As Tanks Run Low, Maker Moves On.
Reprinted From Crains NY Business
Rosenwach's water tanks, redwood behemoths ranging from four to 26 feet high and capable of holding up to 50,000 gallons, have dotted the New York skyline for more than 140 years. The city has 9,000 of the company's water tanks, a multiple of its closest competitor's units.
"Rosenwach has a long history of quality performance in New York City," says George Weiss, senior engineer for plumbing at the New York City Housing Authority, one of Rosenwach's largest clients.
The Rosenwach Tank Co. was aware for years that it was living on borrowed time, however, and that technological advances would steadily reduce the demand for its product.
In fact, "we never expected wooden tanks to last this long," observes Chief Executive Andrew Rosenwach, the great-grandson of Harris Rosenwach, who bought the operation from founder William Dalton for $55 in 1896 and promptly renamed it.
Determined not to fade into extinction, the Rosenwach family has branched out over the decades. In 1995 it created an umbrella entity, Rosenwach Group, which comprises five separate companies - including Rosenwach Tank.
By popular demand
Today, the Long Island City, Queens, group derives 60% of its revenues from nontraditional businesses. With diversification has come growth. In the past decade, its workforce has increased 67%, to 100 employees, and revenues have tripled, to more than $15 million.
"We constantly have to reinvent ourselves," Mr. Rosenwach says. The process began in the 1960s under his father, Wallace, in response to customers' frequent requests for the company to inspect the cooling towers sharing roof space with its tanks. He founded United Tower to fill that niche.
As the recession of the 1970s stifled activity, Wallace Rosenwach cast about for new projects to keep the factory busy. In 1975 he began building three-foot-high redwood tanks, which he marketed at garden shows as planters under the brand name Sitecraft, and soon added a line of wooden benches.
The first big order came within months of the first show, with Rockefeller Center outfitting its entire complex with Sitecraft products - including a giant planter under the statue of Atlas.
The Sitecraft line - still turned out by Rosenwach's Greenpoint, Brooklyn, factory - now includes trash receptacles, gazebos and hot tubs. The offerings account for 10% of the group's revenues and are used as far away as Japan, at the Universal Studios theme park.
The company next big move, in the early 1990s, was Andrew's brainchild: a building restoration business. Mr. Rosenwach started it with the idea of making the firm a one-stop shop for both landlords and general contractors by offering an array of services, including roof and piping repair, masonry work, and facade restoration - in addition to water tank repair, of course.
Full service
On a recent project on Broad Street in lower Manhattan, Rosenwach installed a new cooling tower on a 16-story building, erected an 18-foot structured-steel frame for it, and redid all the piping connecting the building and the cooling tower. The company finished the job by resealing the entire roof.
The restoration business is now the group's second-largest - and fastest-growing - subsidiary. Its revenues, which have doubled in the past three years, account for 30% of the group's total. Another business, founded in 1985 handles water filtration, plumbing and heating.
Rosenwach has installed and repaired water tanks at Yeshiva University for more than 20 years. It has recently done facade maintenance, cooling tower and roof work on school buildings.
"It's easier for me that they do not subcontract and do all work themselves," says Jack Zencheck, Yeshiva's director of purchasing. "It's easier for insurance and liability reasons and for speed, accountability and quality reasons."
