Specialty window maker opens Dutton Drive headquarters

by Judy Stringer

Consumer demand for windows with built-in blinds has fueled the relocation and expansion of a local manufacturing company.

Intigral Inc., formerly based in Walton Hills, makes insulating glass windows and doors in Walton Hills and at sites in Twinsburg and Austintown. The Twinsburg Midway Drive facility was used in the production of windows and doors with blinds in-between the insulated glass panes, according to Marketing Manager Jamie Runevitch. Earlier this year, however, Intigral relocated that operation to a vacant 140,000-square-feet building on Dutton Drive, which now serves as its new corporate headquarters, as well.

“We can pretty much see the old building from the new one, but we’ve just been expanding so quickly that we needed a bigger facility,” she said.

The Dutton plant “currently sits at around 70 people and growing,” according to Runevitch, who said it is hard to predict how many employees it will add over the next several years, “but this building allows us that growth.”

Runevitch said much of that growth can be attributed to the increasing demand for its electronically controlled blinds-between-glass product line, used in a wide variety of applications from homes and daycare centers to office buildings. The products were recently featured on the home improvement program “Designing Spaces,” in which the glass-enclosed blinds were a solution for a home with young children “who kept messing up the patio door blinds,” she said, and for an older couple with arthritis who struggled to operate manual blind cords and wands.

Blinds between glass is also becoming a prominent safety product for day cares and schools, giving administrators the ability to remotely control blinds if an unauthorized individual approaches the building.

The company will keep its existing Walton Hills and Austintown insulating glass manufacturing sites. From those, Intigral Inc. can deliver or ship products within about a six-hour radius, Runevitch said, before the cost of shipping encroaches on margins. The blinds-between-glass products made in Twinsburg, however, are a “value added product,” she noted, meaning the margins are much greater.

“Being able to expand here in Twinsburg has taken us from being a regional company to a national company, even shipping internationally, but very slightly at this point,” Runevitch said.

Featured image photo caption: Intigral Executive Vice President Deanna Negron, Vice President Operations Don Smith and President Jason Thomas stand in front the company’s new Twinsburg headquarters and manufacturing plant.