A Relationship for the Long Term
WD Door and Kinzler Corporation continue to expand.
Steve Bouchard and Jeff Myers, owners of WD Door in Ankeny, built a successful business and a retirement strategy on the same principles that made them friends in high school.
“We’re competitors,” says Myers. “That desire to be the best, to keep improving, made us good friends in high school and made us want to be the best in our professional lives, too.”
That drive has paid off over the years, growing the company from a small Ankeny business to a leading garage door company serving customers across the state.
“We were both working for a competitor at the time, but we wanted to have a business of our own. We’d started identifying ways we felt we could care for customers and employees that we weren’t seeing at our previous employers,” Bouchard says.
Myers and Bouchard took over WD Door as part owners of the franchise with Wayne Dalton. A year later, they bought out the business, and they haven’t slowed down since.
“We’ve always approached this as a relationship business,” Myers says. “We don’t want to sell a customer just one door. We want to build a relationship for the long term.”
The pair treated their customers like they would their friends. They asked customers what they wanted, and then the company found ways to meet those needs.
“The key to our growth is that we do what we say we’ll do,” says Myers.
“No one’s perfect,” Bouchard adds, “but we’ve made a point of taking care of our customers, owning our problems and our mistakes. Customers recognize that and respect it.”
Myers and Bouchard have sought employees who have that mindset as well. During the early years, Mike Lohmeier, a third partner in the business, managed the financial aspects while Myers and Bouchard built the relationships. Eventually, the pair bought out his share as well.
“We’ve never recruited from competitors,” Bouchard says. “Our team has grown by word of mouth. And we’ve been very intentional about developing our culture so that every member of our team reflects the way we want to do business.”
The company soon expanded to eastern Iowa with the acquisition of a garage door company in Cedar Rapids. Now, after two decades growing their business, Bouchard and Myers remain hungry to grow, still focusing on building relationships first. That long-term approach also led them to start discussing an exit strategy well before either is ready to retire.
“Our kids are not really interested in taking over,” Myers says, “and that’s fine. We both want our kids to follow the path that’s best for them. But we also didn’t want some big equity firm to take over and not treat our customers or employees the way we’ve always treated them.”
The pair discussed a variety of options, including an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan), but hadn’t settled on a solution. Bouchard and Myers both knew the leadership at Kinzler Corporation from interaction at business events in Ankeny over the years. And they knew Kinzler’s reputation for growth through acquisition.
“We’d seen how Kinzler handled other acquisitions, so I just gave Tanner Kinzler a call and told him where we were,” Bouchard says. “We were at a point with our growth that we felt we needed to make a decision. Continued growth would mean investing in some significant software and infrastructure, but Jeff and I weren’t sure we’d see the return on that investment before we were ready to retire.”
According to Jason Mortvedt of Kinzler, “WD Door is a great fit for us. We’re able to provide a lot of the administrative—the HR, payroll, accounting, marketing, IT tasks—and let them do what they do best, which is being the boots on the ground and continuing to build those customer relationships.”
Not only has the transition been smooth, the move has been, too. The WD Door sales team moved across the road to the Kinzler headquarters building, allowing the WD Door property to better serve the installation and repair teams.
“We stay in our lanes, crossing paths and working together on big decisions,” Myers says. “But Kinzler has been great about letting each of us do our thing.”
Bouchard says, “The Kinzler staff has the same values we have, the same family feel, and our team has been energized by the new opportunities the relationship brings.”
The WD Door acquisition also led to the acquisition of Delden Door, another Des Moines-area garage door company.
“That acquisition was finalized in May, and we’ve phased out the Delden name, bringing their employees and customers under the WD Door name. There’s a learning curve with new systems and business models, but the Delden team already feels like they belong,” says Bouchard.
At the beginning of November, WD Door officially opened its first Nebraska office with a team in Omaha. “We do a lot of work for builders that are expanding in the Omaha area, and this opportunity was right in line with our vision to expand the WD Door name,” says Bouchard. “We couldn’t do what we’re doing now if we weren’t part of the Kinzler Corporation.”
Both Bouchard and Myers say they’d like to see the WD Door brand continue to grow in new markets across the Midwest with long-term employees stepping into leadership and growth opportunities as they arise.
“We want to have the kind of relationship that allows us to leave on good terms with everyone, both employees and partners, whenever that happens,” Myers says.
If their first year as a Kinzler company is any indication, that shouldn’t be a problem. Building relationships is what Bouchard and Myers have been doing all along.