Jim Ziminski is the Consummate ‘Corporate Man’

Jim Ziminski, the consummate industry insider, refuses to be labeled “corporate” despite his success within its realm. He is the chairman of Omnia Exterior Solutions, a new private equity-backed portfolio company launched in June 2023.

Amidst a meadow-filled backdrop, Jim Ziminski rattles off facts and figures, red-letter dates and historical comparisons that only an insider could enumerate, which seems about right if you are in any way familiar with the level of accomplishment he has attained.

For readers who may not recognize his name, it’s OK since another attribute Ziminski is notorious for is being unassuming. He would rather his accomplishments speak for themselves, and, to that end, they do; lest you think it’s hyperbole, perhaps you’re familiar with Mr. Roof or its sister brand, Able Roofing.

Today, the gentleman whose prescient insight into brand evolution and where trends lead returns to the roofing industry in a new capacity: heading a private equity-created portfolio company called Omnia Exterior Solutions.

Mike Blumenfeld, Ziminski’s partner in the quest to create a new paradigm within the residential roofing contractor space, successfully bundled disparate flooring companies under a private equity portfolio company.

Building a ‘Less Traveled’ Road

To appreciate the accolades, you should know how much Ziminski has accomplished during his 30-year career in the building envelope space. It neither came suddenly nor quickly, and it started not with roofing but with window sales. The year was 1985.

“I was selling windows for a manufacturer [and] a couple to dealers in upstate New York and New England and did pretty well, and then a couple of years later joined a startup burgeoning high-end vinyl company called Great Lakes Window out of Toledo,” Ziminski recalled. “It was a phenomenal experience for me … I had to learn how to speak their language and learn the game to get legitimacy.”

Among the many other things he says he learned was that his job was not really about selling windows or really “selling” anything, but how to speak with entrepreneurs and businessmen about how to help them run their businesses better and make more profits.

He says he spent a lot of time learning the retail side of the business, how to generate leads, how to sell in the home and the like, and considers those first years pivotal insofar as he honed his chops learning how to listen to his customers and, more importantly, what he did — and didn’t — want to do.

“What I learned was I didn't want to do that for a living because, as those guys would say, you wake up broke every day,” he explained. “And windows … [is] a lot different than roofing; roofing is a need-based sale; you call someone generally because you need a roof, so I don’t have to establish with [a customer] you need a roof, I have to establish that I'm the best company to do your roof.”

After his successful stint in window sales, gaining credibility in what was once referred to as “building product supplies,” Ziminski accepted a position with CertainTeed heading up the company’s Wolverine vinyl siding division. A few years of success with CertainTeed was his gateway to a transformative experience with a family-run concern called Vipco.

It was in the early aughts when he joined Vipco, but Ziminski knew vinyl siding had already seen its heyday.

“Consumers really didn’t like vinyl siding; it was something they ended up with,” he said. “I used to joke with my dealers … ‘It’s like Denny’s; no one goes to Denny’s, you just end up there.”

In short, Ziminski gained the trust of the Crane family, which owned Vipco, and convinced them that a wholesale rebrand was the best way to conquer the market. Through market research, consumer focus groups and careful study of industry trends, Ziminski rechristened the concern’s vinyl siding division Crane Performance Siding and began competing with the big players of the day, already selling a superior product for exterior finishes known generally as fiber cement board. Competitor brands included established names like James Hardy. Ziminski offered his version, Crane Performance Siding and his rebranding was an unabashed success for the Crane family.

Of course, nobody thought the gravy train would end — until it did. In fact, the train stopped running and derailed to such an extent that the disruption would soon be known by history as the aptly named “Great Recession.”

“The Cranes realized they needed to diversify out of building materials, and [together] we decided we should sell the business,” he said.

The sale of Crane Performance Siding, with its good reputation as a solid product produced by a well-run organization, was consummated in 2011 when the division was acquired by Georgia Gulf, which owned Royal Building Products. As part of the deal, Gulf insisted that Ziminski be included in the transaction.

“And we became part of Royal Building Products,” Ziminski ruefully recalled. “And our sales led the whole thing for the whole company, and again, I'm in corporate America; and again, [after] about three years, I'm like, ‘Okay, it's time for me to move on, this is not for me.’”

