By Linda Schmid
Joe Wozney, Clarence Smieja, and Zig Glaunert had no experience in rafters when they decided to start a rafter company. What they had were entrepreneurial spirits and the common experience of hauling hay to sell in the Dakotas where they saw old barns with intriguing rafters, “Gothic rafters” they called them. They put their heads together to figure out how to make them, and the company was begun.
Happy 60th Anniversary to Starwood Rafters Today
The company thrived. It is now in the hands of Steve Wozney and Corey Wozney, two of Joe’s sons. They still make rafters and trusses including laminated Gothic Arches, I-Lams for single slope applications, gambrel rafters, and mono Lam-Ply for partially open livestock enclosures. Their most popular product is the Lam-Ply Truss, which was developed in the early 70s. Incorporating plywood, glue-lamination and dimensional lumber for strength, these trusses allow the builder to space the trusses farther apart than the norm. Their products are used in agricultural, commercial, and residential construction markets, but agricultural projects are their more prominent market.
In the agricultural market, Wozney said they see a lot of animal enclosure requests, some larger dairy buildings and equestrian arenas, and a barndominium sometimes.
Headquartered in Independence, Wisconsin, the company originally serviced Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and the Dakotas. Today they have spread throughout the Midwest and into the Northeast. Wozney attributes their growth to three key goals: Put out a good product. Price it competitively. Get it to the customer in a timely manner.
Employees
The main challenge the company has faced, aside from the rising costs everyone experienced during the COVID pandemic, is keeping employees. They are doing well because Steve Wozney said, they pay their people well and offer them competitive benefits, so turnover is nil. Further, it may be a cliché, but he said, they think of their employees as family. When you do that, people feel it and they want to come to work.
Just treating your employees like family, however, isn’t enough. Wozney said that when you are hiring, you have to find people who will fit with the employees you have; you don’t want an employee that no one wants to work with. He currently has 15 employees and they are a tight group, and that leads to great teamwork.
One of the marked characteristics of the team is that everyone does their part efficiently without much direction from management.
“Our guys know what needs to be done and they get it done,” Wozney said.
Looking Back
One thing Wozney thinks he and his team could have done differently is to be bolder when they saw an opportunity. If you want to do things, such as expanding your manufacturing abilities, he said, but you feel like the company isn’t quite ready to take it on, so you wait until you have the people and everything else in place before you buy the equipment, you may find that the equipment has gone up greatly in price. In fact, it can go up so much that such an investment will take a very long time to see a return and you find yourself wondering if it’s worth it.
Looking to the Future
Wozney said that builders who have no experience with Lam-Ply are impressed when they find out about it from another builder and often they try it themselves. Starwood Rafters has a great client base with wonderful word-of-mouth he added, so they do very little advertising. He believes that continuing to work with their partners and providing great products and excellent service will help them continue to expand. Further, there are markets that they haven’t penetrated very deeply, such as the barndominium market. Starwood is building future success, one roof at a time. RB
