Company History

RSL’s Beginnings: RSL was founded as a family business over 42 years ago by Bernd Lewkowitz, an immigrant from Europe working as a foreman in a local lumberyard in southern New Jersey. Wishing to achieve “the American dream”, he worked weekends and nights manufacturing a building product that he could sell to the lumberyard. He decided to make windows for doors (called doorlights or doorglass) because in the 1960’s they were generally small wood inserts with single strength untempered glass that could be cut to size. 5x10’s and 10x10’s were the norm and represented the ideal product for a small family start-up business.

He named the company “RSL” after his children, Ron & Sharon Lewkowitz, and continued to work diligently for decades building the company prudently by reinvesting nearly all profits. RSL was one of the first companies to realize that plastic frames would represent the future of commodity doorlights and injection molds were built; this foresight has factored prominently in RSL’s success.

Strategy for Success: From its earliest days, RSL has had two strategies for success that have continued to the present. The first is a focus on product quality. It is no secret that the building standards in Europe are far more stringent than in America and homes there are built to last for centuries. RSL designed and maintains a manufacturing process that makes RSL products the best in our industry. Today, our doorlights, sidelights, and transoms are the only ones in our industry that have a lifetime warranty on both the glass and frame. That can only be attributed to serious attention to product quality throughout the organization. Talking about it in sales or marketing alone would never produce enough results; our employees take tremendous pride in RSL’s reputation for excellent product quality and believe that every doorlight they manufacture should be as if it was made for their own home.

The second strategy for our success is the importance we place on relationships. RSL believes that in order to be successful we need to place equal value on our customers, employees and vendors. Treating only one group well is an insufficient management strategy. Our vendors, employees and customers play an interrelated and critical role in the company’s success. Honesty, integrity and clear communication are but some of the important values that we commit equally to all three groups above. This strategy has been successful, evidenced by the fact that our management and production team has so many members that have been with RSL for decades. Our plant managers have thirty four and thirteen years of experience with RSL, our Operations Manager has been with RSL over thirty three years, our Vice President and Controller have been with RSL twenty five and nineteen years each, and many others in production have extensive experience with the company. Our independent sales representatives and vendors have been associated with RSL for decades in part due to our respectful treatment of them as significant members of our team. Customers sense this teamwork and appreciate our friendly customer service from all levels of the company. Our appreciation for the importance of relationships has been a significant factor in our success.

Injection Molding Experience: RSL is proud of the superior quality of its injection molded frames. In Warren, Ohio our sister company Champion Injection Molding has tremendous capacity to meet the needs of the industry’s largest companies. Our facility there is 200,000 square feet with 65 foot high ceilings, overhead cranes, and tremendous capacity. Injection molding presses that range from a “tiny” 28 tons to 2000 tons operate around the clock, often with robotics, to produce high quality frame sets. Our maintenance free frames use an excellent weatherable resin that will not yellow if unfinished and does not require priming before painting or staining. It has good heat resistance and impact strength, making it an ideal material for doorlight frames.

When Champion Injection Molding is not molding RSL frames in its 12 presses, it uses its considerable plastic processing experience to manufacture other products for industry leaders such as Kodak, Deere Tractors, Ford, Ames Tru-Temper, and IBM. This custom molding expertise, large tonnage presses, and huge capacity potential have been the reasons for our reliable production for nearly twenty years.

Marketing Advantages: RSL is determined to offer unique and compelling reasons for customers to choose RSL as a doorlight supplier. Our decorative catalog, customized literature, and posters are the source of great pride among our sales and customer service team. All of our photography depicts our products with real life settings so that end-users can clearly distinguish the patterns of our glass and the amount of privacy afforded by each. Our doorlights are shown in larger images than any of our competitors because we are convinced that in this context, size really matters! We also arrange our decorative selection by size and caming options because market research indicates that end users make their selection with predetermined ideas of the size of the doorlight that they want in their entry doors. We welcome customers to put our decorative catalog next to any of our competitors’ and compare clarity, size, and presentation on the page. These marketing advantages make a significant difference.

Mission Statement: RSL is dedicated to the goals of operating with integrity, safety & continuous improvement; manufacturing high quality for residential entryways; providing friendly and reliable customer service; and building trust & teamwork among our employees, vendors & customers.