Guardian Industries Corp.

1932–57: BEGINNINGS OF GUARDIAN GLASS AS WINDSHIELD FABRICATOR

1957–68: REVITALIZATION UNDER BILL DAVIDSON

1968–79: GLASS MANUFACTURING AS PUBLIC COMPANY

1980–85: THE EUROPEAN INVASION

1985 FORWARD: TREMENDOUS GROWTH AS A PRIVATE COMPANY

1932–57: BEGINNINGS OF GUARDIAN GLASS AS WINDSHIELD FABRICATOR

In the early 1920s David E. Hokin began supplying windshields to Ford Motor Company by importing Czechoslovakian glass through Canada into Detroit, a route designed to circumvent the heavy duty that the United States imposed on European sheet glass. When Ford started outfitting its Model A cars with laminated glass windshields in 1928, Hokin established a new company, Laminated Glass Manufacturing Company, to produce laminated glass using a process originating in Czechoslovakia. This endeavor enjoyed a good start, but demand for the firm’s windshields plunged when the boom times ended with the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. Hokin was finally forced to liquidate Laminated Glass in early 1932 when Ford stopped buying the firm’s windshields because new technology had made them obsolete.

The company was quickly reorganized in a process initiated by Hokin’s business attorney, David I. Hubar. In February 1932 a Hubar-led group of investors acquired the assets of Laminated Glass, which reemerged as Guardian Glass Company. The name played off the security and protection that the firm’s windshields offered to occupants of vehicles, and this theme was carried over into the company logo, a large G surrounding a knight on a horse. Other key investors at Guardian’s founding included Barney Wetsman and Frank Handler. Previously, Wetsman had successfully owned a clothing store, a construction company, and a theater, while Handler, a cousin of Wetsman, was the owner of a brokerage house in Buffalo, New York. Its main asset a small plant on St. Jean Avenue on Detroit’s lower east side, Guardian Glass had a workforce of about 20 at its founding and was producing fewer than 100 windshields per day; first-year revenues amounted to around $130,000.

By 1936, Hubar and Wetsman had bought out all the other partners except Handler. Eventually, Wetsman bought out Hubar to become Guardian’s largest shareholder, with a 51 percent interest; Handler owned the remaining 49 percent. In the meantime Bert Root, a former executive at Toledo, Ohio, glassmaker Libbey-Owens-Ford Company, had been brought onboard in 1934 to serve as president. Under Root’s guidance, Guardian in 1938 set up a modern plant on West Lafayette Boulevard in Detroit, at a former sign factory. The plant’s new equipment, which included a high-pressure autoclave, raised the quality of Guardian’s products. At this time, in addition to turning out original equipment and replacement windshields for cars, trucks, and buses, Guardian was also producing safety glass for other applications. Gradually, the financial health of the company improved.

Wetsman died in 1940 following a heart attack, which led his brother Frank to join the firm as treasurer. A successful owner of theaters through a partnership, Frank Wetsman initially and reluctantly left Handler in charge of Guardian. The Wetsman family had grown to distrust Handler because in the late 1930s he had been imprisoned for more than three years after being convicted of swindling his brokerage firm customers. Nevertheless, Guardian prospered during World War II producing laminated windshields for military jeeps and trucks as it contributed to the manufacturing efforts that earned Detroit the sobriquet of “Arsenal of Democracy.” The company suffered a blow in 1944 when Root died, and business dropped off in the immediate aftermath of the war.

In the postwar boom, demand for windshields surged as sales of automobiles and school buses skyrocketed. Curved windshields were among the design changes introduced by automakers during this period. In response, Guardian Glass in 1956 purchased a radiator foundry and machine shop on Campbell Avenue in Detroit from U.S. Radiator. The company installed machinery at this new plant for the production of curved laminated windshields, and the site also served as Guardian’s headquarters.

