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2024 – A year we will not soon forget!

By: Melissa Dillon, SHIELDS® Marketing Manager

 

Wow, it’s been awhile since we’ve posted on our BLOG!! My what a ride 2024 was. Somehow we are already a month through 2025. Time is a thief!

We had several moments in 2024 that will not soon be forgotten. The absolute highlight of the year was being selected in the Top 100 Small Businesses in America by the Chamber of Commerce. It’s called CO-100, which for months we called it C-O 100 and were corrected in D.C. that it is Co, like Co-Op… oops.

The whole event exceeded our expectations beyond belief. We knew it was an honor to be selected amongst the seventy some thousand small businesses that applied across the U.S. We knew the honor was prestigious, but it wasn’t until we got there that we realized just how big it was.

Coming from our small town of Martinsville, Indiana, it’s surreal to see us and compare us to businesses across America. We live and work here, we love what do and we do it with some of the best people in our community. We have a couple employees that live outside our county, but most people have grown up together playing softball, going to church and went to school together. We are a family, and a small one comparatively. It is difficult to see the impact that a bunch of us small town folk have on the rest of the world with our windows.

As we stood there on a roof of one of the tallest buildings in Washington D.C., overlooking the White House, sipping wine in our best dress, we wish we could’ve brought everybody from our SHIELDS team there. They all deserved that honor and we toasted together.

It was a two-day event filled with knowledge, classes, dinners, social gatherings that were all leading up to the final dinner and award ceremony. One business would come out the “winner” of the dinner. If you asked the employees that got together for a viewing party to watch us on TV, we did not win. But oh we won. We were there and OUR team earned that. Big deal? Abso-freakin-lutely.

We returned from D.C., emotionally overwhelmed, but deeply happy and proud to come home to our team to share our experiences. Then we hit the ground running for holiday season and all the joys and challenges that it presents.

Earlier in the year, we finished our last piece of our building puzzle. We call it Building D and it houses our two brand new CNC machines, a corner for marketing and trade show storage, our press brake and some odds and ends.

We took a moment to view a near once-in-a-lifetime full solar eclipse. Which personally, was one of the coolest nature experiences I’ve been apart of.

We produced our first real TV commercial late in 2023 and had a sequel, if you will, in spring of 2024. Our president turned into a cartoon! The commercial has gone viral on a few different social media platforms to the point he feels like he start bringing a sharpie to sign t-shirts and posters. Still waiting for that one person to ask for that! Look for a sequel of his cartoon in 2025!

VIDEO LINK >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxwbvplPGKU

As far as trade shows go, this was an “off” year. We only had the PRI Trade Show right in our back door of Indianapolis. It was a great show. Now we gear up for Utility Expo in October, our second largest show and then ConExpo a year from now, our biggest trade show. Buckle up!

Our engineering team kicked butt! We produced 91 brand new products, just shy of two windows a week. One of the coolest windows we engineered was a window for the Lane Motor Museum. The rear window basically broke the laws of physics. The picture below, yes, there’s actually a window in there. Our team did such a great job that you can hardly tell there’s a window. We’ll share more photos once the car is finished!

We finished the year with a charter bus trip and wonderful dinner at Weber Grill as a whole team, with a little shopping before coming back to the plant.

We thank you all. We sure couldn’t and wouldn’t do this without our wonderful customers and fantastic employees. We added some wonderful new team members, promoted some internal positions and made huge changes in our production to streamline our stock program. And of course, we had some fun along the way.

2025 is going to be the biggest year yet. We have a huge surprise for you hopefully this summer that could really be a game changer in the heavy equipment world. Stay tuned!

 

By |2025-01-29T16:32:16+00:00January 29th, 2025|About SHIELDS®, Education, Uncategorized|0 Comments
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THIS IS SHIELDS® Windshields: Creating solutions for businesses, big and small

What does it take to be the best? With 2023 being a record-setting year, SHIELDS® Windshields has proven its vision and core values are continuing to push the company in the right direction – and 2024 has the potential to be even better.

