Binswanger Returns to Its Roots
August 15, 2011

By Penny Stacey, pstacey@glass.com

Binswanger Glass has endured a number of changes since the sale of former parent company Vitro America in June, but the biggest change may be that Binswanger has returned to its roots as a glass retailer and installation company, says Arturo Carrillo, who's been named president of Binswanger. Carrillo served as president and chief executive officer of the former Vitro America (now part of the newly formed Trulite Glass & Aluminum) prior to the sale of the company to Sun Capital Partners.

Arturo Carrillo has been named president of Binswanger Glass.

"Binswanger for the first time in many years is independent of a fabricator. It is its own stand-alone legal entity with its own stand-alone management," says Carrillo. "With this acquisition Binswanger comes back to its original roots, so we're pretty excited to run Binswanger in an independent manner and continue to be a successful and long-term company."

Among the changes has been the consolidation of several branches. According to Carrillo, only a small percentage of the company's stores across the United States were affected.

"We have consolidated a few facilities-not many; about 5 percent of locations," Carrillo says. "That already has happened for the most part. Most consolidations we were going to do already happened."

Some of these have been positive moves, he says.

"We're moving a few other branches to better and bigger locations," he says. "We're able to use part of the [capital from] the acquisition to re-negotiate with our landlords and that's what led to the consolidation to new facilities, [moving to] facilities that were in better parts of town, etc."

He adds, "It's not a change of business strategy-it's more of an ability to negotiate with landlords and come up with a better footprint."

Carrillo offers the following response to the speculation that Binswanger could be sold again in the near future.

"Binswanger has been a long-standing company. It's been around for [more than] 100 years and it has a lot of long-term [leaders] running it," says Carrillo. "Over the last 100 years it has been owned by different people, so now it's owned by Sun Capital and Sun Capital intends to run it and have it as a successful company. Will they sell it in the future? It's probable. But would this affect the employees? It wouldn't."

He adds, "It's an interesting discussion, but from the day-to-day operations it should be an irrelevant question."

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