While the firm was thus meeting the needs of its customers and also enjoying high demand for its products, Guardian was simultaneously flirting with bankruptcy. As the Wetsmans had feared, and eventually uncovered, Handler had been engaging in financial improprieties that left the company vulnerable. Frank Wetsman, however, never confronted his cousin about the financial wrongdoings, and he died of a heart attack in the spring of 1956.

COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

At Guardian, our longevity isn’t too surprising. On the contrary, it’s a testament to our ability to adhere to a business style that works.

Make aggressive moves. Choose wisely. Remain flexible. At Guardian, these concepts have driven our success for more than 70 years. Today, 19,000 employees across 19 countries on five continents subscribe to our way of success because it works.

Blending individual responsibility with a results-oriented mindset simply creates a foundation for quick decision making—and nearly unlimited visibility. By decentralizing authority, we combine the collective foresight of our family, and focus it all on growth.

And ultimately, that’s what you’ll find at Guardian’s family of companies. Companies defined by sales, plants, products and careers that have a unique tendency to grow like crazy.

It’s no wonder.

1957–68: REVITALIZATION UNDER BILL DAVIDSON

Fortunately for the company, Wetsman had begun grooming a successor. In 1955 he had brought his oldest nephew, William M. (Bill) Davidson, onboard as treasurer. Born in Detroit in 1922, Davidson was a World War II veteran and an avid athlete who had earned a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Michigan and a law degree from Wayne State University after the war. After briefly working at a private law firm, he moved into the business world where he quickly made a mark by turning around the fortunes of two failed businesses: Frank W. Kerr Company, a pharmaceutical wholesaler, which he purchased in 1951, and Rupp & Bowman, a surgical supply company, bought the following year. As an adjunct to the Kerr business, Davidson partnered with Warren Coville, a local photographer, to form a photo processing firm called ABC Photo, Inc., in 1955.

After his uncle’s death, Davidson sparred with Handler over control of the company. Davidson stopped Handler’s attempts to sell Guardian, and he eventually fired his relative. Davidson then tried to buy out Handler’s interest in the company. A deal was finally reached in 1957 after months of wrangling, with Handler selling his stake for $175,000.

Soon thereafter, Davidson filed to reorganize Guardian under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As the reorganization progressed, Davidson attempted to boost sales by setting up a separate distribution company in 1958. This firm opened a wholesale distribution center in Detroit specializing in replacement windshields. One year later, production began at Guardian Glass’s second laminating plant in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

At the same time, Davidson was seeking to gain a greater share of the original equipment windshield market. Fortune intervened in the form of a Glass Workers Union strike that stopped production at nine U.S. glass plants in late 1958. Using glass supplied by Ford Motor, Guardian stepped in to fabricate windshields for American Motors Corp. (AMC). When the strike finally ended after 18 weeks, Guardian retained the AMC account and continued to supply that automaker for many years to come.

When Guardian emerged from bankruptcy in 1960, Davidson took the unusual step of committing to pay off the company’s creditors in full. In part by pledging personal assets as collateral, Davidson fulfilled this commitment over the next several years. During this period, Guardian Glass grew at a steady if unspectacular rate, eventually reaching sales of $19 million by 1967. Davidson at the same time rapidly expanded his automotive glass distribution business. He set up additional distribution centers in New York, Georgia, Massachusetts, Illinois, Texas, Washington, D.C., Kansas, New Jersey, and California. The two businesses were closely linked: About 70 percent of the windshields produced by Guardian Glass were sold through Davidson’s distribution centers; the remainder went directly to automakers to fulfill original equipment supply contracts.

KEY DATES

1932:: Guardian Glass Company is established as a small windshield fabricator in Detroit.
1957:: William M. (Bill) Davidson gains full control of Guardian and files to reorganize the company under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
1960:: Guardian emerges from bankruptcy; eventually all its creditors are paid in full.
1968:: Davidson consolidates his various business interests, including Guardian Glass and ten automotive glass distribution centers, within the newly constituted Guardian Industries Corp., which is taken public.
1970:: Guardian begins manufacturing glass with the opening of a float glass plant in Carleton, Michigan.
1981:: Company moves into Europe with the opening of a float glass plant in Luxembourg.
1985:: Davidson takes Guardian Industries private through a $302 million leveraged buyout.
1990:: Sales pass the $1 billion mark.
1998:: Guardian acquires significant stake in Builder Marts of America.
2000:: Cameron Ashley Building Products, Inc., is acquired.

