decorative porch columns and specialty products such as mailbox posts and arbors.

Curtas projects that sales will top $10 million this year, in part because of a marketing campaign that is rebranding its product line. From now on, all Mid-Atlantic railing, fencing, decking and other materials will be sold under the name WeatherWise. “We’d like one day for the name WeatherWise to be a household name, to really be synonymous with high-quality outdoor vinyl products,” Curtas says.

The company’s long-term plans include opening distribution centers in Florida and Ohio. “We’re trying to first get a foothold everywhere east of the Mississippi and then hopefully we’ll go nationwide,” Curtas says.