Vanguard
Vanguard Building Materials Corporation
Not every window-making business in Marathon County was an automatic success. Sometimes the conditions are not quite right for a new company to take off, as was the case in 1969 when Sid Winnig formed the Vanguard Building Corporation.
^ Mr. and Mrs. Winnig meeting Deborah Kerr during a visit to the 20th Century Fox Studios during the filming of "The King and I", (published in WDH, 13 Feb 1956)
Sid Winnig was accurately described as "a Wausau industrialist." After graduating from Marquette University in 1947, he moved to Wausau to manage Marathon Millwork and was part of their transition into a modern window and door company. He had also long been involved with the First National Bank of Wausau, and in 1969 he became the president for a new investment company called Venture Capital, Inc. Although it was based in Delaware (for tax purposes), it was in practice headquartered in Wausau, and Winnig would use it to fund a new venture in Wausau to assemble and distribute window and doors.
Vanguard Building Materials Corporation was established in January of 1969, and for two months they operated out of some rented space in the new Employers Mutual building on Westhill Drive. By March, they had moved into new facilities on Norton Street.
This company was not a manufacturer of windows or doors, but instead it partnered with other manufacturers to assemble and distribute their brands. These included the "Pease Ever-strait Thermal doors," Klein wood patio door and windows, and Malta casement and awning windows.
^ The first newspaper article to feature the Vanguard company, May 29, 1969
Other window manufacturers such as Kolbe & Kolbe had started assembling and distributing the products of other companies, and it is possible that the intention was to eventually follow the same path to manufacturing windows and doors.
But by the fall of 1969, the future of the company was in question. The residential construction business was going through a decline, and interest rates were "oppressively high," and Venture Capital decided it was not worth operating the company at a loss. So it was closed, with the slight possibility of reopening in the following spring if things improved quickly. But though the industry did recover over the course of 1970, it was not quickly enough to revive Vanguard Building Materials.