Emily Videtto thought she was going to be a lawyer. When she walked onto campus at Indiana University in 2000, she studied English and business. But after college, she had the chance to join GAF — the largest roofing manufacturer in the world — as a marketing analyst. 

“I just fell in love with the industry — consumer durables, physical products that go into people’s homes,” Videtto, named Pella Corp.’s president and chief operating officer in December, told the Business Record. 

Videtto spent more than 12 years with GAF based in New Jersey just outside of New York City, and eventually became vice president of residential marketing and new product development, responsible for the company’s multibillion dollar shingle business.

Videtto relocated from the Northeast to Pella in 2016 when she was named Pella’s chief marketing officer. She became executive vice president of sales and marketing in 2021.

“There was an acclimation process, as you would imagine, but we’ve really come to love the sense of community, hard-working, honest, really incredible people here in the community of Pella,” she said.

The Business Record recently sat down with Videtto at Pella’s headquarters during the company’s Founders Day 100th anniversary celebration to discuss the career that led her to the town of 10,800 people and the window and door manufacturer’s plans for more market growth and expansion.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. 

You lived and worked in New Jersey before coming to Pella. Is that where you’re originally from?

I’m from all over the place. The Boston metro is where I was born. I lived in Connecticut and Indiana for a long time, went to high school and college in Indiana, and then moved to New Jersey for 13 years. I had a chance to work with GAF for a long time, innovation, product management brand, and then had the opportunity to engage with the team at Pella. This is an incredible organization, and there are a lot of reasons why I joined. 

Can you share those reasons with me? Why Pella? What was the appeal?

First off, this is a family-owned organization. There are many benefits to that, but one of the things that is pervasive throughout the organization, from the shareholders to the factory floor, is an emphasis and dedication to our people, which was very consistent with my value set, and something that gave me a lot of energy. It’s a really, really critical part of what we do here. So that was No. 1. No. 2 is we have an incredible brand. So, an industry-leading brand, but not just now, but a history of the highest-quality products and backing that up, and that’s why the brand has been so powerful. And then finally, the leadership team under Tim Yaggi, who’s our current CEO, an incredible group of people that had their eyes set on big growth aspirations. And we’re in an industry where we have a leadership position, but there’s still a tremendous amount of growth and runway to take more share and do it in the right way.

Let’s talk about that growth and the growth trajectory. How does your role fit into that overall picture as Pella expands?

We’ve had a great run of growth over the last almost nine years. My first role here was as chief marketing officer, and then I had the opportunity to expand and work directly with the sales organization. So growth has been at the epicenter for me and also for Tim and the leadership team, because we understand that growth can be a catalyst to great jobs, to enabling our customers with better capabilities, and to reinvest in the business. We’ve done that in a number of different ways. We’ve invested in the brand. We are now the No. 1 preferred brand in the market, and known for innovation and quality. A brand in our category, which is a really complex category and a considered purchase that consumers make once in their lifetime becomes really important. So you cut through the noise, and you can educate the best to the consumer. No. 2, we’ve invested a lot in products, and we’re really proud. We’re surrounded by all of the innovative products that have been part of our portfolio, but we’ve grown that a lot. We’ve expanded into new materials. We have purchased a number of companies that give us access to new parts of the market, like Florida and Texas, and then we focused on channel management. Our Pella direct sales network is a dedicated area of owner-operated businesses that distribute our products and do an incredible job of representing the brand, but we’ve also entered into other distribution channels to make sure we can serve our customers. It’s a multifaceted approach to growth, and it’s certainly going to be a catalyst for our future strategies. 

When a company like Pella expands into a market like Florida, there are differences, not only from a commercial standpoint but from an environmental standpoint. What does it take to make your products adaptable to a new economic market and new environment that has events like hurricanes?

It’s a question of the safety of the individuals that live in the home. So we take our responsibility of creating great products really seriously, given the inclement weather that Florida in particular experiences. So for us, we had a broad portfolio that we could offer in Florida, but what we recognized is that Florida code regulations and the environment and the products that are necessary made it really important that we knew the Florida market from the inside out. So we actually pursued an acquisition, actually two of them now: Custom Window Systems, and we operate under the CWS brand, and then, most recently, Lawson Industries Inc., which has an aluminum impact solution. We have doubled down on the state of Florida and are really resolute in our commitment there and did that through organic and inorganic growth.

In those two acquisitions, it sounds like the attraction was also facilities and plants and more than just entering the market with an existing product.

Yes, it was. To your point, there were manufacturing facilities. We have Ocala and Jacksonville and then we’re in the Miami metro now as well, so that was really important. And I think for the consumer in the state of Florida, they want to know that you’re producing products in that state and really understand the environment and the regulation. There was also just the Florida mindset that came with the leadership teams who are now part of our business and giving us great insights that we poured in not just to Florida, but to the overarching enterprise.

And going into Jacksonville [and Miami] gives you access to several major interstate systems and the Jacksonville and Miami port authorities for logistics and shipping.