1968–79: GLASS MANUFACTURING AS PUBLIC COMPANY

By the mid-1960s, Davidson had grown unsatisfied with the profits his company could make fabricating windshields and with his dependence on the big glass manufacturers. The U.S. glassmaking industry at the time was dominated by an oligarchy consisting of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (which was renamed PPG Industries, Inc., in 1968), Libbey-Owens-Ford (LO-F), and Ford Motor. No company had entered the field in the United States since 1920, when Ford started making glass. At the same time, the industry was in the midst of a revolutionary transition to the float method of manufacturing, which the U.K. firm Pilkington Brothers Limited had introduced in 1959. In this process, molten glass was poured onto one end of a shallow bath of molten tin at about 1,800°F and formed into a ribbon that floated, frictionless and in a controlled atmosphere, down the bath through a temperature gradient falling to about 1,000°F at the other end. At this temperature the ribbon, fire finished, was cool enough to be taken off on rollers without marking the surface. This revolutionary new method of glassmaking produced polished plate glass much more economically by removing the large fixed capital investment in grinding and polishing machinery and by cutting working costs. After it started using the float method, Pilkington began licensing the process to other glass manufacturers. PPG became the first such licensee, in 1962. L-O-F and Ford soon followed suit.

Davidson embarked on a risky strategy to break into this entrenched field. First, on November 7, 1968, he consolidated his various business interests within one new company called Guardian Industries Corp. Included under this corporate umbrella were Guardian Glass, Guardian Photo, Inc. (the renamed ABC Photo), and Davidson’s ten automotive glass distribution centers. This consolidation created a more powerful business that could more easily raise the large amount of capital needed for an entry into glassmaking. Soon after its creation, Guardian Industries held an initial public offering (IPO) of shares on the over-the-counter market. (The stock began trading on the American Stock Exchange in 1969.) Following the IPO, Davidson controlled 45 percent of the company’s stock, other shareholders of the original companies held 29 percent, and the remaining 26 percent was in the hands of public shareholders, including employees.

One of the main reasons for going public was to facilitate acquisitions. Davidson had concluded that a new float plant would produce more glass than Guardian needed for its windshield requirements. He also wanted to diversify outside laminated glass. Tempered glass, which was heat-treated to create a stronger and more break-resistant product than ordinary glass, seemed the best bet as it was used to make both the side and rear windows of vehicles, and Guardian could thus offer automakers a full array of glass products. The tempered glass market also offered entrée into the architectural market as most patio and storm doors were made from tempered glass. In December 1969, then, Guardian Industries via a stock swap acquired Perma-glass, Inc., a tempered glass fabricator based in Millbury, Ohio, that held more than 50 patents in the glass fabricating field and had annual sales of around $11 million. In addition to several U.S. plants in Ohio, California, and Florida, Permaglass also operated a plant in Ontario, Canada, and had majority control of a business in Australia. This marked Guardian’s first foray outside the United States.

While pursuing this acquisition, Guardian was moving ahead with construction of its first float glass plant. Davidson swooped in to hire Edward R. Sczesny (pronounced Sezny) away from Ford and placed him in charge of building the new plant. Sczesny had directed the installation of the Pilkington float glass process at the Detroit automaker. Then, when Pilkington turned down Guardian’s request for a float license, Davidson elected to move forward anyway. Although the U.K. firm threatened Guardian with legal action if it proceeded to build a float plant without a license, Davidson took a calculated gamble. He and his legal advisors concluded that Pilkington risked jeopardizing its entire worldwide licensing program if it sued Guardian and lost.

