When Kris Vockler was a girl, she’d sit at her parents’ Vancouver workplace for hours, watching her father develop new coatings for glass while her mom managed the books for their small business.
The process fascinated the young girl, who admired her dad’s creativity with chemistry and appreciated her mother’s talent for overseeing their family business, ICD High Performance Coatings. Larry and Patricia Vockler worked confidently, Kris said, but they always encouraged her to pursue her own dreams. She studied chemistry and geology and landed a job in Colorado. But working for someone else only helped Kris realize she was destined to join the company her parents started in 1986.
Kris is now CEO of what has become a global company. But 15 years ago, it took some convincing to get her dad to bring her on board, Kris recalled. Larry Vockler had worried his other employees would accuse him of playing favorites.
“At first, he said, ‘No,’ ” Kris Vockler said. He eventually gave Kris an opportunity and she won her parents over by working her way up through the ranks from a part-time production worker to marketing, before moving into management.
Now, Kris is the chief executive officer of the global company and ready to help her father, the company’s president, and mother, who is secretary-treasurer, guide ICD through its next expansion. The Vocklers will start by moving the 26-employee company into a larger facility on a site being prepped for construction in Ridgefield. They are expected to move in by December.
The planned 28,000-square-foot building will nearly double space for the company, which manufactures paint and tinted coatings for flat architectural and commercial-grade glass. Used to tint everything from skyscraper glass to automobile windshields, the coatings are low in volatile organic compounds and don’t contain heavy metals, a high-demand recipe among environmentally conscious customers all over the world. The company sells its glass-tinting products in Europe, China, Southeast Asia, Malaysia and Canada. It also has projects within the United States.
“What drives us is the green-ness,” Kris Vockler said. The company also has few competitors and tries to win clients over with color-matching and other customer-friendly services.
High demand for environmentally friendly products has long fueled ICD’s growth, helping sales increase by 10 to 15 percent per year until just before the economy turned in 2008, Kris Vockler said.
During the recession and slow recovery, “sales flattened out and now are back up again,” she said. The company is once again experiencing growing pains at its current Salmon Creek facility at 13911 N.W. Third Court, where ICD has been since 1994.
IDC Coating’s new site “will have space to add between five and 10 employees,” Kris Vockler said. “Right now, we provide 26 people with long-term employment,” she said. The workforce includes four chemists, she said.
The new facility will be built in the Union Ridge business park east of Interstate 5. It’s designed with room for a more efficient production line than the company’s existing building. General contractor for the project is Robertson & Olson Construction, Inc.
Twenty years ago, the company built the current location as a first expansion for ICD, which had its birth in a Hazel Dell garage, said Matt Olson, Robertson & Olson’s president.
“Kris is kind of their second generation,” he said. “We’re just real pleased to be able to build their second location.”
Kris Vockler wouldn’t share ICD’s annual sales, but said she expects sales will double or triple 10 years from now.
“The vision is for growth,” she said. “I’d be very happy if we were looking to expand again.”
