How Vortex Doors is capitalizing on recent successes by expanding its footprint across the US
Vortex Doors was founded in 1937 in Los Angeles, beginning its journey as LASSCO and specializing in door repairs and installations. It has been on the road to success ever since – Kristin Slyker, CEO, joins Construction Today to tell us more. We start with some company history: “The business began doing more metalwork during WWII, and the demand for gate and door services quickly became apparent,” she begins. LASSCO built blast doors for bomb shelters and hangar doors for Air Force bases, and then post war it evolved its services further, adding new door options, opening Service Centers and continuing to expand. There were even name changes along the way to becoming the Vortex of today. “From our humble beginnings in 1937, our philosophy has always been to provide each customer with a superior experience in door, gate, and dock equipment repair,” Kristin emphasizes. “This was critically important to our founder, Frank E. Everett, and his wife, Betty. Today, our leadership team continues to strive to achieve our company mission to delight our customers through unsurpassed service, superior quality, fast response, and safety excellence.”
Kristin then expands on the full range of products and services that Vortex Doors offers: “The business provides repair and replacement services for a wide range of building openings, from industrial roll-up doors, commercial storefronts and glass, security doors and security solutions such as gates and advanced access control systems, to loading doors and docks, and hangar door repair. We also service roof hatches and drive-through windows. Finally, we provide both fire inspection and remediation services as well as preventative maintenance. As a repair company, our attitude is that we want to fix whatever issue our customer may face. This means that we must find creative solutions, and every project can be unique.”
Focus on learning
To capitalize on its recent successes, Vortex Doors is expanding significantly. Kristin explains the approach: “We made five acquisitions last year that were all geared toward the expansion of our national capacity to provide services to customers. We acquired in growing markets for the company, where we already had significant customer demand. We also had the intention of adding trained personnel to our growing team of over 600 highly qualified door installation and repair technicians.
“Our vision is to be recognized as America’s highest-quality and most customer-centric commercial and industrial door services company. We want to provide same-day service to our customers when they need us. Achieving this means being positioned locally to them. To achieve this, we will continue to expand our footprint as well as the breadth of services that we can provide to meet their needs.
“Last year, for example, the company added several locations in Florida, including Orlando, Miami, Tampa, and Tallahassee. We are continuing to hire and expand our service capabilities in these cities, all of which have a large demand for customer-centric door repair services. To support our East Coast operations, which have grown since 2023, we have added a second training center in Fort Worth, Texas, and are leveraging our national support network and traveling trainer program to further develop our people in these cities.
“The program offers a curriculum of courses based on job role. Technicians have the opportunity to learn via a set of over a dozen classes, which progress from being a field apprentice to taking intermediate-level courses and finally to receiving advanced certifications such as Certified Trainer. We also offer industry certifications and sales training. Our front office and home office personnel have the opportunity for online and in-person learning. We continue to further develop our curricula to serve all roles and are currently working on developing training to support internal promotions.”
Delightful, dedicated & dynamic
Kristin then goes on to explain how the company manages to maintain such a low staff turnover rate: “We are very proud to have been recognized as a 2024 Most
Loved Workplace award recipient, appearing in Newsweek. It is such a meaningful recognition of the attention that we pay to ensuring that Vortex Doors is a place where our people can find career opportunities, not only financially but in the form of promotions, training and skills development, as well as mentorship. Safety is also a cornerstone of everything that we do, and we want everyone to go home safe every day. Each of us wants to have a place to come to work where we feel safe, valued, understood, and recognized, and it is our daily mission to ensure we maintain that experience for all of our employees.
“As a result of this approach, Vortex Doors creates a family feel for our employees. Our entire team stays focused on our values of being delightful, dedicated, and dynamic in order to make this happen. We believe that our people are one of our biggest assets and the driving force behind making Vortex Doors a pleasure to work with. I am exceptionally proud to lead a team of so many individuals who care about their customers deeply, are humble in their approach to service, and who give their all each and every day.”
Kristin then looks to the future, outlining the company’s ambitions for the coming years: “We will continue our expansion efforts in 2025. In the past three years, we have nearly doubled in size and now have 59 US based service centers throughout the country. We will continue to invest in ways to make it easier and more satisfying for our customers to do business with us, with a strong focus on customer experience.
“We will also continue to improve our newly deployed field service systems to ensure that they are highly efficient and review our processes to ensure that they are lean. We are also focused on ensuring that we communicate effectively with our customers based on their business needs. Every year, we focus on top initiatives to make Vortex Doors the best place to work, and we will continue to do this, focusing on those things that our employees have asked us for.
“In the longer term, we want to be known for being the highest-quality, most customer-centric door services company in the US. Historically, we have been known on the West Coast, especially in the state of California, and have a sincere desire to expand and serve our amazing customers on a national level. We will continue to expand the line of services that we offer. Today, we are 1000 employees strong and expect to continue to grow our capability to serve exponentially through training, internal promotion, and development programs.”