Broadway Glass Honored As Long Beach Best Again In 2018

Broadway Glass is once again honored to be listed among Long Beach’s best in the Press Telegram Reader’s Choice Awards in 2018.  This is the fourth time we’ve gotten this honor in recent years, winning favorite in 2014 and 2016 and best in 2015 and 2018.

lbBest2We can’t thank the readers and the Press Telegram enough for choosing our company among Long Beach’s best, and we are proud to have served Long Beach and the surrounding communities for over 60 years.

We’re dedicated to continue our decades of service and commitment to customers in Long Beach and throughout Southern California.  Treating our customers, as we like to be treated, is the key to our continued success. While maintaining the strong roots from which we were initially based to deliver “a good price with better service” to our customers, word of mouth remains our most effective form of advertising.

Broadway Glass & Mirror, Inc. Celebrating 60 Years In Business

(Photograph by the Business Journal’s Evan Patrick Kelly)

Original Article from Long Beach Business Journal

Broadway Glass & Mirror Inc. is celebrating its 60th anniversary today, September 1. The business, known for lighting up Broadway at night with its classic sign, was purchased by owner Ron DeWolf’s grandparents in 1955. DeWolf (pictured) started working at the family business about 35 years ago to help out his family, and never left. In 2008, he purchased his sister’s share in the business to become sole owner. Since then, DeWolf acquired a San Pedro business, Mac’s Glass, and opened a new headquarters in Westside Long Beach. While the business originally focused on glass replacement for residences and autos, over time it grew to include large commercial projects. The diversity of projects Broadway Glass & Mirror is able to accommodate is part of the reason it has been successful, DeWolf told the Business Journal. “Being able to serve all facets of the industry . . . has helped us stay in business as long as we have,” he said. Customers range from local residents looking to replace glass in a picture frame to the Long Beachbased national health care provider Molina Healthcare, he noted. A recent local project was installing glass for the Gelson’s supermarket near Belmont Shore. “Our biggest thing we believe in, and feel is one of the reasons we have been able to endure for 60 years, is that . . . we really do try to put our customers first,” DeWolf said. Broadway Glass & Mirror’s showroom and retail store is located at 2523 E. Broadway. Call 562/434-8405 for more information.

Broadway Glass has A Clear Vision

Original article found on ocregister.com

Broadway Glass and Mirror Photo By Jeff Gritchen, OC Register Staff Photographer

Broadway Glass & Mirror isn’t the biggest glass installer in the area, but it has become one of the larger diversified businesses that divides its revenue between commercial and residential streams.

Owner Ron DeWolf bought Broadway Glass, which has been in business since 1954, from his sister in 2008 after they inherited it 14 years earlier from their grandparents, James and Verta DeWolf.

Since the Great Recession, Ron DeWolf has invested heavily in the tiny glass and mirror shop that his grandparents had made a brand-name fixture for decades on Broadway. He has stepped up bidding on commercial jobs, in addition to keeping true to the bread-and-butter business of cutting glass for walk-in customers for items such as picture frames and windows.

“We aggressively looked for business rather than wait for it to come to us,” DeWolf said.

It’s not uncommon to see Broadway Glass hanging scaffolding outside of some high-rise buildings downtown to replace safety-glass windows. For instance, just a week ago, Broadway added several huge window panels on the 15th floor of 300 Oceangate, where Molina Healthcare Inc. is adding an event hall. The windows extend from floor to ceiling, giving an unobstructed scenic view of roughly two-thirds of the floor to downtown Long Beach and the twin seaports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

Some of its biggest jobs have included installation of windows at a fire station in Hollywood and 550 shower enclosures at the swanky W Hotel in Hollywood.

It also has added windows at the Long Beach Convention Center, Hyatt Regency, Los Alamitos Elementary School, Long Beach Senior Arts Colony on East Anaheim Street and several high-rise residential towers in downtown Long Beach.

At the moment, DeWolf is juggling an expansion of the business to West Long Beach and San Pedro and building up more commercial work simultaneously. He hired a president to help run operations from 2010 to July and free the company to more aggressively expand through acquisitions. DeWolf pulled back the reins on expansion, shedding the president as he cautiously reevaluated the pace of growth.

“It was more than I expected,” said DeWolf, who said he took on more than he could handle.

In 2012, DeWolf acquired the assets of bankrupt-Mac’s Glass & Mirror at 1044 S. Gaffey St. in San Pedro and renamed the business Mac’s Glass Inc.

He also began leasing a 7,500-square-foot warehouse at 2001 W. 16th St. in Long Beach, where he plans to move Broadway’s headquarters as well as keep his fleet of vehicles for hauling plate glass. He already has carved out offices in the building in the industrial neighborhood, where he’ll open the main headquarters in a month or two, he said.

The retail shop on Broadway will remain. There are no plans to move that long-time fixture from Broadway, he said.

DeWolf, like his grandparents before him, lives in the top floor of the glass shop, in the rear. He plans to remodel some of the warehousing behind the store to expand his own personal space.

Since buying the business from his sister, Denise, in 2008, DeWolf is finally hitting his stride in the business.

Before 2013, the best-ever year for revenue was the year in which DeWolf bought the business, mainly because Broadway Glass was still fulfilling commercial orders placed before the economic crash.

The business felt the lingering effects from the recession in 2009 to 2012 but started seeing an upswing in revenue afterward.

“We always felt like since we had been such a local business for so long, it really helped us weather the economic downturn,” DeWolf said.

Read the complete article on ocregister.com