The “un-corporate” corporate man left Royal Building Products and rejoined the Cranes, this time to run the family’s roofing division, Able Roofing. With a laser-like focus and pedagogic understanding of branding, Ziminski combined Crane’s roofing and general contracting divisions into Crane Renovation Group.

“[We] started to grow that business and had a pretty nice seven-year run,” Ziminski said. “And then, ultimately, [I] decided, you know what, it’s time to move on; and they were looking more for operational excellence, which isn’t my forte; I’m more of a visionary in sales and marketing.”

Ziminski and Ann “Tanny” Crane, president of Crane Renovation Group, pictured in a 2016 article from Columbus Business First, after Ziminski consolidated Crane’s roofing and contracting divisions under one brand. Photo by Dan Trittschuh; courtesy of Columbus Business First

The Iron is Hot

Ziminski stayed on with the Cranes, looking for potential acquisitions to bring into the family fold. Still, ultimately he recognized the family seemed content managing the roofing and exterior building empire their prodigal creationist developed. As 2022 came to a close, so did that chapter in Ziminski’s career.

Fortuitously, his departure coincided with a previously scheduled speaking engagement at 2022’s Best of Success conference. During the two-day event in Scottsdale, Ariz., he met someone whose ambition and ethics mirrored his own and who had already achieved within the commercial flooring space what Ziminiski saw coalescing within roofing contracting’s residential sector.

“That’s where I met my partner on the acquisition side,” Ziminski said.

He refers to Mike Blumenfeld, managing partner at BZR Advisors, who had worked with private equity firms to consolidate nearly two dozen flooring concerns under a portfolio company called Artisan Design Group. Ziminski says the umbrella concern, with 22 different brands, generates more than $1.7 billion in annual sales.

After Ziminski’s address at BOS 2022, he says Blumenfeld approached him, unabashedly noting the depth of insider’s knowledge within the roof contracting space Ziminski possessed. Blumenfeld said the residential roofing contractor industry was primed for a similar consolidation that finished flooring had undergone.

It seems unlikely that someone with Blumenfeld’s ability to fashion a billion-dollar concern went into Ziminski’s address unaware of the speaker’s professional successes. By the start of this year, the two men set out to replicate what Artisan Design Group has become to flooring products in residential roofing. The founding of Omnia Exterior Solutions gestated for about six months while Ziminiski and Blumenfeld, through an advisory partnership they formed called BZR Advisors, sought out the right private equity firm to execute the launch.

That firm turned out to be a young private equity called CCMP Growth Advisors. Established only in 2022, the new partners’ financier has an impressive lineage: a spinoff concern from a private equity outfit with an impressive financial pedigree called CCMP Capital, formerly JP Morgan Partners, a one-time appendage of JP Morgan Chase.

Mark McFadden, co-managing partner at CCMP Growth Advisors, the private equity firm that Ziminski and partner Mike Blumenfeld chose to partner with when planning the launch of Omnia Exterior Solutions.

Ziminski and Mark McFadden, CCMP Growth Advisor’s co-managing partner, weren’t strangers. Ziminski says he first met McFadden some 13 years earlier, and the two had stayed in touch.

“We'd talk about deals, we'd have a beer, we'd, you know, talk about the industry,” Ziminski says. “I was doing some consulting work for them on another roofing deal, and I told him what my partner and I were going to do, and he said, ‘Jim, we've been trying to partner with you forever.’”

Ziminski says McFadden was eager to make something happen. He told McFadden that he and Blumenfeld wanted more than just an outfit that bankrolled. They wanted to be partners in the new venture, and Ziminski also wanted a seat at the table; in this case, on the new venture’s board.

“I have a vision for what this thing can be,” Ziminski says, recalling that conversation with McFadden. “He's like, ‘Well, Jim, I'd like you at one point to be CEO,’ and I said, ‘I don't want to do that anymore; I would be on the board,’ and he said, ‘How about if you're the chair of the board?’ and I said, ‘That's perfect.’”

On June 1, 2023, Omnia, with Ziminski as chairman announced through a press release it had arrived and, as its first acquisition, welcomed a well-established brand, Hoffman Weber Construction, based in Minneapolis, Minn., as an Omnia-owned concern.

