Mid Atlantic trying to create a national brand for its vinyl products

by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
May 2007

Why WeatherWise? That’s a question Luke Curtas, CEO of Mid Atlantic Vinyl Products, hopes that potential customers will ask when they shop for vinyl railing, decking, fencing and decorative porch columns. The Fredericksburg-based company rebranded all of its products under the WeatherWise name last year.

“There are a lot of vinyl products out there, but there’s no one nationally recognizable name in the industry that catches people’s eye,” says Curtas, Although the company still has a way to go to obtain a national footprint, it has seen its profile rise steadily as it became one of the top five players in the fledgling vinyl railing market. The company’s revenue grew 182 percent from 2002 to 2005, making it the top manufacturer in the 2007 Fantastic 50. Mid Atlantic Vinyl Products’ revenue comes mostly from selling do-it-yourself kits of porch and deck railing at specialty lumber, siding and roofing supply stores. Curtas expects revenue to grow another 40 percent this year.

The company has developed a strong loyalty among the contracting and remodeling community, says John Hurd, a district manager based in the Norfolk branch of Norandex/Reynolds, a national wholesale distributor of exterior home products based in Macedonia, Ohio. Hurd chose WeatherWise Rail to be his sales district’s exclusive vinyl railing product in 2004.

“It is selling extremely well, and it has been a big part of our own recent growth,” Hurd says. Sales of vinyl railing at the stores in his district, located around the Tidewater area, have jumped about 30 percent annually during the past three years.

Mid Atlantic Vinyl Products, which has 50 employees, tries to differentiate itself in several ways. One is product quality. Curtas says his products exceed engineering codes and his manufacturing process is certified for quality. “We’re evaluated every three months, so an inspector comes in unannounced to check to see if we are doing production the way we say we’re doing it,” says Curtas.
Another important factor for Mid Atlantic Vinyl is its customer service. While many vinyl companies deliver products two to five weeks after order, Mid Atlantic is able to deliver in as little as three days, Curtas says.
He says the company will maintain this type of customer service even as its sales and service territories grow. The company is developing a hub distribution system under which it will locate a distribution center every 250 miles.

Mid Atlantic Vinyl used to ship everything out of Fredericksburg. But last year it opened a second distribution center in Atlanta and recently opened another in Albemarle, N.C. Curtas expects to have still another in Tampa next year. The company also has begun building a 20,000-square-foot shipping warehouse at its main manufacturing site in Fredericksburg.

“We want to keep costs down as much as possible in getting the product to the end user, and freight is the biggest cost, so this way we can get full truckloads of product to our distribution sites and then spread out,” he says. “It also keeps our products closer to the customers, which makes for speedy delivery, too.”

Mid Atlantic Vinyl Products is expanding to other parts of the Deep South. Earlier this year, the company began negotiating with a national sales rep based in Mississippi to sell WeatherWise products to stores in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama. “There’s a big market down there because of all the recent hurricanes,” Curtas explains. “And they actually approached us and asked to take on our entire product line.”

The company also will expand beyond vinyl to include aluminum railing and fencing products this year. The new products will be manufactured in Fredericksburg and Albemarle, N.C.