Construction of the plant began in April 1969. It was located in Carleton, Michigan, just south of Detroit. As construction proceeded, Davidson worked to secure funding for the plant. The eventual $17 million construction cost was a huge amount for a firm the size of Guardian, and it was only after months of discussions with various banks that sufficient funding was secured. In August 1970 production began at the 275,000-square-foot facility, which had an initial capacity of 350 tons of glass per day.

Industry observers expected Pilkington to sue Guardian for violation of its patents, but instead the U.K. company had already reversed course and entered into negotiations with Guardian about a float license. The two sides reached a deal in May 1971. Guardian entered into an ongoing royalty license agreement, but it successfully negotiated lower payments than those of other Pilkington licensees on the grounds that it had received no technical assistance from Pilkington in setting up the plant. This better deal infuriated the entrenched U.S. glassmakers, but they had little recourse. Guardian continued to make royalty payments to Pilkington until 1977, when a final lump-sum payment was negotiated and paid.

Davidson’s huge gamble quickly paid off. The Carleton plant was profitable within seven months of startup, and by 1972 Guardian Industries’ net income was more than three times the level of three years earlier. A major financial restructuring in 1972 vastly improved the company’s balance sheet, and early the following year Guardian’s stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Also in 1973 the installation of a second float line at the Carleton plant more than doubled the plant’s capacity at a cost of $20 million. Company revenues reached the $100 million mark in 1974. In the meantime, Guardian moved into new headquarters in the Detroit suburb of Novi in 1972.

During and in the wake of the severe recession of 1974–75, which hit the automotive industry particularly hard, Guardian shifted more of its attention and resources to architectural glass. In 1974 the company acquired Webster, Massachusetts-based Glass Guard Industries, which produced tempered and insulated glass for the architectural market, and Guardian later began producing window glass for residential construction as well as reflective glass. By the end of the 1970s, the architectural market was responsible for 75 percent of Guardian’s glass sales.

As the heavy weight of glass made long-distance shipping economically unfeasible, Guardian began planning for additional float glass plants around the United States. Its second float plant opened in Kingsburg, California, in 1978 and its third in Corsicana, Texas, in 1980. From its three plants, Guardian was able to capture about 13 percent of the U.S. glassmaking market. Guardian Photo, in the meantime, transformed itself from a regional to a national player by acquiring the photofinishing business of GAF Corporation in 1978 for around $6 million. By purchasing GAF’s 17 photofinishing plants in 13 states, Guardian Photo became one of the top four players in its industry in the United States, with annual revenues of more than $70 million, which represented about 30 percent of Guardian Industries’ overall total.

1980–85: THE EUROPEAN INVASION

In 1979, when total revenues reached $280 million, Guardian was already in the planning stages for another large gamble: an invasion of the European glassmaking market. Before this plan reached fruition, however, the company diversified further in the United States when it began making fiberglass insulation at a plant in Albion, Michigan, in 1980. Prior to launching this venture, Guardian had hired a number of employees away from Johns-Manville Corporation, and the latter firm sued Guardian in 1981 accusing it of duplicating its patented technology for making fiberglass insulation out of glass. Manville won a judgment against Guardian, which after a lengthy battle in the courts was forced to pay Manville $40.6 million in early 1991.

Guardian made its move into Europe through a Luxembourg-based joint venture called Luxguard. The company owned 70 percent of the venture, while Ferdinand Kohn, a local businessman involved in the distribution and fabrication of glass products throughout Europe, held the remaining 30 percent. In November 1981 production began at the new plant, which was situated in Bascharage, Luxembourg, and had a capacity of 500 tons of glass per day. Guardian’s push into Europe shook up the entrenched players there—Pilkington in particular, which filed several lawsuits against Guardian, the first even before the plant was completed. The two companies eventually reached a worldwide out-of-court settlement in 1986, the terms of which were never disclosed.

