Josh Granere, who grew up in Elsmore, is back home, and he’s brought Peerless Products with him. The company, based in Fort Scott, recently announced its purchase of a 150,000-square-foot building, formerly home to Endurance Lift Solutions. Peerless plans to create over 100 jobs in the next five years. Granere will be the plant manager of the Iola location.
Granere has been with Peerless Products 11 years now. He’s advanced from working the paint line on the night shift, to the day shift, to the thermal department, to extruding metal, then becoming assembly line supervisor, and then working in scheduling, and eventually, purchasing.
One day, company executives sat Granere down and told him they, “wanted to do a new building for the G800 and it was going to be my building, so find one. And here we are,” laughs Granere, as he sits in his new office at 2702 N. State St. in Iola.
Coming to Allen County is significant to Granere, who currently lives in Moran and has a brother here in Iola.
“I’m very blessed to have the opportunity to be back in my county,” said Granere. “There were other places we looked at, but to choose our county to be part of what we think is a very profitable part of the industry” is special.
Granere explains that the decision to pick Iola was a confluence of several factors and, to be honest, good timing.
Incentives discussed by the City of Iola “were nice, but that wasn’t the sole reason. It was a bit of everything. The building, the location, and obviously my growing up here had to play a role in it. Our president just always circled back to Iola.”
Their location offered convenient access points to two highways, and, Granere said, the excitement from city and county leaders “pumped us up, too. It was all very exciting and accepting, so it seemed like the right thing.”
“This is actually the only building that was occupied out of all the sites we considered, back when Endurance Lift Solutions was here,” continued Granere. “When I first called about this building, Lisse Regehr (Thrive Allen County CEO] told me that Endurance was going back to Texas, so it just seemed like everything was falling into place and meant to be.”
Since the announcement, the first to bring major industry to Iola since Russell Stover arrived in 1994, Granere notes how supportive the community has been, saying “Allen County and Iola have been very receptive.”
PEERLESS plans to use its Iola facility to manufacture the G800 window, one designed for commercial purposes. The G800 is “the highest quality window we want to produce,” explains Granere. “It’s just a more petite product” compared to other Peerless windows. “This window is going to be more standardized,” Granere continues, “so that if you ask for a window, we can probably have it in a couple of days and have some inventory already made. We think we can be ahead of the game.”
Right now, the new facility is undergoing a facelift, with employees cleaning floors, repainting and preparing for new equipment. That said, Granere is already looking to hire.
“We’re actively looking for employees,” says Granere. “Some could be trained here, some in Fort Scott, because we don’t have product yet. But folks are excited and putting in applications, and we want to bring them in and talk to them. It may be a bit bumpy at first because we’re not at 100%, but we’ll be transparent with them.”
And as Granere envisions the future of what now is an empty factory floor, his mind jumps to where things will be in five years. If all goes according to plan, “We’ll have our big sign, a different look to the outside of the building, maybe it’s gotten a bit bigger, and hopefully you’re seeing the parking lot full.”
“That’s the end game, that’s the goal,” says Granere. He’s hoping for a facility, “full of employees working for a common goal, not just for Peerless, but for Iola and Allen County. For me, that’s the ultimate dream.”
