Crown West Realty

Journal of Business

By Mike McLean

Spokane Valley-made product lines to be sold throughout the Northwest. Coeur d’Alene Window Co. is located in the Spokane Business & Industrial Park and initially will employ 10 people.

SPOKANE, WA-McVay Brothers Inc. is getting back into the window-making business, says Mike McVay, the company’s owner and president.

The longtime Spokane Valley supplier and installer of windows, siding, roofing, and gutters planned to start production this week at its new subsidiary, Coeur d’Alene Window Co., McVay says. The new window manufacturing plant is located in 16,000 square feet of leased space in the Spokane Business & Industrial Park, at 3808 N. Sullivan.

McVay Brothers sold its original window manufacturing division to Liberty Lake-based Window Products Inc. in 2004. Window Products later changed its name to Cascade Windows. At the time of the sale, McVay Brothers’ then 30,000-square-foot manufacturing plant, at 1805 E. Trent, employed 62 workers and had annual sales exceeding $10 million.

McVay says he expects Coeur d’Alene Window will start up with 10 employees, and the company will hire additional employees as sales grow. Its products will be marketed throughout the Pacific Northwest and California, he says.

“We’ll sell them through McVay Brothers within 200 miles of here,” McVay says. “Outside of this area, Coeur d’Alene Window will sell to other contractors and remodelers directly.”

McVay Brothers handles its distribution and installation of siding, roofing, gutters, and windows through its sales-and-distribution complex at 11420 E. Montgomery Drive, where the company employs 75 people. The complex includes a 6,400-square-foot, office-and-showroom building, and two other buildings with a combined 16,200 square feet of warehouse space.

McVay Brothers currently sells and installs windows made by Cascade and Pella, Iowa-based Pella Corp., but McVay says McVay Brothers will phase out the Cascade brand and replace it with Coeur d’Alene Window’s products.

Coeur d’Alene Window will manufacture two lines of windows, he says. One line will be sold under the brand Pend Oreille and will be targeted at the new-construction market. The other line, called Coeur d’Alene, will be the company’s premier line and will be targeted at the remodel market.

McVay says he expects Coeur d’Alene Window’s annual revenues will exceed McVay Brothers’ revenues within four years.

He says he chose to name the window company Coeur d’Alene Window, because “I thought it was a good, strong regional name, and we may move the manufacturing facility to Idaho at some point.”

His brother, Mark McVay, former president of McVay Brothers, left the company to take an executive position with Window Products when McVay Brothers sold its original windows division. He returned to McVay Brothers about a year ago and now is the sales director there. McVay Brothers was founded here in 1955 by their father, Harrison McVay Sr., and uncle, Warren McVay.

Chase Breckner, of Crown West Realty LLC, which owns the Spokane Business & Industrial Park, handled Coeur d’Alene Window’s lease.