Neither the lawsuits nor the settlement slowed Guardian’s expansion. In 1984 the company acquired a 48 percent stake in the Spanish glassmaker Villosa, which operated a plant in Llodio, Spain. Guardian installed a 500-ton float line at this plant the following year and then acquired full control of the company in 1986. Back in North America, the company in the early 1980s acquired a number of fabricators of glass products as well as a float glass plant in Floreffe, Pennsylvania. In 1985 Guardian opened a new automotive glass fabrication plant in Auburn, Indiana, which specialized in producing original equipment windshields and side windows for General Motors Corporation.

1985 FORWARD: TREMENDOUS GROWTH AS A PRIVATE COMPANY

From its 1968 IPO to 1984, Guardian increased its revenues from $34.2 million to $543 million. During the same period, earnings had grown at a rate of 21 percent per year, peaking at $39 million. Davidson, however, grew to believe that the company’s stock was undervalued and destined to remain so for some time. He concluded that the time was right to take the company private once again, a move that would also prevent Guardian from falling victim to a hostile takeover while also freeing management from some of the constraints under which public companies must operate. In July 1984, then, Davidson announced his intention to purchase the 57.3 percent of the company he did not already own at $24 per share, well above its level of $15.25 per share before the offer. After the company board approved the $302 million leveraged buyout in January 1985, Davidson completed the transaction one month later.

In the wake of the buyout, Guardian’s debt ballooned from around $150 million to $450 million, and its debt rating was downgraded to “junk” status. Over the next couple of years, Davidson reorganized the firm into four semiautonomous groups—the Glass Group, the Automotive Group, Guardian Photo, and the Insulation Group—and focused mainly on reducing the debt load. In 1986 the insulation operations were expanded through the opening of a new fiberglass plant in Mineral Wells, Mississippi. In May of that year, Guardian’s flagship Carleton plant was hit by an acrimonious strike of United Auto Workers (UAW) members. The company eventually hired strikebreakers to keep the plant operating, and in October, following a controversial ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, both the strikers and the so-called replacement workers were allowed to participate in a decertification vote. As a result of the dual vote of workers and strikers, the UAW was ousted from the plant, and the strike was broken. Guardian’s employee relations reputation was sullied by the events at Carleton.

By mid-1987, the debt reduction program had succeeded in returning Guardian’s debt rating to investment grade status. Not coincidentally, the company announced new growth initiatives at this same time, including the construction of two new float glass plants, each capable of producing 600 tons a day—one in North America, one in Europe. The former was located in Richburg, South Carolina, near Charlotte, and was designed to serve customers in the southeastern United States. Guardian’s third European float plant was sited in Luxembourg at Dudelange, 12 miles from the Bascharage facility. These plants, both of which commenced operations in late 1988, increased Guardian’s glass manufacturing capacity to beyond 5,000 tons per day. They also helped propel the company’s sales past the $1 billion mark in 1990.

Guardian accelerated its growth in the early 1990s, vastly expanding its number of float glass plants and moving into various developing markets. New float plants commenced production in Maturin, Venezuela (1990); Orosháza, Hungary (1991); Nong Khae, Thailand (1992); and Gujarat, India, and Tudela, Spain (1993). Guardian also set up a distribution subsidiary in Japan as part of an attempt to break into that important market, which was protected by restrictive trade barriers. In the meantime, Guardian’s glass operations cast an increasingly large shadow over Guardian Photo. The photofinishing unit had seen its revenues rise to more than $100 million by 1985, but sales then stagnated. The time seemed right to divest this noncore asset, and Guardian Industries sold it to Qualex Inc. in 1991.

Having outgrown its Novi offices, Guardian in 1995 moved into new headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan, north of Detroit. The 55-acre site was adjacent to the Palace of Auburn Hills, a sports arena that Davidson had partially financed. The Detroit Pistons, acquired by Davidson in 1974, played professional basketball at the Palace. Also in 1995, Guardian launched a $500 million expansion program through which it opened new float glass plants in Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia, and Thalheim, Germany, in 1996 and a second plant in Thailand at Rayong in 1997. Distribution centers were also established in Argentina and South Africa in 1997. Several acquisitions of fabricators of glass products, particularly mirrors, in the United States in the early 1990s increased the company’s appetite for raw glass. Guardian therefore boosted its U.S. capacity by building new float plants in DeWitt, Iowa, in 1996, and in Geneva, New York, two years later.

