Glenny Glass is still growing after 157 years
The glass business has changed considerably since William Glenny started Glenny Glass in 1851. Building contractors and homeowners today require glass that can help keep them cool in the summer and warm in the winter, is shatter-resistant, safe and architecturally attractive.
To take the basics of glass and make it meet the growing demands of contractors demands innovation and technology, and that’s why Glenny Glass is still expanding after 157 years in business.
When its growth required a larger facility and new equipment, the company worked with Huntington Bank’s Connie Condo and Mike Crowe of the Horizon Certified Development Co. to borrow nearly $4 million for a new building and a high-convection tempering furnace, an expensive, but key piece of equipment needed to heat-strengthen glass and make it safer.
Glenny is now in a 48,000 square foot building in Milford, nearly double the size of its former headquarters and plant. The facility is designed specifically for its needs, improving work flow and productivity. Glenny President Braxton Smith says his partnership with HCDC enabled the expansion. “It opens the doors for credit-worthiness for businesses like us,” he says. “Banks will more readily offer funds to companies like us because HCDC takes a second position on the loan.”
Since Smith, along with his father, bought the business in 1989, it’s grown from less than $2 million in sales to $10 million, and from 13 employees to 38. In addition to being a source of small-business financing, the Small Business Administration 504 loan program is “a vehicle for job growth in the community,” Smith says. Glenny Glass has added 12 employees just since it moved into the new space at the start of 2007.
The SBA lending programs offer low, fixed-rate financing for small businesses that create or retain jobs and help improve or stabilize the local economy.
Promoting growth at Glenny Glass is an example of how the loan officers at HCDC work in partnership with banks to find financing solutions that help businesses succeed. For more information about financing programs offered by SBA through the Hamilton County Development Co., please contact HCDC’s Mike Crowe at 513-631-8292, or by e-mail at mcrowe@hcdc.com.