It starts with having a great product that serves more than one purpose. Safety is always a huge benefit, but not to be underestimated is the financial impact of keeping machines in operation and reducing downtime.

This is the third in a series of conversations hosted by Tim Surber about how the business took shape and grew over the past four and a half decades. Second-generation family member and President, Brad Shields, sat down with his daughter, Director Alyxa McKee, during a podcast where they discuss the company’s year and outlook.

https://www.shieldswindshields.blog/this-is-shields-windshields-how-it-all-began/

The big reveal

After receiving form-fit-function approval, SHIELDS® recently rolled out a new window for the Wirtgen Reclaimer. (It’s pronounced “Virtgen”) The company is excited about offering both the door and windshield for this incredible machine.

President Brad Shields explains the importance of it.

“It’s an amazing machine. Everyone’s seen it but you have no idea what it does. It looks like something from the Star Wars movies. It’s really large. It basically drives on the old road and chews it up, sifts through it and spits it out. Some of it is reusable material, so it’s almost like recycling.

“They’re almost like the cartoon world, the Jetson world, where you’d see it chopped up and the road laid right down. It’s amazing and an amazing machine.”

The Reclaimer will benefit greatly from having windows that can stand up to the rigors of working on the road.

The Wirtgen Reclaimer

https://www.wirtgen-group.com/ocs/en-us/wirtgen/wr-250i-88-p/

The benefit of a SHIELDS® window

Safety is always a prominent concern for every window the company produces, but it’s not the only one. Brad explained the different considerations of having a work stoppage and why SHIELDS® puts its windows on machines that aren’t necessitated because of safety.

“Any time glass breaks, there’s a potential for something bad to happen to the operator or someone nearby. But that’s not the one driving this – it’s the harmonics of vibration of this machine.

“But the glass is going to break. It could break on the way to the job site. You’re going to get all kinds of fragments coming up hitting it. Not enough to need a forestry package, but when that window breaks, that machine is done until it gets a replacement – and you’re replacing it on the site. You’re not pulling that thing back to the shop.”

Production has now stopped, and everyone sits there, waiting to get back to work. Expenses mount while deadlines are compromised – and that’s the SHIELDS® focus – to keep you safe and on time.

“Safety is first and we want to keep you on time. We also want better performance. There’s a lot more to it than just ‘this doesn’t break’,” Brad said.

This window is now available for purchase in the company’s growing list of offerings.

How to buy: https://www.shieldswindshields.store/

SHIELDS® has record-setting year

Because of the industry taking note of the benefits of a SHIELDS® window, the company enjoyed a record-setting year.

Director of Operations, Alyx McKee, reviewed the highlights.

“Based on your (Brad’s) tracking, we had eight record months. October was the best month in the company’s history – in sales, as well as volume. None of that usually happens within the same month. So, incredible. Our growth has been tremendous.

“There’s a lot of records, a lot of growth, a lot of change – an exhausting year. But we’re just getting started – and I had a baby in the middle of all that.

“One of the bigger things I was pumped about was that we shipped 20,244 parts last year, which was an eight percent increase in our throughput from the previous year. Our growth has been tremendous,” Alyx shared.

Brad concurred.

“As I mentioned at the company holiday dinner, my proudest thing about that is more than 20,000 operators are staying on time and going home safe – and that’s 20,000 minimum.

“It’s the start of the impact that we can be an integral partner in the world of construction. To not only help them stay safe but stay on time and be a better business.”

https://www.shieldswindshields.blog/this-is-shields-windshields-building-within-the-framework-of-community/

SHIELDS® Creating solutions

With the increase in exposure, customers are finding out just how good the windows really are, and they perform as advertised.

In addition to a good marketing plan and business strategy, word of mouth is still one of the best strategies for growth, and SHIELDS® has seen its profile increase within the business community as customers test out the company’s products and share about their experiences.

