Caldwell and Kawneer

Kawneer the premier aluminum storefront and curtain wall system had been distributed in North Carolina by one company with several branches. Market pressures of the early 80's led Kawneer to seek a few additional dealers in North Carolina. I had shown interest in the Kawneer products as early as 1975 but due to their agreements in place I was not able to obtain a dealership. April of 1985 that all changed and Kawneer contacted us to say we had been approved as a Kawneer dealer. This resulted in a much broader product line over our previous suppliers and along with the Kawneer trade mark recognition we were able to increase our market coverage with Kawneer. Partner Pak a full featured estimating package offered to Kawneer dealers became available around 1995 and since I had written my own software I was very interested in this announcement. I reviewed the software almost immediately and visited the Arizona office of DeMchele Group. I met with Don DeMichele and discussed the Partner Pak program and how it differed with the software I was using. It was more full featured and I decided we needed to lease this more improved system. The biggest difference between Partner Pak and the software I wrote was the ability to create CAD elevations of storefront frames and doors from the input to the estimating program. Another feature involved the optimization of stock lengths generated from the same input. Both of these allowed us to become faster in fabrication as well as better in the use of material and quicker to turn around submittal s andorder entry of glass sizes. We no longer needed to wait to build our frames to obtain glass sizes for ordering the glass panels. One advance triggers another often times and in the case of metal optimization we had to upgrade our saw to take advantage of the optimized cut lists, We added an automated stop system that allowed the saw operator to set the cut length without leaving the cutting station. Business was really good through the 90's until around 2007 our sales grew and our jobs were larger and more complex but with the help of Kawneer and other quality vendors we grew and focused on commercial glass. We started in 2005 looking at expanding our market area into the Charlotte area to our south. There we found we could use labor subcontractors and feed them metal materials out of our Lenoir facility ,deliver glass directly from the fabricator to complete jobs outside our normal market area. This also allowed us to grow the business without setting up branch locations which always end up with duplication of staff and expenses. In 2008 Nick Forbing joined to our staff. Nick started in the glass business in his home town but soon went to work for Kawneer as a roving trouble shooter across the Southeast. He moved into management at the regional Charlotte service center where he was working prior to coming to Caldwell Glass. Nick has retained many of his contacts at Kawneer gained in over ten years of working there and has helped us move forward because of his understanding of metal systems and operational policies of Kawneer.