It is. And just one other thing I’d add to that, so we think about manufacturing, we also think about our distribution footprint. And so we have stood up a number of Pella direct sales network distribution within that market and a couple of other adjacent categories as well so that customers in Florida can buy where they want to buy.

How would you describe your leadership style?

Warm, energetic, and I spent a lot of time on coaching and developing our team. Back to the roots of this company, our people are the most important part of what we do every day, and I take my responsibility there really seriously. I also think there’s a shift in what good leadership looks like over the last several decades. I think the command and control style, which maybe was prevalent several decades ago, is just no longer relevant. People want to be inspired, and they want authenticity, and they want a leader who really cares. That’s the way that I show up and try to show up for our team every day. I’m here to serve them. 

What are your goals coming into the president and COO roles?

I started our conversation talking about growth, and again, growth enables us to create future generational success for the company, which is really important to us, and create great jobs. At the epicenter of my responsibilities, that’s a really key part. No. 2 is building a talent advantage, and I’ve had the opportunity to work on the growth side, but now I’m getting to engage with our manufacturing team, which is a body of incredible team members, men and women with craftsmanship, and they’re putting so much passion into the work they do. It’s about enabling them and creating an environment where they can thrive and continue to create great, high-quality products. Those are two keystones of what we’re excited about. The other one I’d bring up is innovation. Innovation is part of our mantra here at Pella, and we’ve got a lot of innovations that we’re proud of. But I also think it’s a mindset. It’s about testing and learning and trying new things, really listening to the customer and solving real problems for them. And I think across the manufacturing team, the sales team, the marketing team, we are going to continue to embrace that, to really differentiate in the market.

Let’s talk a little more specifically about innovation. What are some things you’re working on right now? You said you’re responding to the customer. What are the customers saying that they want, and how do you achieve it?

I’ll give you one example of this, although I could give you many and you’ll feel my passion for this, because the team has just done a tremendous job standing up a capability of innovation — dedicated people, processes and metrics to hold ourselves accountable for that. Our most recent innovation is called Steady Set. And essentially what we’re trying to solve is the complexity behind installing windows. They’re really hard, they continue to get bigger, they’re heavy, and you think about the labor population, it’s harder to get people to want to be installers in the market. It’s part of our responsibility to create products that are easier, safer and faster to install. So, less people required, an easier job, and then higher-quality output. Steady Set does that. It cuts down the number of people required to install the products and also provides a better-quality output. That’s going to be part of our keystone of our innovation strategy going forward, and we’re going to continue to build on that to create a better experience for our pro customers who are working hard out there.

Is Steady Set exclusively for residential or is Pella using that for commercial, office, and other types of projects as well?

Right now, we started with our wood windows, and we’re predominantly focused on single-family new as the beginning stages. But light commercial, jobs that act a little bit more like residential, it’s applicable there. Any new construction install, it’s applicable. We’re looking at how we apply it to the replace and remodel segment, to our vinyl and fiberglass products. But we wanted to start with wood because those are the more complex installations and some of the bigger problems to solve based on our customer feedback.

I wanted to ask you about the city and community of Pella and your headquarters here. How does that fit into Pella Corp.’s growth strategy?

Today we’re talking about our 100th anniversary, and it’s just a really nice moment to reflect on what Pete Kuyper put into this community and his aspiration and goal to create great jobs for the community of Pella. And today, here we sit with over 10,000 team members and still have a deep commitment to this community and all the communities in which we operate. But there’s something really special about the intrinsic nature of the community and the company in Pella, Iowa. So we’re going to continue to invest in this community — affordable housing, access to restaurants, child care because the people of Pella are a large portion of our employees here and team members, and also our history is so intertwined with this community, so it’s a really big part.

Sounds like a lot of quality-of-life projects for the community. What about the headquarters itself? Does that growth include the expansion of the facilities here?

We have our largest facility here in Pella, Iowa, and we’ve made significant investments. You’re sitting here in the Experience Center, which is one of those, and continue to invest into our manufacturing capabilities here. Automation, the team is just doing a tremendous job engaging and digitizing, but also embracing all the great capabilities we have here. We’ll continue to do that. In addition to that, we also need to have relevant manufacturing facilities where our customers want to buy so we have expanded to 18 manufacturing plants. Back to our conversation about Florida, we have relevant manufacturing plants close to the proximity of our customers. We will continue to invest here and also continue to expand nationally. 

What about globally? 

Not globally, right now. So there’s a lot of things that we are focused on and right now, we think the opportunity for share growth and serving our customers in North America (Pella Corp. has markets in the United States, Canada and Mexico), in windows and doors, is really where we’re going to be focused for the foreseeable future.

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At a glance

Hometown: Lexington, Mass. 

Education: Bachelor of Arts in English, Indiana University Bloomington; Liberal Arts and Management Program certificate, Indiana University Kelley School of Business; Program for Leadership Development, Harvard Business School

Family: Husband, Alex; two children, Grace and Mark

Resides: Pella, Iowa

Book recommendations: “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail” by Clayton Christensen and “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese