Tim Harrell of Van Products Inc says most van modifications are paid for by individuals.

All over the world at this very moment, little brothers and sisters dream of the day they will grow too big for their older siblings to pick on. Van Products’ day has come. “We used to be the underdog,” says operations manager Tim Harrell from his Raleigh, NC, office. “Now we tell people at our sister company, ‘Better watch out or we’ll squeeze you out.’” As with a lot of sibling rivalries, it is all in good fun, and the family ties remain strong.

The older sister turns 50 this year. William Wendt founded Orthopedic Service Company in 1954. That company has evolved from making leg braces to providing wheelchairs, seating and positioning accessories, wheelchair ramps, scooters, stair lifts, and porch lifts. But some clients wanted more.

Getting in Gear
“In the early ’70s, one of his sons, David H. Wendt, got quite a few requests to see if they could help with transportation, so he branched off and started doing wheelchair lifts for vans. The two sons began to take over the business and run with it. One ran the home health care equipment, while the other started the transportation end of the business, which ended up being Van Products.”

Van Products offers sales and service of both adaptive equipment and wheelchair-accessible vehicles, with David H. Wendt still at the helm. “When I first came to work for them, half the shop was doing the leisure vans, with the TVs and the VCRs and all that kind of stuff,” Harrell says. “That was like building a house. You’d have customers coming in here and they would change colors 13 times a week.”

The company phased out the leisure-van business in favor of up-fitting commercial vans. Now, in addition to installing lifts in vans for the physically challenged, Van Products also equips vans and pickup trucks with toolboxes, racks, and lift gates for plumbers, electricians, landscapers, and the like.

Van Products also sells used accessible vehicles it takes as trade-ins on new vehicles. “Some of the companies that do lifts don’t want to get involved in taking people’s vans in on trade,” Harrell says. “We’ll take them in on trade and then get rid of them just to make it feasible for these folks to buy a van. Otherwise, they have to try to sell the vehicle and get the money and come back and buy. That’s just not the way we want to do business.”

As a North Carolina franchisee for a rental company, Van Products also provides rentals. “We have 20 rental vans in Raleigh and two at our satellite office in Wilmington that David Wendt’s son Lee runs,” Harrell says.

In addition to installing lifts, Van Products equips vans and pickup trucks with tool boxes, racks, and lift gates.

Cruising
Harrell puts the company’s annual sales at $10 to $12 million. He manages five salespeople, two service managers, 15 technicians, and four accounting and payroll clerks. “The shop next door has about 6,500 square feet,” Harrell says. “Out of that building, I’ve got five or six guys who do nothing but commercial up-fits. We probably do about $2 million a year in that. Even though it has nothing to do with physically challenged people, we’ve branched off and diversified a bit, so if things slack off, we’ve got something else we can keep busy with.”

Van Products and Orthopedics Service share a showroom in Raleigh. “It’s more than 10,000 square feet,” Harrell says. “Folks come to have the wheelchairs, scooters, hospital beds, and more worked on. Lots of times they may not even know they’re coming to the same place as Van Products until they get in the door and see the lifts and vans. They may come here for one thing and realize that we do it all.”

Fueling Growth
Van Products’ growth has outstripped that of its sister company partly because of the younger company’s relative independence from public and private insurance programs, according to Harrell. “Most insurance plans don’t cover the van end of the business,” he says. “It’s not considered durable medical equipment, so customers pretty much have to have some financing. We’ve started offering financing, so when somebody comes in, we can hopefully get him or her approved. We’ve got quite a few churches and civic groups locally that will try to do a fund raiser for somebody, but for the most part van modifications are paid for by individuals. In my opinion, that’s been the difference between Van Products being able to skyrocket in contrast with companies that have been regulated to what Medicare and Medicaid are going to allow.”

Despite the company’s growth, Harrell says he tries to promote a family atmosphere. “At least once a month, I have a little cookout on Fridays.”

Van Products occasionally takes a demonstration van to shopping centers and disability-related events in the local area.

Driving Forward
To help keep Van Products growing, the company devotes significant resources to advertising and marketing, according to Harrell. “We do quite a bit of advertising, which I think is a little different from some of our competitors,” he says. “We spend a decent amount of money every year on TV.”

The company also markets its products by taking a demonstration van to shopping centers and to disability-related events in the local area. “We market to Raleigh and east,” Harrell says. “We try to focus on being the headquarters for the physically challenged in North Carolina. In our advertising, we’re trying to say we aren’t going anywhere.”

Despite these promotions, Van Products has seen a recent decline in the number of modified vans sold—but that’s not as bad as it might sound. “The reason is we’re selling more of these minivans with the ramps already in,” Harrell says. “We think this type of customer is going to be very-service oriented over the next several years, because you don’t have to replace these minivans often.

“We’re trying to come up with service contracts so customers will come in twice a year,” adds Harrell. “That keeps us on top of their program to make sure their vans stay in good working order. At the same time, it gets them in our door—so if there’s any new products, suddenly they’ll see them.”

Before cell phones became ubiquitous, Van Products capitalized on the emerging technology to offer them to their disabled customers. Now Harrell is investing in different gadgetry. “I’m looking at putting some global positioning systems (GPS) in vehicles, but it’s a hands-free GPS so that physically challenged people can speak an address—and they can find where they’re going because it will talk back to them and tell them where to turn. It will make it easier for them to drive.”

Keith Bush is a contributing writer for Dealer/Provider.