Sunday, May 21, 2017
By Kalea Hall
BOARDMAN
Alex Simon came to Youngstown from Lebanon and started Simon Roofing in the 1900s as a way to provide for his family.
Alex’s successors, his grandsons, say he would be amazed at the state of the company today.
No longer is the focus on residential roofing, but on commercial and manufacturing the products for repair and restoration.
What Alex and his sons, Joseph, Paul, James, John and Samuel taught their successors led them to create a code to crack problems with roofs and help the Simon customers know when the roof needs replaced.
The name of this technology is PreVision.
“It gives exact results,” said James Simon Jr., one of three owners of Simon Roofing. “We actually bring it to the exact year the roof will need replaced.”
Doing this lets customers prepare financially for the cost of the roof replacement.
“I’m sure [our predecessors] would be really excited to see it,” James said.
The predecessors include Alex’s seven children – five sons and two daughters, Minnie and Anne.
James, his brother, Alex Simon, and his cousin Anthony Vross are the third-generation owners. The fourth generation also can be found inside the offices at Simon’s headquarters on Karago Avenue in Boardman.
Simon Roofing employs more than 500 people nationwide, has 66 service centers and 15 branches.
The company is considered an innovator in the industry, and it got that title through a hard-working spirit that has flowed from the start.
“They would work all day,” Vross said of his family.
Tuban Simon, Alex’s wife, would make a full-fledged dinner with meat and potatoes to prepare her husband and sons for a full-day’s work.
“They taught us you are to give a fair day’s work for your wage,” James said. “I think that ingredient was what led the company to grow to this size. I don’t think that could have been done without that work ethic being instilled in [the company].”
The company was conservative in its choosing to expand because of the rough times it had been through. The goal, however, always remained the same: to provide for the customers.
“It was about quality and doing a good job,” Vross said.
James, Alex and Anthony all have roof experience and know the ins and outs of the industry.
In the 1980s, the three took over the company and moved away from residential roofing to focus on commercial roofing.
They realized adding another location outside of the area would be beneficial to continuing the business during off months in Ohio, so they opened a branch in North Carolina.
“North Carolina was big for us,” Vross said.
Then they added a Simon Roofing branch in Florida.
In the 1990s, knowing all they knew about the industry, Vross, James and Alex decided they could create their own supply chain for Simon Roofing.
“We not only provide roofing services for our customers, we also manufacture specific materials for our customers,” James said. “We control the entire supply chain. If there is ever a mistake. It’s on us. We take care of it. We don’t finger point at someone else.”
In 2010, Simon Roofing opened a new 42,000-square-foot manufacturing facility at 276 State St. in Struthers, moving all the manufacturing to a local spot from the previous Cleveland location.
“I think that was one of the goals, to keep the family here,” Vross said.
In the early 2000s, Simon Roofing opened a lab inside its headquarters to test roof samples and decipher the remaining useful life of a roof, and conduct quality control, research and development for its products. The products are partially field- and lab-fabricated.
“We were trying to look at what could we do to extend the roof’s life,” Vross said.
Recently, Simon Roofing introduced CLP membrane, a roof-replacement option designed “to reduce or eliminate the most common failure points found in competing single-ply systems,” according to the company’s website.
The new product will be featured in an episode of “Office Spaces” to air at 5 p.m. June 25 on the Fox Business channel.
The company also recently developed a service tablet to monitor jobs.
“We have hundreds of technicians in the field,” James said. “This software allows us to see their work and the quality of their work all in real time. The software allows us to auto generate reports for our customers.”
Times have changed since founder Alex Simon first decided to get on a roof, but the continued hard work and dedication to quality has led to Simon Roofing’s success.
The dedication to quality is what encouraged Alex’s grandchildren to expand and innovate.
“I think what has really helped us is our ability to constantly educate ourselves,” James said. “You have to keep renewing yourself. It’s the ability to grow the management team’s skill set that has allowed us to prosper.”