Today we’d like to introduce you to Bill Runzel.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Bill. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’m the CEO of Lake Cable, a company that produces wire and cable products for a wide range of industries. The Runzel family has been making wire and cable in the Chicagoland area for over 100 years and across four generations. If you walk into the lobby of Lake Cable’s headquarters in Bensenville, you’ll quickly get a sense of how important that family history is to me with pictures on the walls of the Runzel Cord & Wire Company building on Montrose, an old ad for that company and a news story from many years ago featuring my Dad, brother and I.
In 1995, I founded Lake Cable with the aim of building one of the strongest manufacturers in the wire and cable business. Since then, we’ve grown to over 400 people among four plants – one in Bensenville, one in Valparaiso, IN and two in Elkhart, IN.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Well, I’d say we had a big mountain to climb in the early days of Lake Cable as so many other companies starting out would typically face. Here we were in the wire and cable manufacturing business and we only had three machines for making wire. Additionally, with only me and three other people to run things, we had to wear a ton of hats as well. Combine that with the fact that Lake Cable was a new name to many people at the time, so, even though my family had been making wire for decades we still had a lot to prove.
When you’re a new player going up against well-established companies that have far more resources, employees and a track record of success you have to find other ways to innovate. Fortunately, if there was one thing we had going for us, it was our deep knowledge of how to design and manufacture high quality cable. If we could leverage that knowledge and convert it into smarter processes and systems, we’d have a better chance of beating our competitors on faster product lead times because we were hearing stories of how they were so inconsistent on delivery.
I think the advantage we arrived at back then is a big reason why “When Delivery Matters…” is such an important motto, and eventually our tagline, that we continue to live by today at Lake Cable.
Lake Cable – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We have so many talented minds in-house at Lake Cable and the leadership team we’ve put in place is phenomenal. But it’s the way we share information and want to help one another that yields the true breakthroughs. We’ve also got a process here that allows us to build in a lot more customization than others can and manufacture wire faster to go out the door on time, every time.
So I’m really proud of that reliability we’ve established but I’m also proud of this innovative, entrepreneurial “whatever it takes” spirit we have behind everything we do. For example, a couple years ago, we kept hearing installers in the field asking for a better cable distribution system on site in which the wire wouldn’t tangle. We could’ve just said, “We don’t handle that area,” but instead, a bunch of our people rolled up their sleeves and built a more efficient system for them called The CableM8. It’s even more environmentally friendly than what many of them were using before too.
Also, a lot of companies talk about culture, but really, either you have it or you don’t. You can’t fake that stuff. Our folks love spending time with each other outside of the office, whether it’s an outing to Brookfield Zoo’s Holiday Zoo Lights to decorate our tree with our families or the Runzel Brothers Spring Shoot, our annual fundraising event where we just raised over $85,000 for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. In fact, I just learned that we had a team of 30 people participate in a mud race where they raised close to $5,000 toward fighting MS – sure, that’s a terrific cause but it also speaks to the camaraderie of our people. By the way, that speaks to another motto we have – “Have Fun. Make Wire.”
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
A lot of things we do at Lake Cable get measured that way – are we doing it better, smarter and faster?
When you’re on the short list time and time again, you know you’re doing something right. It’s not just about manufacturing exceptional quality cable – it’s about protecting the reputation of those who install our product. We’ve got our wire and cable powering everything from nationally televised sporting events to water filtration plants to solar power systems. So you also can’t help but think about the thousands of people who are counting on your product to perform beautifully, because you don’t get a second chance to get it right in many instances.
Contact Info:
- Address: 529 Thomas Drive
Bensenville, IL 60106 - Website: http://lakecable.com
- Phone: 888-518-8086
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lakecablellc
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/LakeCable
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/133401/
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