By 1995 revenues from Guardian’s Automotive Group had reached $500 million, or 30 percent of the company total. At this time, automakers were increasingly seeking to contract with suppliers who could deliver entire systems. Guardian therefore moved to transform its Automotive Group from a supplier of automotive glass to one capable of supplying a vehicle’s entire exterior trim and molding system. It achieved this position by acquiring a 70 percent stake in Automotive Molding Company, based in Warren, Michigan, which produced molding, trim, and other exterior vehicle components at four plants in Michigan and Georgia. This $125 million deal was followed by the opening of a new automotive trim plant in Morehead, Kentucky, in 1998. That same year, Guardian took its new automotive strategy international by purchasing Lab. Radio, an automotive manufacturer in Valencia, Spain. This acquisition meshed with Guardian’s 1993 entry into the European automotive glass business through the opening of a plant in Grevenmacher, Luxembourg.

Guardian Fiberglass, which had sales of about $75 million in 1990, expanded in the 1990s by opening new plants in Erin, Ontario, in 1994, and Inwood, West Virginia, two years later. Also in 1998, Guardian Industries took an even greater leap into building products when it acquired a large stake in Builder Marts of America (BMA), a privately held wholesaler of building materials to more than 1,000 lumber and building material retailers across the country. Based in Greenville, South Carolina, BMA had annual sales of $590 million. In 1999 BMA merged with Ace Hardware’s lumber and building materials division to become the nation’s largest wholesale buying and distribution group in the lumber, building materials, and millwork industry. Guardian Fiberglass and BMA were grouped within a newly formed Building Materials Group, which engineered yet another deal in 2000. The group acquired Dallas-based Cameron Ashley Building Products, Inc., for approximately $160 million in cash and the assumption of $177 million in debt. With annual revenues of around $1 billion, Cameron Ashley had a network of more than 160 branches in the United States and Canada from which it distributed roofing, millwork, pool and patio enclosure materials, insulation, siding, and other building products to independent building material dealers, professional builders, large contractors, and mass merchandisers. In 2003 Guardian acquired full control of BMA and then merged its operations with those of Cameron Ashley to form Guardian Building Products Distribution, Inc., a $2 billion distribution unit.

As its building products operations took a rapidly enlarged place with the company fold, Guardian Industries continued its steady expansion of its core glass manufacturing business. In addition to expanding and renovating existing facilities, new float glass plants were opened in Czȩstochowa, Poland, in 2002, and Goole, England, in 2003. Guardian also entered into a joint venture in 2003 to purchase the Egyptian Glass Company, which was operating a float plant outside of Cairo. In 2004 production began at Guardian’s 24th float glass plant, which was located in El Marqués, Mexico. Guardian also took a more aggressive approach toward developing new glass products in the early 21st century, an initiative launched in 2000 with the opening of a 50,000-square-foot science and technology center across the street from the firm’s first float plant in Carleton, Michigan. Among the new products the firm subsequently unveiled were SunGuard, a line of solar control coated glass products designed for commercial buildings; DiamondGuard, a scratch-resistant coating product; and ClimaGuard, touted as the first glass technology offering complete protection from ultraviolet radiation.

By 2006 Guardian Industries’ revenues had reached $5 billion, a remarkable achievement for a company whose sales were a mere $22 million in 1968. Davidson’s bold moves into glass manufacturing and into the markets of Europe and elsewhere overseas had paid off handsomely, and made him a billionaire. In addition, the broadening of the automotive unit and the diversification into building products meant that Guardian was much more than just a glassmaker. As the firm celebrated its 75th anniversary and Davidson’s 50th year at the helm in 2007, the growth initiatives continued. Guardian was in the midst of investing an additional $537 million in major capital expenditures, including a new float plant under construction in Ryazan, Russia. The company had also entered into a joint venture to build another float plant in the United Arab Emirates. The 84-year-old Davidson was also making plans for succession, though he announced no intentions to retire. He planned to keep Guardian Industries family-owned, but he also indicated that employees would own and control a significant portion of the company.

