Wisconsin Fertilizer Maker Set to Expand

Lightning that struck a Jackson, Wis., barn in the mid-1950s, wiping out the family dairy herd, eventually led Bill and Randy Vogel into the global commodities business.

The Vogel brothers own Spring Valley, a fertilizer manufacturing company that serves the professional lawn, golf course, landscape, nursery/greenhouse and sports turf markets.

This time of year, the company is probably better known for the ice melt it supplies to private snow and ice removal companies.

Their story is one of a small, family-owned business that has adapted as houses sprouted where corn once grew and prospered as customers sprang up on the other side of the world.

Steel girders attached to the foundation of a headquarters building going up behind the converted farmhouse that currently houses most of the company speak to the firm's future prospects.

"We're choosing not to participate in the recession," said Randy Vogel, company president.

"We're going on offense rather than defense," said CEO Bill Vogel. "In any recession there are businesses that are going to thrive."

Expanding into a new building is part of that strategy. So is attention to customers.

"In tough times, people want to buy the product and be taken care of," Bill Vogel said. "They don't want any hassles."

So when the Green Bay Packers needed a custom ice melt product, the company delivered.

"They've actually been very, very helpful in designing some products that have been really useful," Todd Edlebeck, facilities manager at Lambeau Field, said of Spring Valley.

Rock salt is corrosive to the seating areas inside Lambeau Field, so the stadium has to use some other type of ice melting agent.

Years ago, the facilities staff would hand-mix ice melt and sand in the back of a pickup truck and then spread the mixture where it was needed.

Spring Valley developed a pre-mixed ice melter that includes grit to allow for better traction for the 78,000 people who visit the stadium on game days.

"They came up with this product, and we've been using it for, gosh, at least 10 years," Edlebeck said.

Working with a Wisconsin-based company is a plus, said Edlebeck, who has been with the Packers for 25 years and grew up four houses from Lambeau Field.

"I think when you can buy from local people, it's definitely a benefit," he said.

Lambeau also uses some of Spring Valley's turf products for the field itself.

International sales
The snow-covered woods and fields of Wisconsin are a long way from the Pacific Rim and Near East. Those growing parts of the world, though, are playing into Spring Valley's plans, the Vogels said.

They didn't necessarily always think that way.

"I thought, 'This is nuts, sending all these samples to the Pacific Rim,' " Randy Vogel said about a recent business venture.

But the samples resulted in business coming from the Philippines and South Korea.

International markets can also be bruising. In recent months, China and India began buying huge amounts of fertilizer. That sent raw materials prices soaring.

"Nitrogen prices quadrupled in about six months," Randy Vogel said.

Buying too much of a specific raw material at too high a price could devastate the business.

"It's a very challenging time," he said.

Change by thunderbolt
Like any small business, challenges and opportunities ebb, flow, and sometimes come crashing in for Spring Valley.

When lightning struck the barn in the '50s, it traveled instantly across the metal stanchions and killed most of the dairy herd their dad had purchased with borrowed funds.

"He owed everybody in the county money," Bill Vogel said.

With no milk to sell, there was no income, so their dad decided to start a farm supply business.

The business grew from there and, in 1993, took a strategic turn when the brothers decided to sell off the agricultural division.

"We saw the farms growing houses instead of corn," Bill Vogel said.

Agricultural lands in areas surrounding Milwaukee, especially Waukesha County and southern Washington County, were giving way to subdivisions filled with new homes.

The company started calling on professional landscaping companies, and the business grew to take its place in the $10 billion-a-year fertilizer industry. Spring Valley has 75 employees and facilities in the Town of Jackson and at a plant in Fostoria, Ohio.

Going forward, the Vogels are choosing to expand while the economy contracts. "We've gone through several recessions," Bill Vogel said. "We'll manage it."

Now is the time to establish a new headquarters, he said. "It will allow us to explode when times get better."