Pozzi Window Company, a fixture in Bend since the 1970s when the company grew out of Lee Millworks (later the Bend Millworks Corporation), passed through two owners before being acquired in 1992 by Jeld-Wen, a door and window manufacturer with global reach.

Pozzi, in turn, was a good partner to help expand Jeld-Wen’s West Coast business. Jeld-Wen also owns facilities throughout Oregon, allowing Pozzi to leverage nearby resources for timber and manufactured parts.

Bend-based Pozzi has been able to penetrate competitive markets in the Northeast and Southeast because of Jeld-Wen’s wide distribution network. Its products, which are turned around in three weeks from order to shipment, are individually created for commercial and residential customers.

The Bulletin caught up with general manager Tom Takach for an interview.

Briefly, what is the history of Pozzi Windows? Where did the name come from?

The name came from Arthur Pozzi, who bought the company some time in the late 1960s. The company that started on this site was Lee Millworks back in the ’60s and they were a mill. Arthur bought the company in the late ’60s and was producing in the early ’70s Pozzi Windows out of some of the wood parts that he machined here at the mill.

In 1992, Pozzi became part of Jeld-Wen, which distributes globally. What was the size of Pozzi’s market prior to that?

Primarily, prior to Jeld-Wen taking over Pozzi, Pozzi was a West Coast window.

It really didn’t have any market share to speak of east of the Mississippi. And that’s been one of our key focuses since Jeld-Wen took over, to expand market share across the entire country. We do a little bit of exporting, but not a whole lot. It’s primarily to the Caribbean and Japan. But for the most part our sales are all domestic. We’ve done a fantastic job over the last 10 years expanding our market. We’ve got market penetration in essentially all 50 states. And we’ve certainly expanded our presence in the Northeast and Southeast. We have a large customer base in Miami and Boston.

How did your products change, if at all?

Product changes are really a key to our success. We have expanded dramatically the choices and options available to our customers as far as color, sizes, as far as product lines. Obviously we’re constantly working on improving our energy efficiency in windows. Really, what we do from a product development standpoint is offer more choices to our customers. And as we have expanded across the country, obviously people’s needs and desires are pretty different. What people like in New England, people don’t necessarily like in Bend, Ore.

How much did Pozzi depend on the local mills for its wood supply prior to the mills closing? Who supplies to you now?

The mill is still operating here. We’re the first four buildings on the site. Everything else is Bend Millwork Corporation, which is also a division of Jeld-Wen. They supply about 60 percent of our machined wood parts, and every machine part we get is coming from Oregon. Jeld-Wen has another facility down in Klamath Falls, which supplies about 35 percent of our parts.

And then Ponderosa Mouldings, which is in Redmond, and is also another Jeld-Wen company, which supplies just about 4 percent. So that’s about 99 percent. Jeld-Wen is a vertically integrated company, so we buy a significant amount of wood material from right inside of the company.

Pozzi supplied some of the windows that were installed in the Olympic Village in Salt Lake City. What other notable projects has the company worked on?

We do so many commercial projects that are college buildings and lodges. Recently they built an inn at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., which is the largest residence in the country. They built an inn there and we did the windows for that project. We’ve done all kinds of different university jobs. We did the boat house at Boston University in Massachusetts right on the Charles River. Last year we did the Teton Club in Jackson Hole, Wyo., which is a very, very high-end hotel with condos. On the residential side, I won’t name drop, but we’ve done all kinds of actors and actresses and professional sports people.

How much has Pozzi grown in the past five years? What are your expectations for growth in the next five years?

We’ve had substantial growth in the last five years, and obviously our expectations for the future are to continue that growth. We’ve expanded markets throughout the country, and we’ve expanded our market share in those markets. That’s what we’re focused on for the next five years.

Do you see a time when you’re going to push that internationally, or no?

Internationally, import and export, nobody really imports windows. Nobody really exports windows too much. It’s almost cost prohibitive because of the cost of freight to ship it overseas. It’s not like a car where you’ve got a lot of costs built in. And then there is also the handling issue. We’re dealing with products that have glass in them that is susceptible to damage when you put them on a boat for a ride for 5,000 miles.

What is the single greatest factor affecting the market for your product? For example, the health of residential construction, commercial construction, or the price and availability of timber?

Certainly the housing market. The building market residentially and commercially is the single biggest factor. We need a demand for our product. There is no doubt about it. Also, the remodeling market, which continues to grow, especially in the metropolitan areas in the Eastern part of the country.

We continue to see that as a huge opportunity for us. We see our product as equally functional in both new construction and replacement remodeling. …We especially found a niche in historical renovations where there are historical review boards, architectural review boards that require the look of historic windows but with the energy efficiency that products provide today and our product has that architecturally correct appearance to it.