With an expanded reach has come increased opportunities. SHIELDS® growth as a company has come in both the window market, as well as businesses finding uses for polycarbonate with SUPERCOAT™.  The company’s market share has increased dramatically in both areas.

But the goal moving forward is still the same.

Win the window world.

Brad shared his vision for what the company is looking for in 2024 and beyond.

“I’m not competing against the polycarbonate market. I’m not badmouthing anyone else making it. But they don’t do what we do. They certainly don’t do it how we do it.

“I’m after the window world; I’m not after looking to make the next cheapest widget. I’m not trying to do something that’s a quick sale in the sense of let’s just get it done. No, these are solutions, and that’s what we want.”

SHIELDS

SHIELDS has record-setting year

A place for the individual contractor

Dominating the market involves more than appealing to big businesses. It means keeping the individual contractor in mind as well.

Brad’s passion continues to be to meet the needs of every sized business.

“I’m romantically still attached more to our individual’s retail, the men and women that work every day. I’d like to take my truck (which is the baddest ass truck on the planet!) and go door-to-door to self-contractors. I still like walking up to construction sites and talking to the workers and seeing their reaction to our windows.”

https://www.shieldswindshields.blog/we-found-a-fraud-website/

Values driving the business, record-setting pace

The company’s multi-faceted approach to becoming the leader in formed and post-coated polycarbonate will also happen because of the vision guiding the process.

Alyx is excited about the SHIELDS® team embodying the company’s mission statement and core values.

“It is our core values that we embody that will empower us to become the world leader.”

Integrity.

Innovation.

Intention.

Those words will be unpacked in days to come, but are the key ingredients to the future of the company’s mission and goals.

The bottom line for SHIELDS®

Brad sums up the business in a nutshell, “If you don’t have the best product, everything else you do is a waste of time. If you have the best product, your marketing is not done, but it’s there.

Alyx concurred.

“We educate, we don’t sell. It goes hand in hand. There is no scheme.”

Contact information

To learn more about shields and our commitment to windshields with performance proven toughness, visit shieldswindshields.com.

For any inquiries or to explore our range of products, call 1-800-554-7527, text us at 765-913-8121 or email info@shieldswindshields.com.

#polycarbonate #SHIELDS #windshield #heavyequipment #skidsteer #excavator #Wirtgen #Volvo #innovation #integrity #intention #quality

By |2024-08-14T19:44:13+00:00August 14th, 2024|Uncategorized|0 Comments
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SUPERCOAT™ What Makes Us Different

SHIELDS® people, today we are going to dig into a part of our business that sets us apart from our competition. Our proprietary SUPERCOAT™ is the hard coating that we add to our polycarbonate products. This coating gives you a windshield with a scratch-resistant surface that is abrasion resistant to steel wool! So, you get the perfect OEM fit and function with the best scratch resistance, but how? Let’s dig into our SHIELDS® SUPERCOAT™ and talk in terms of candy!

Yes, candy! To explain how we have a hard coating on our products with the perfect form we like to use a 3 Musketeers candy bar as an example. When you buy a new 3 Musketeers candy bar you have a flat bar with hard chocolate all over it. What happens to the chocolate when you bend the candy bar, it cracks and breaks, right? That is what happens when you try to form and bend polycarbonate with the coating on it. Many of our competitors know this so they use a coating that is softer, not hard chocolate. They can then bend the candy bar without the coating cracking. That is okay, but the scratch resistance is not nearly as good.

 

That is when we realized there is a better way to handle a candy bar. We don’t accept not having both the best coating and the perfect form, so we do not compromise. To get this we take our candy bar and shape the nougat into the perfect form first! Then we bring in the chocolate and add it to the nougat. You end up with the best of both, our SUPERCOAT™ and the advantage of SHIELDS® form, fit, and function! If our windshields were a candy bar, they would be the tastiest and the coolest looking in our opinion.

