Q&A: New Andersen Corp. CEO talks about lessons learned during COVID and the decision to invest in transparent solar technology

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
·13 min read

Chris Galvin, the new CEO of Andersen Corp., knows he is following a long line of door-and-window innovators.

Take Fred C. Andersen, the son of company founder Hans Andersen, who received the company’s first patent in 1926 — for a universal frame with wood-nailing flange.

“Prior to that, windows were assembled on the job site,” Galvin said during a tour of the Bayport-based company last week. “You’d actually take the wood, you’d make the frame, you’d make the interior window. One of his first inventions was to put together a frame bundle that we could manufacture here, and you could take it on site and put a window together in a matter of minutes instead of hours. … That really helped the company take off.”

The company, which has more than 235 patents, remains dedicated to avoiding complacency, Galvin said. “The way I view it is: If we don’t innovate and disrupt our own industry, somebody’s going to come in and do it for us.”

The company’s latest venture is a joint-development agreement with Ubiquitous Energy, a transparent-solar-technology company based in Redwood City, Calif., to develop energy-generating window and door products.

“For a couple of hundred years, the focus has been: How do we keep warm air in and cold air out? Or if you live in the South or the West, vice versa,” Galvin said. “Where we’re going, from an innovation standpoint, is to try to use windows and doors for energy generation, which is a really different concept. This could really transform our industry. We are in the process of developing a transparent solar window, which will be able to capture the energy from the sun to generate electricity. We’re still in the development stage, but things are looking really good. We’re about one year in, and we already have some of our pilot units being tested.”

Galvin, who was named CEO in September, joined Andersen Corp. in 2002 as an investment director. He has held leadership roles across all areas of the company, including corporate finance, manufacturing, logistics, supply-chain operations and general management. In 2019, he became president of the Andersen Division. Two years later, he was promoted to president and chief operating officer of the company.

“One of the things that we hold sacred at Andersen is making sure everybody can achieve their full potential,” Galvin said. “What’s great about that is I had opportunities, as do every one of our employees, to move to different parts of the organization.”

Founded as a lumber company in 1903 in Hudson, Wis., by Danish immigrant Hans Andersen, the privately owned Andersen Corp. will celebrate its 120th anniversary in August. It has nearly $3.5 billion in annual revenue and has more than 13,000 employees in sites across North America and Italy. About half of the company’s employees work in Minnesota at facilities in Bayport, Oak Park Heights, Cottage Grove and North Branch.

Company lore has it that one of the first phrases Andersen learned to say in English — which would become the company’s mantra — was “All together.” “He used to say it when he was out on the (St. Croix) River breaking up the logs,” Galvin said. “It used to be ‘All together, boys,’ but it’s changed to just ‘All together’ now.

“The way he described it is, ‘We share in all the challenges in the business and the hardships, but we also share the success,’” Galvin said. “He believed in that. It’s a saying and a mindset that we use today as we continue to build on that ‘all-together’ culture.”

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Galvin, 53, grew up in Abbottsford, Wis., population 2,000, and went to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in finance, he worked in banking and investments in Madison and Chicago. He later moved to the Twin Cities to pursue a master of business administration degree in finance and strategic management from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

Galvin joined Target Corp. in 1994, working in various roles focused on financial planning and analysis, treasury and benefit investments. Eight years later, he was hired at Andersen Corp.

Galvin and his wife, Connie, have been married for 24 years and live in Woodbury. They have three children: Marquesa, 22, a student at the University of Iowa; Lauren, 20, a student at the University of St. Thomas; and Aidan, 14, a student at East Ridge High School.

In an interview with the Pioneer Press, Galvin talked about helping lead Andersen through COVID-19, its diverse workforce and its dedication to profit sharing.

The transcript is edited for clarity and conciseness.

Q: How did the pandemic affect Andersen?

A: In 2020, we were very focused and aligned around a couple of key things. Number 1, the health and safety of our community. That was first and foremost. The second thing, back at that point, was to focus on keeping our doors open, so that all of our team members could keep their jobs. We became an essential business because of the industry we are in. People need windows and doors to protect the envelope of the home, and it was important to us to make sure we kept the doors open. The third was to stop the spread of the virus. We did everything that everybody else did across the country with masks and social distancing. We changed our manufacturing layout and environments so as to keep spacing between folks. The fourth piece was to protect the longevity of the business — to make sure we survive and make it through.

We took a big dip early on, but snapped right back — and one of the reasons is: We all started to move home. We were educating our kids at home; we were working from home. So much started to revolve around the home. As they looked around, people wanted to update their windows and doors. They wanted to have a warmer environment, and they also had more discretionary income. They weren’t spending money on travel, they were going out less to restaurants, and there was a lot of government assistance. Some of that helped to fuel mostly the home-improvement side of our business.

Q: Did you shut down for any period of time?

A: We did not shut down our operation at all. Early on, when we had a (COVID) case come through, we might have shut down for a shift. We brought in a group to clean the whole area, so that we could bring people back in the next day or so, but we never shut down entirely.

Q: What did you learn?

A: Number 1: Focus on what matters most — and what mattered most was the safety and health of our team. It was keeping our doors open and keeping our team members employed. It was helping to fight the spread of the virus. And then: this long-term future of the business. We’ve got to make sure this is here for the next generations to come — not just for next year, but for generations to come. So how do we do all that? You get focused on what matters most to the business.

