In the News

Security Roofing built on father's principles

After fixing family's roof in 1958, he was given $10,000 to start business

 

By Amanda Lauer

The Buisness News

alauer@thebusinessnewsonline.com


The unique start of Security Roofing says a lot about this family-owned business. The principles the company was founded on 50 years ago are still the cornerstone of this business today.

Reid Ribble, president of The Ribble Group, Inc., based in Kaukauna, said the business started in 1958 when his father, Ralph, was a
salesman for another roofing company.

“They did a roofing project on a home for an elderly couple, and for whatever reasons, that roof didn’t work out right,” Ribble said.

“The contractor my father worked for was refusing to take care of it. So, my father, with his own money, went over there on nights and weekends and replaced the roof for this family. When he was done, they gave him an envelope and said, ‘We just wanted to give you something because we appreciate what you did here.’ My dad left and in that envelope was a check for $10,000.”

Ribble said his father didn’t feel he could accept their generous gift, but the couple told him, “We felt so good about what you did, we felt you should have your own roofing company. So, we wanted to give you some seed money to get it started. In fact, we felt so secure with
you; we think you should call it Security Roofing.” 

That was the beginning of Security Roofing & Siding.

“In 1962, my father paid that family back all their money with interest,” Ribble said. “We tell that story often because the only way to differentiate ourselves is with our story. What is the core value that you run your company by? We’re going to operate with as high a level of integrity as we possibly can. We’re going to try and treat people as fairly as we can and try to live up to the standard my father set when he started the whole thing.”

 Ribble, the youngest of eight children, was encouraged by his father to join the company after attending only one year of college because, at the time, none of his brothers wanted to. His brother Rick eventually came on board and was his partner for 20 years.

At that point, the company was fairly small and based out of a converted barn on the elder Ribble’s property in Menasha.

“He had a handful of guys that worked for him,” Reid Ribble said. “When I joined the company in 1975, I was given the job of studying commercial roofing and developing a commercial roofing division within our company.”

By the time his father retired in 1980, the commercial division dwarfed the residential division. “As time went on, the only residential roofing work we were doing was for paper mill presidents who were customers of ours,” Ribble said.

In 1988, the partners purchased the assets of Luebke Roofing in Appleton. “I still own that company today,” Ribble said. “We now divide our responsibilities within the company. Luebke Roofing does all our residential roofing work and Security Roofing (the name was changed in 1992 when they got out of the siding business) does all of our commercial and industrial roofing work.”

Wal-Mart is one Security’s largest customers and the company has done roofs on 27 paper mills throughout the state and 100 churches in this state and beyond.

Today, 65 percent of the company’s annual revenue is in commercial and industrial roofing and 35 percent is in residential. Throughout the year they have 45 people working for them, but in the summer that number can grow as high as 65 or 70.

“When I took over the company in 1980, our annual revenues were about $450,000 per year,” Ribble said. “Today, they’re $5 million. My nephew Troy Ribble is a minority stock holder. At some point, it’s our intention to pass the business onto him. He would be the third generation of our family to own the company and run it.”

The Ribble Group also operates an architectural sheet metal company operating under the Security Roofing name and the largest gutter protection company in Wisconsin under the Luebke Roofing name. Their product is called Gutter Topper.

Asphalt has been the standard in the roofing industry for years, but Ribble believes that is about to change.

“I think there will be almost a revolutionary change in the roofing business in the next five years just because everything is going green,” Ribble said. “Everything will be recyclable. The demand for oil is high and anything that can be done to reduce the amount of asphalt — it’s a 100 percent byproduct of oil — is going to happen, so roofing materials made out of recycled plastic, rubber, and metal are growing at very rapid rates,” Ribble said. His company is embracing these changes and he’s been actively investigating the green approach to roofing. They offer several different green systems already.

“America’s roofs are going to become energy producers rather than energy wasters. You’re going to see roofs utilized in both wind and photo voltaic energy as far as generating electricity,” Ribble said. Blacktop parking lots and dark roof surfaces can raise the temperature of an inner city by four degrees. By converting those roofs to be reflective you can reduce the temperature of the air surrounding those buildings. You’re seeing more demand for vegetated roofs — roofs that have gardens on them to help manage water runoff and help clean the air around them.”

An avid fan of Habitat for Humanity, Ribble has donated labor and/or materials to more than 30 Habitat homes through the years and has made a commitment to do five Habitat homes this year. “Our company is a member of the Roofing Alliance for Progress, which is the National Roofing Foundation’s big endowment. I’ll be president of the Roofing Alliance for Progress in 2009.”

Ribble said that owning his own company and being in the roofing business has been hugely rewarding on many different levels.

“First of all, the people I work with — I’ve got a lot of people who work at my company who have been there years and years,” he said. “Two years ago, I was honored by the roofing industry and was asked to be president of the National Roofing Contractors Association, the oldest trade association in the U. S.,” Ribble said. “Plus I really enjoy my work. I like what I do. I enjoy my customers and the people that we’ve done work for. It’s a really good job.”

 

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