That is a quick take on our hard coating we have a video demonstration of this on our Instagram page. You can also learn more about what we do on our other posts like, how polycarbonate is better than glass. But, don’t just take our word for it, check it out for yourself, and try a SHIELDS® replacement windshield! You can find our entire retail line here and order quickly and easily online. 

Until next time,

SHIELDS® Team.

 

By |2020-08-24T18:00:22+00:00August 24th, 2020|Education, product properties|6 Comments
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Polycarbonate Guages & Why They Are Important

SHIELDS® people, I want to break down polycarbonate gauges and explain why it is important to know what thickness you are ordering your SHIELDS® replacement window and why!

One of the main reasons to go from glass to polycarbonate (AKA Lexan, Safety glass, etc – if the names are confusing read this post) is because polycarbonate is 260X stronger than glass! Glass is just going to break, it is not “if” but “when”. Maybe a bias statement, but we have not been proven wrong yet. If you are new to SHIELDS® it is fair to warn you, we are confident in what we do here, it is our passion!

Now that you are aware of our confidence let’s dive into today’s topic. We offer three gauges for each of our products, 1/4″, 3/8″, and 1/2″. When replacing glass this is a serious choice. Talking to our customers, we let you order whichever gauge you desire; however, we strive to ask as questions that can help lead you to the safest decision. Over the phone, it might come across as an “upsell”. That is not the goal, I assure you. We want YOU to be the safe and sometimes that means suggesting that you need the 1/2″ gauge. I may be jumping ahead, let’s go through each gauge of polycarbonate and what its’ suggested use may be.

1/4″ Replacement Windows

Let’s begin with 1/4″. Quater inch polycarbonate is the simplest to understand. The general explanation we use is this: If you are using 1/4″ glass and are fine, then our 1/4″ poly will be perfect.  You will have use of the same hardware, and your wipers will work great. Our 1/4″ gauge windows and doors replace glass great for most applications BUT there are circumstances where you might want a heavier gauge. A note for anyone dealing with cars or racing, this does not necessarily pertain to your applications. For questions about racing and cars, give us a call!

3/8″ Replacement Windows

Okay, onto our middle thickness, 3/8″. This gauge is one we suggest when your application involves any of the following but not limited to: GRASS MOWING, GENERAL CONTRACTING, AND MATERIAL HANDLING. To be as clear as we can be 3/8″ is NOT suggested for demolition, skid steer loader brush clearing, or wood processors. If you think you might someday do any of these you will want to get a heavier gauge. We have come across people getting a 3/8″ door or window and a year later decide to do some brush clearing. If this is you, you will want to upgrade thicknesses purely for safety reasons. We might sound like the cup is half full; however, you never know what is hiding in that brush! We are the plastic people, have a little faith in us, we promise your safety is at the top of our list.

1/2″ Replacement Windows

That leads us to our final gauge, our 1/2″ thick polycarbonate. This is the gauge when someone is uncertain or your work includes, but not limited to the following: DEMOLITION, SKID-STEER FORESTRY APPLICATION, GROUND CLEARING, BRUSH CUTTING, WOOD PROCESSORS, OR TREE SHEARS. This is a short list to help you understand that our 1/2″ polycarbonate is the safest choice. There are more applications that would apply. When ordering over the phone we ask that you share your application with us as we want to ensure you are ordering the appropriate polycarbonate replacement window.

We love it when customer call; however, we do have an online store. This is hands-off for you. Like other online stores, you can select what you want, put your info in and presto, you ordered your SHIELDS® polycarbonate replacement window! (This is for heavy equipment only, sorry car people, be patient yours is coming!)We are proud of our store; however, this puts the responsibility in YOUR hands as the customer! It is your choice on what you order. Therefore, if you have questions about gauges, I hope I have answered them and we are always here to answer your questions.

Stay safe out there, SHIELDS® people!

1-800-554-7527

www.shieldswindshields.com

By |2020-08-07T11:30:49+00:00August 7th, 2020|About SHIELDS®, Education, Heavy Equipment|0 Comments
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