Rib Mountain Glass
Rib Mountain Glass has been a major local provider of glass in various forms for decades. From its origins in automobile glass in the 1960s, to contract work glazing windows for other regional companies, to becoming a retail outlet for commercial and residential glass products.
In 1962, Bernard Richards Sr. brought his 16 years in the glass industry (including jobs at Hoffer Glass) to form a partnership with Eugene Pankonien, a 15-year veteran of the upholstery industry. The new company, called Rib Mountain Trim and Glass, would focus on automobiles. Pankonien did the trim and upholstery, while Richards handled the automobile windows in addition to other types of glass installation.
Rib Mountain Glass, Inc.
By 1972, Richards bought out Pankonien. The company focused on glass production and in 1976 they formally incorporated as Rib Mountain Glass, Inc. Richards' extensive contacts in the window industry had led to opportunities to contract with the many area companies that needed help with window glazing and installation. And so in addition to working on glass storefronts and household windows and mirrors, Rib Mountain Glass was installing glazed windows in the cabs of Drott trucks and was contracting with Wausau Metals.
Richards's teenage sons and some of their friends had helped out in the company while they were in high school, and with the opportunities to expand the business they became permanent employees after graduation. Richards eventually entrusted them with part of the company, and family contacts have made up a major part of their workforce throughout Rib Mountain Glass's history.
^ Rib Mountain Glass was active in the recreational sport leagues, from bowling to softball. It also sponsored a hockey team.
Their experience doing in-house Wausau Metals led to a partnership developing a new technique for shipping windows. Previously windows were shipped to the construction site, and then glass workers were brought in to install the glass on site, which added extra time and expense to the build. But Rib Mountain and Wausau Metals developed resin clips to allow the glass to ship with the aluminum systems.
In 1997, Rib Mountain Glass announced plans for a new facility in Rib Mountain. Back when Richards and Pankonien started their partnership thirty years earlier, their shop on Cottage Avenue had been in what people at the time had called Rib Mountain. But it had been incorporated into the expanding City of Wausau since then. The opening of the new facility on Wood Duck Lane once again located Rib Mountain Glass in Rib Mountain.
The new building became the home for the residential department for Rib Mountain Glass. As some of the larger window companies in Marathon County closed and others developed their own window glazing capabilities, Rib Mountain Glass had less need for teams of contracting glaziers. Demand for glass windows and doors for residential markets became more important for the company, and products like shower doors have become more profitable in the twenty-first century.
The commercial part of the business continued to operate out of the old facilities on Cottage Avenue, until the need to expand led to a new building in the Wausau West Industrial Park.