Dan Higgins said that he always had the drive to be his own boss and not punch a timeclock. That was part of the ambition for him and his wife, Karen, to purchase a piece of property in Wittenberg, along State Highway 45, in 1993. Prior to that, they both lived in Davenport, Iowa and looked all over the country for the right piece of property for them to eventually start a business on.
“We always liked the rolling hills and the trees and everything in Wisconsin,” Dan Higgins said. “We looked at property in the Wild Rose area, Green Bay area, and kept on telling the realtors, it’s not quite what we’re looking for. We knew having good highway access was important. And we wanted to get some land.”
Higgins acknowledged that back in 1993 they extended themselves in order to purchase the Wittenberg property, but everything “worked out great” over the next 30 years.
Their business, Willow Springs, had a humble beginning, as it was started in the garage attached to their house. It started with Higgins selling outdoor wood burners. This eventually led Higgins to expand his product offerings to radiant floor, gas boilers, gas furnaces, mini splits, and more.
Over the years, Willow Springs shifted from selling those products to focusing on its own product label “WSD.” This includes fabricating and marketing its own private-labeled line of products under the WSD brand. Willow Springs also sources and offers products manufactured by third-party companies. The company has a line of products available to HVAC, plumbing, and concrete wholesalers, fulfilling orders from coast-to-coast.
The expansion of the business led to five building additions, and let Higgins add additional employees. Willow Springs currently has eight employees, including Higgins and his wife. In addition, the company has independent sales reps from different states.
Alan Hanke, general manager at Willow Springs, said heat exchangers and copper manifolds are two popular items that are assembled and sold by the company.
“We’ve been called the ‘go to guys’ for heat exchangers,” Higgins said.
Hanke added, “What’s unique about it and what I find from a lot of our customers is that we’re kind of a one stop shop for a lot of different products. And we also are very flexible. Like with the copper manifolds, we’ll make whatever you want. We’ll cut them. We’ll put different sizes together and whatever else. So, we’re really quite flexible for what we do.”
Before Willow Springs sells a product, Hanke said the company does a lot of research and development in an effort to verify it is a worthy product to sell.
“We try to pride ourselves in really vetting a product we pick quite well, because nothing tarnishes your name more than a product that doesn’t work that great,” Hanke said.
“We’ve hit some home runs and we’ve had some flops,” Higgins admitted.
The wide variety of products offered in one of the 236-page Willow Springs catalog helps set the company up to thrive in an environment in which larger companies are consolidating their vendor lists.
“You don’t want to have to buy from 3,000 different vendors,” Hanke said. “They’re narrowing it down, and the vendors that can offer them the widest range of stuff seem to be the ones that they’re picking and sticking with.”
As an example, Higgins said if someone is ordering tubing from a tubing manufacturer, all they can order is the tubing. But if they order from Willow Springs, they can order the tubing, the manifolds, the clips, and all the other components to go with the tubing.
Willow Springs also has designed a custom heat exchanger that is used by the U.S. military. The heat exchanger is used on Humvee-type ambulances, Hanke said.
Higgins added that Willow Springs also sells the U.S. military material to secure rooms. The rooms are lined with the material so sensitive plans and data can be discussed without it being transmitted out of the room.