Jim Ziminski on Vetting the ‘Siren Call’ of Private Equity

The industry vet offers contractors besieged by PE propositions some sage advice

As 2023 began, so too did a new era for Jim Ziminski, the roofing contractor wunderkind who helped his longtime employer, the Crane family, offload its exterior siding division, Crane Performance Siding, to Royal Building Products, before making its roofing division, Able Roofing, a nationally recognized brand.

The kismet meeting between Ziminski and his now business partner, Mike Blumenfeld, at last December’s “2022 Best of Success” conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., led to the creation of a consultancy firm, BZR Advisors, which hopes to replicate Blumenfeld’s success of consolidating multiple flooring operations under a single portfolio concern. That entity now generates more than $1 billion in revenue.

In business, six months can be a mere blip or an eternity, depending on the perspective. In this case, it was as if the universe ensured the underlayment of this new endeavor was perfectly adhered to by two men sharing similar values, ethics and goals.

“Rather than do it a ‘traditional’ way, which would be to find a contractor who wants to sell and then source [them] to different private equity groups and get someone to buy, he said, ‘Hey, let's go talk to eight or 10 private equity groups,” Ziminski said. “Find one that shares your vision, Jim, and then let's partner with them.”

And, so they did.

Ziminski is a font of knowledge about best practices dealing with private equity and offers up some important questions contractors should ask — of themselves and those interested in acquiring their labors of love — during these heady days of buying and selling, merging and acquiring.

“Some private equity firms [may] look for [companies] … on the cheap, so that [they] can put a bunch together and then roll it up,” Ziminski explained. “So they might be looking for a low valuation for a business; other private equity firms might be saying, ‘OK, we want just retail guys or storm guys.’”

He notes that, in most cases, private equity firms are interested in bottom-line revenues and whether an organizational structure will remain in place after an acquisition since most private equity firms rightly acknowledge they have no clue how to run a roofing contracting firm.

“Do you have someone that can stay and carry it on reasonably?” he asked rhetorically, roleplaying as a private equity prospector. “They're looking for the management structure; they're looking for good [bookkeeping] to determine if it’s a profitable business … [with] systems and processes that can carry on.”

For contractors reading this and thinking, “Oh, it’s time; I’m going to cash out and enjoy some fishing in the Gulf of Mexico,” it may be more complicated. Valuation is only partially a science, so it depends on how well the organization maintains its records and safeguards its reputation.

“[Private equity firms] all have different versions and models and due diligence [processes]," Ziminski said. “Once they agree and sign a letter of intent, I don't care who it is, it's a hard, arduous process. They want to know every detail of the business; the contractor needs to be prepared and make sure they have their finances in order.”

Of course, every concern is run differently. Where one principal will have spreadsheets prepared as if gearing up for a Head of State dinner, others may say, as Ziminski colorfully described it, “Hey, talk to my accountant; he does everything, and here’s my shoebox of stuff. And others are very organized. I've seen all sorts.”

Ziminski notes that while some firms want extreme organization, others may not care. “They'll do all the work, but know they're going to probably pay less for a business like that,” he said.

For Blumenfeld and Ziminski, making a fast buck is far from the point. Neither is in this for philanthropic reasons, but they agreed at the outset that reinvestment in their new endeavor, Omnia Exterior Solutions, was the priority.

Ziminski, for sure, needs not to create a vanity project. His legacy in the roofing contractor world is secure. For him, a top-line question that contractors should ask themselves is how selling will impact those who made the sale possible in the first place: the field crews, support staff and others who helped create the company in the first place.

“One of the things I heard was a lot of the owners are cashing out, but their workers, the people who helped build the business, felt like, ‘What about me? Where [do] I fit in this thing,’” he says. “And, so one of our tenants was we wanted to make sure those folks had opportunities to invest and also get some options in the business so they were financially engaged in the success of the overall platform.”

Where this great consolidation goes and when it will end are still open questions. Other industries, like HVAC, insulation, building envelope distribution and countless others, have already gone through this process and are, as they say in the world of finance, mature. Residential roofing’s turn is still relatively nascent.

“It's very early still,” Ziminski said of the new normal, offering a sports analogy: “It's early in the season, like in football or whatever; there are a lot of teams that look great, and they're going to make it, then they fizzle out, and they don't — so you're going to see some churn.”

— By Bryan Gottlieb

This story was revised at 9:00 AM EST on August 4, 2023, to reflect a correction: the name of the family-run company mentioned was called Vipco, not Difco. The revision reflects this change, and we regret the error.