David E. Salamie

PRINCIPAL SUBSIDIARIES

Guardian Automotive Corporation; Guardian Automotive Products, Inc.; Guardian Building Products, Inc.; Guardian Building Products Distribution, Inc.; Guardian Fiberglass, Inc.; Guardian Glass Company; Guardian Industries Canada Corp.; Guardian Building Products Distribution Canada, Inc.; Guardian Industries VP, S de RL de CV (Mexico); Guardian De Argentina S.R.L.; Guardian do Brasil Vidros Planos Ltda. (Brazil); Guardian de Colombia S.A.; Guardian de Venezuela S.A.; Guardian Industries France SAS; Guardian Flachglas GmbH (Germany); Guardian Oroshaza Co. Ltd. (Hungary); Guardian Europe S.A. (Luxembourg); Guardian Luxcoating S.A. (Luxembourg); Guardian Luxguard I S.A. (Luxembourg); Guardian Luxguard II S.A. (Luxembourg); Guardian Automotive E.S.A. (Luxembourg); Guardian Industries Poland Sp.z.o.o.; Guardian Glass España, C.V., S.L. (Spain); Lab. Radio, S.A. (Spain); Guardian Industries UK Ltd.; Saudi Guardian International Float Glass Co., Ltd. (Saudi Arabia); Egyptian Glass Company; Guardian Africa Corp. Ltd. (South Africa); Gujarat Guardian Limited (India); Guardian Japan, Ltd.; Guardian Industries Corp Ltd. (Thailand).

PRINCIPAL COMPETITORS

Nippon Sheet Glass Company, Limited; Compagnie de Saint-Gobain; Asahi Glass Company, Limited; Pilkington Group Limited; PPG Industries, Inc.; Apogee Enterprises, Inc.; Owens Corning Sales, LLC; Vitro, S.A. de C.V.; Johns Manville Corporation; Safelite Group, Inc.

Guardian Industries Corp.

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Guardian Industries Corp.

1932–57: BEGINNINGS OF GUARDIAN GLASS AS WINDSHIELD FABRICATOR

1957–68: REVITALIZATION UNDER BILL DAVIDSON

1968–79: GLASS MANUFACTURING AS PUBLIC COMPANY

1980–85: THE EUROPEAN INVASION

1985 FORWARD: TREMENDOUS GROWTH AS A PRIVATE COMPANY

PRINCIPAL SUBSIDIARIES

PRINCIPAL COMPETITORS

1932–57: BEGINNINGS OF GUARDIAN GLASS AS WINDSHIELD FABRICATOR

COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

At Guardian, our longevity isn’t too surprising. On the contrary, it’s a testament to our ability to adhere to a business style that works.

And ultimately, that’s what you’ll find at Guardian’s family of companies. Companies defined by sales, plants, products and careers that have a unique tendency to grow like crazy.

It’s no wonder.

1957–68: REVITALIZATION UNDER BILL DAVIDSON

KEY DATES

1932:: Guardian Glass Company is established as a small windshield fabricator in Detroit.
1957:: William M. (Bill) Davidson gains full control of Guardian and files to reorganize the company under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
1960:: Guardian emerges from bankruptcy; eventually all its creditors are paid in full.
1968:: Davidson consolidates his various business interests, including Guardian Glass and ten automotive glass distribution centers, within the newly constituted Guardian Industries Corp., which is taken public.
1970:: Guardian begins manufacturing glass with the opening of a float glass plant in Carleton, Michigan.
1981:: Company moves into Europe with the opening of a float glass plant in Luxembourg.
1985:: Davidson takes Guardian Industries private through a $302 million leveraged buyout.
1990:: Sales pass the $1 billion mark.
1998:: Guardian acquires significant stake in Builder Marts of America.
2000:: Cameron Ashley Building Products, Inc., is acquired.