In our last milestone post about important events throughout Progressive Foam’s 20+ year history, we took a look back at how the company got its start in 1992. For this post we will flash forward to 1995, the year that Progressive Foam found a home in Beach City, Ohio.
Prior to 1995, founder Pat Culpepper and a handful of employees were working out a small pole building just south of New Philadelphia, Ohio, making siding insulation for use behind vinyl siding. On December 2nd, 1995, the company moved into the Beach City facility, which at the time was only 36,000 square feet. Culpepper recalls thinking ?What have we done, we’ll never fill all of this space!?
By 2006, Progressive Foam had indeed outgrown the space. The first addition was made to the facility, providing 40,000 additional square feet of operating space. In that same year, Progressive Foam built the first commercial-size machine for laminating siding insulation to vinyl siding. Building the machine took a leap of faith, as Culpepper did not have a single customer committed to buying a laminated insulated vinyl siding at the time.
When the lamination machine first launched, the goal was to have the capability to laminate 200 squares (or 20,000 square feet) of insulated vinyl siding in one day.? Originally Culpepper was told that the goal was impossible. To put that in perspective, today we are now able to laminate 200 squares in just three hours.
In our next milestone post we will cover the official commercial launch of insulated vinyl siding in the marketplace.