The second thing, which we have all learned, is how to be agile, and how to pivot. Those first couple of weeks and months, we relied on the CDC and other medical experts in the field. We didn’t know anything, so we would go out, and we would bring our group of experts in. I remember they would tell us on a Monday what would be the safest way to operate the business. … By Thursday, there was new information that we learned from the CDC or others, so we would have to get back out in front of our team and say, “Guess what? What we thought was really important on Monday has changed. We’re gonna have to change.” But I’ll tell you what was really important in that: being agile. It was also being transparent and being really honest with our team around what we knew and what we didn’t know. It helped that we were all dealing with this — not just at work, but in our lives outside of work, so that transparency and that agility helped us. As we move through things, whether it is supply-chain challenges, whether it’s the housing recession that we’re entering, we’re using that agility and that ability to be transparent to help pivot the business when we need to.

Q: What made you decide to leave Target and join Andersen?

A: I was at Target for eight years. This was the mid-1990s to early 2000, when an extreme amount of growth was happening. It was, “How many stores can we put up?” I had a number of different roles. I was in our treasury organization, helping develop and build our growth plans and financing plans to finance our growth, and so I really got to understand the retail side of the business. I got a call from a friend of mine, and he said, “I just interviewed at this great little company, Andersen. I know you’ve heard of them.” I said, “Sure, I know the brand.” He said, “I interviewed for the role, but I don’t think I fit the role very well. I thought of you.” I said, “That’s great, but I enjoy what I’m doing at Target.” He called me three times, and he said, “You’ve got to see this company.”

Q: What position were you interviewing for?

A: It was actually for a finance manager role. I interviewed with Mike Johnson, the previous chief financial officer. We sat and talked for two long sessions — more about my values and my beliefs, as much as we did about my capabilities. I learned a lot about the culture in those couple of days, and that there was something special going on here. I was looking for a company with a strong brand that was a leader in its industry, but it was this unique culture that kind of hooked me. What’s kept me here for 20 years is the culture and the people.

Q: Can you talk about how your transition to CEO went?

A: What I appreciate most is the continuity that we’ve created in this transition — that’s really important for our team members, for our customers and for the business. We’ve been working on this for a year and a half. Our leadership team has been together for the last five, 10, 15 years. It’s a team that (former CEO) Jay (Lund) and I worked on building. Continuity is important, especially when you go through things like the recession, COVID and the supply-chain challenges that we’ve had. Probably most important is the continuity of the plan that we have to move the business forward. Jay and I helped, with the rest of our senior leadership team, to put together a long-range strategic plan over this past year that really focuses on getting closer to our customers and understanding our customers’ needs.

Q: Andersen’s workforce continues to become more diverse. How do you welcome everybody?

A: You can’t start with diversity unless you have an inclusive environment. When I think about an inclusive environment, we have created a lot of opportunities. For instance, here at our 100 Series window manufacturing line, over 30 languages are spoken. So we provide things like English as a Second Language classes for free. It’s the right thing to do — creating a diverse culture. If we’re going to be hiring, I want to be looking at the entire labor force — and you have to have a mindset around diversity to be able to do that.

Q: Andersen is famous for its profit-sharing program.

A: We had one of the first profit-sharing programs in the United States. It started in 1914. It’s really around this “all together” culture that we talked about. There were six years during the recession where we actually paused profit-sharing in order to maintain the viability of the business long-term, and then we brought it back, and we bought back a little differently. We share it equally across our entire organization — all 13,000 team members, equally.

Q: You serve on the board of directors of the Andersen Corporate Foundation. Can you tell me more about that?

A: When you talk about what keeps me here, it is that philanthropy and giving back to the communities that we live and work in. It’s important for our team members to understand how we give back. They really take pride in that. The corporate foundation has given over $60 million back in the last 80 years to the communities that we live and work in. It’s the magic circle. It’s the essence of the vision that Hans originally had. He said everybody who comes into association with Andersen should benefit from that association.

Q: How does the overall economy look to you? How has the inflation of the past year or two affected your business?

A: We’ve just come off 12 years of broad economic expansion, and now we’re facing inflation and the Fed trying to do whatever it can to slow the economy and get rates under control and growth under control. How has it impacted us? It’s impacted our industry, certainly. Mortgage rates have doubled since the beginning of the year, which makes it more difficult for families to get into homes, and it’s also had a broader impact on the supply chain. We go through these cycles in our industry, usually every four or five years, but it’s been 12 years since we’ve had to face it. Housing tends to lead the economy into recessions, and it also leads the economy out of recessions. There certainly is going to be an impact on new construction in the next year or two, and we’ve seen that already. … But the area that’s holding up pretty well is home improvement or remodel-replacement. The majority of our business is in that remodel-replacement side of the business. If people are going to stay put in their homes because they’re at a low-interest-rate mortgage, they’ll tend to take that discretionary income and put it back into the home that they are in. We’re used to going through cycles, and this will be one that we manage, too.

Q: What advice would you give someone who aspires to be a CEO?

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A: Take risks, and explore. Find out about the business through exploring different parts of the organization. Step outside your comfort zone, and try new things. Get to know their customers. Get to know their suppliers. All of those things will help you to understand the economic engine behind the business and the relationships that are critically important.

Q: What are you reading these days?

A: I’ve been reading a lot of CEO books lately: “CEO Excellence” and others. They’ve been very helpful. Most of my reading is to stay current on the economy, to stay current with the industry.

Q: What are you binge-watching?

A: I’m into “Yellowstone,” just like everybody else.