Since 1996, Apollo Supply Company, an independent wholesale distributor of exterior building products, has been focused on its customers and dedicated to helping them succeed. Apollo Supply is Cleveland’s last family-owned and operated distributor of exterior building products, and has made its customers its mission from day one by focusing on finding solutions for those customers.
To better serve its customers, Apollo maintains three warehouse and showroom/design-center facilities, including its original facility on Apollo Parkway in Willoughby, Ohio. In 2019, the company opened a second location in Cleveland proper, a 55,000-square-foot property under one roof, and in 2023, a third facility in Akron, which includes two warehouses totaling 65,000 square feet on a seven-acre property.
We recently enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation with the founder, owner, and company President, Jerry Bednarcik, who has 40 years of industry experience, and his son, Gerry Bednarcik, Operations, who joined the company five years ago from a Fortune 500 roofing company. Daughter Avalon, who works in sales, logistics and management, has been at Apollo over eight years.
Say hello to the Window Man
“I’ve been in the industry since 1985, so I have an extensive background of exterior building product knowledge and installation expertise,” Jerry says. “I’m still very much hands-on and I’ll do product demos for contractors and work through anything they need help with. Customers call me ‘Jerry the Window Man’ and say, ‘Go ask Jerry, he knows!’”
Just before our interview, he was helping young salesmen working for a contractor measure a house for siding. “They had been using roof and siding scopes and would have to go back to their office to work out an estimate, but I showed them—while walking around the building twice—how they could give the homeowner a price right then and there. They said they hadn’t realized how easy it was, using basic math skills. Next, I’m going to help a contractor figure out how to sell based on the client’s needs.”
Adds Gerry, “It’s about supporting the customer, being their champion, going out in the field, and educating a sales team like my dad did today. And we do this in-house for our staff too; we host internal trainings to make sure our staff is up to date on all the products we offer. We also do customer-facing events every year so they’re aware of what’s new in the market—be it product update trainings or certification courses—because if they know more, they can sell more and support their business growth,” he explains.
“We’re taking our one-stop shop to the next level. For contractors who want their business to grow, we’ll give them the tips and tricks they need to be successful.”
The full envelope
According to Gerry, Apollo’s portfolio of products—which includes windows, siding, roofing, doors, and more—is the most expansive in the region. Some distributors, he says, stock one line of siding or offer limited colors of shingles, for example, which results in delays. That is far from the case at Apollo. The company stocks four lines of siding in the full color offering, carries all lines of asphalt roofing shingles, and works with more than a dozen window and door manufacturers regularly. The team operates under the motto, “We have what you need, when you need it.”
The company is prepared to service a full range of needs—whether contractors are looking for cost and efficiency or to meet the latest ENERGY STAR requirements—with offerings such as foam backed or composite siding, reinforced thermally broken triple pane windows, and cool-roof reflective shingles, to name a few.
“If a builder wants a high-efficiency net zero home, we can accommodate them, and if they say, ‘I need to get this job done as fast as possible,’ we can help with that too. Our knowledge, service, and attention to detail help us navigate the product portfolio and assist customers in a meaningful way.”
Logistics and same-day delivery
It’s one thing to have a large product inventory from leading brands and the requisite knowledge about those products, and another thing entirely to get those materials delivered on time. Here again, Apollo excels.
The company maintains a fleet of over 30 delivery vehicles on the road daily, and also invests in specialty equipment including mounted tow motors referred to as a Moffit or Piggyback—a three-wheel all-terrain vehicle that detaches from a flatbed on arrival at a construction site, unloads the materials, and moves the material to wherever it is needed on site.
“Another vehicle type we have is a boom truck or conveyor vehicle or what I call a ‘laddervator,’ with a range of 28 to 36 feet. It’s mounted on a flatbed vehicle and once that truck is planted, the driver can pivot around and shoot the roofing material up to the crew in the quantity they need, exactly where they need it,” says Gerry.
