The Halcyon Shades Story

Read business writer David Nicklaus’ article about Halcyon from the Post-Dispatch business section.

Halcyon Shades has been making high-tech solar control shades since 2005.  Originally conceived by Solutia, Inc. as a captive customer for its metalized PET shade film, Halcyon was incubated as its own operation.  In 2007, Solutia moved Halcyon’s production facility to Puebla, Mexico to take advantage of cheaper labor rates.  At the time, Jane Quartel, was the business lead in charge of Halcyon for Solutia.  During that year, Jane asked David Kenyon to help her improve production and design the Mexican factory.  While production was efficient in Mexico, the freight and frequent damage caused to shades due to customs inspections nearly offset the benefit of the lower wage rates.

In 2008, Solutia decided that shade manufacturing was not a fit for its core operations and started looking for a buyer for Halcyon.  By that time, Mr. Kenyon, along with his business partner, Kevin Schaedler, had founded Habitata Building Products, a supplier of exterior building products including windows, siding, soffits fences and hand rails. Seeing that architecture and construction were rapidly moving toward “green building”, Kenyon and Schaedler saw the acquisition of Halcyon Shades as a timely move that would take Habitata into the next generation of building products suppliers. Quartel, who is absolutely passionate about her solar control products, was not willing to see the business die or be sold off to someone else.  After assembling the financing with help from two angel investors, Habitata and Quartel reached an agreement with Solutia for the acquisition in mid-March, 2009.

With the peak sales season beginning in April, Habitata had to work quickly.  It built out its production facility in only two weeks.  Quartel flew to Mexico in the first week of May, 2009 to close the Mexican facility.  Two days after her arrival the first truck was packed, documented and sent north across the border.  Meanwhile, Kenyon was rapidly training a brand new American production crew while Schaedler ran operations for the existing building supply business.  Habitata hired the Halcyon administrative staff and then hired eight U.S. production workers and a supervisor.  Only one of the production employees, supervisor Richard Owens, had even seen a Halcyon Shade prior to being hired.  All of Halcyon’s equipment and supplies, 36,000 pounds worth, were packed and shipped out of Mexico in a week.  Five days later three trucks arrived in St. Louis, Missouri where they were unpacked, the equipment was assembled and the materials stored over the course of two days.  On the third day, Halcyon resumed operations with a new factory, new production crew in a new country.

The new production team learned quickly and within a month was meeting demand.  Halcyon’s administrative team worked nearly non-stop to bring the new computer system on-line and set up its communications hub.  All the while, sales grew by 10% over last year.  Within six weeks of unpacking the first truck, however, the Halcyon crew was producing at 85% capacity and in eight weeks was matching and surpassing the output of their more seasoned Mexican predecessors.  During this rapid transition, some orders were delivered late, but every order was made to Halcyon’s exacting standards and shipped to customers all over the United States.  By mid-June, the new crew had production back on schedule making the world’s most effective solar control window shade.

Halcyon soon was on track and despite the coldest summer in fifty years east of the Rocky Mountains, it managed to keep its sales crisp by focusing on the national and local commercial markets.

In October, 2009, the mayor of the City of St. Louis, Francis Slay Presented Habitata with a Business of the Year Award.  Each year the city honors a handful of businesses for their contribution to the community and their innovation.  By bringing jobs to St. Louis from a foreign country and for creating a high-tech “green” business, Habitata/Halcyon was one of the honorees of 2009.  See Halcyon News for more details.