The delivery crew will also hand-drop siding materials exactly where required. Some companies will drop a pallet on the curb, but Apollo will place it according to the customer’s specifications.
Serving the customer is always top of mind, Gerry adds. “If you’re focused on problems, anyone always find them, but here we focus on solutions. I like to say, ‘The answer is yes; what’s the question?”
To help customers, Apollo is open six days a week, “and I have even opened on a Sunday to get a contractor that last bundle of shingles. Our entire organization from sales to delivery has the same mindset: ‘Let’s make sure the customer is taken care of.’”
Digital systems for people and performance
When Gerry returned to the company five years ago, he developed a multiphase long-term plan. The first phase began with redesigning the company’s website, making it attractive and customer-friendly, and building up back-end capabilities so it could move into the second phase. This involved updating the company’s internal processing system, including accounts receivable and accounts payable, by utilizing an improved enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
“Now that our process and network are stable and humming along efficiently, in phase three, we’re going to implement a back-end portal that will let our customers sign on at any hour—they can see their invoices, submit for rebates, pay their bills, look at delivery status, and have a myriad of updates and resources at their fingertips. We’ll be able to service them to an even higher degree than we have before,” Gerry explains.
“I knew this was going to be challenging, and it was a bit like our Apollo space mission,” he says, laughing. “We want to make our service out of this world and, once fine-tuned, we can communicate more efficiently with our customers, market our products more effectively, and let our staff focus more on customers instead of all the other tasks they used to get bombarded with.”
Building community
Treating customers like family extends to the company’s annual fish fry, with fishing boats hired to take customers out on Lake Erie in teams to catch walleye tournament-style. “While this is going on we have live music on shore and a whole array of entertainment along with a fresh fish fry and other food—smoked meats, chicken tenders, cheeseburgers. It’s a two-day event and it helps build camaraderie and a sense of family and helps show our appreciation of our customers.”
Part of the fun at the event involves caricature drawings of Jerry. One year it was Jerry holding a trident with a roofing shingle impaled upon it; last year Jerry appeared as a surfer, riding a window on the waves into shore. “Unlike the national competitors, we live in this community, and when customers buy products from us, they recognize us at the grocery store or the bank, and from their kids playing on the same baseball teams as ours. We live here and we care,” says Gerry.
And caring for the community goes beyond caring for customers, extending to charitable organizations, with Apollo participating in building projects for Habit for Humanity and Home for the Holidays, an initiative of the local chapter of the Home Builders Association; the team also supports the Make-A-Wish Foundation and St. Jude’s Hospital. “We’re a big advocate of supporting all the people around us.”
Fast tracking to the future
Apollo Supply Company was ranked as 2020’s Fast Track 50 No. 1 winner, in the Established Business Class, by virtue of having reported sales of at least $4 million in the years between 2016 and 2020, and has consistently placed in the top five since in the Fast Track 50 organization’s listing, which honors business excellence among the fastest growing businesses in the region.
At the time of writing, it looks now as if opening a fourth location at an undisclosed location within the region will happen sometime in 2025. Would the company ever consider expanding outside the state, we ask? The Bednarciks aren’t ruling out the possibility. “With our 20 percent growth factor, we are definitely on the path to grow our business dynamically over the next few years,” says Jerry. “We’re focused on controlled growth because we want to make that growth reproducible; we want to maintain our customer-centric culture and our family values, and still grow efficiently.”
Indeed, Apollo Supply Company’s journey from a single facility in Willoughby to a regional powerhouse exemplifies the enduring impact of customer-centric values, community engagement, and innovative growth strategies. With a deep commitment to supporting contractors, building lasting relationships, and delivering unmatched service, the company has carved out a unique niche in the exterior building products industry. As Apollo prepares for its next chapter, including expansion and cutting-edge customer solutions, one thing remains clear: this family-owned business is not just about building homes—it’s about building trust, community, and a legacy that continues to inspire.
