It was 1969 and John Mariotti was down on his luck. He had lost everything in a failed Addison window business, and the U.S. government was threatening to auction his house to pay off his outstanding debt.

"I had hit bottom. I couldn't go any farther down," the Elmhurst resident recalled.

He was looking for an out.

What he found was a railroad bridge. The railroad was tearing down an old bridge and offered to sell it to anyone willing to take 400,000 board feet of lumber. He offered the railroad $2,500 for the bridge but said he had no use for the railroad ties or massive oak pilings that came with it.

The railroad accepted this offer but said he had to take the whole bridge, pilings and all.

Though he didn’t know it at the time, that bridge would become the start of Woodland Lumber Co., which in 2004 celebrated its 35th year in business. The company at the corner of Gary Avenue and Lake Street in Roselle, Illinois, is now called Woodland Windows & Doors, and it has grown into a multi-million dollar a year business.

But Mariotti remembers well when business wasn’t quite as profitable.

As he had expected, the lumber sold quickly, but the oak pilings and ties remained a problem. Then one day a landscaper came into his store and asked if he had any railroad ties for sale. Hoping to unload as many as possible, he agreed to sell the ties for $1.50 apiece.

From that day on, he couldn’t keep enough railroad ties in stock. He raised the price to $3 each and then to $4.50 each, but people kept buying. "I went to the railroad for more," he laughed. "I think we started a fad. Everybody wanted railroad ties."

It wasn’t until he passed a sign that said ‘oak firewood for sale’ that he realized the potential of the enormous oak pilings that had once supported that profitable old bridge.

"I started a firewood business with the oak pilings," Mariotti said. "I started selling oak firewood for $25 a ton. We weighed the firewood on a pink bathroom scale."

The company has come a long way from the days of chopping firewood, but one would never know it from a first glance at the rustic operation that characterized the first twenty-five years of business for Woodland. A dilapidated old house with beautiful doors and windows throughout served as the company’s showroom and office from 1969 through 1994. A former grocery store next door had been converted into a factory of sorts, where custom windows were assembled and loaded onto trucks for delivery. Eighteen semi-trailers served as the company’s "warehouse," where bulk loads of windows and doors were stored in a gravel parking lot behind the office and assembly room.

"People never wanted to come in our place," Mariotti, 73, said. "They said, "No way, it’s just a little house.’ But when they came in, they were surprised."

Their humble beginnings had taken the company far, but Mariotti’s children, who now run the business, had bigger dreams in mind. Construction began in September 1994 on the $900,000 building that replaces the two structures and all of the trailers, and now serves as an attractive landmark building at the Lake and Gary intersection. The current Woodland facility is 14,000-square-feet of office and showroom, and the family couldn’t be happier.

Although John and Ann Mariotti still come in and visit, the day-to-day work is handled by four of their children, Rano, Ralph, Kenneth and Frances. Their other three children, Ann Noreen, John Jr. and Particia, helped out with the business when they were younger but now have pursued other careers.

Keeping the family business alive has always been important to the Mariottis. In fact, Kenneth went to work when he was only seven.

Ann Mariotti went to her boys for help in the early firewood years of the business and said that John was ready to throw in the towel. "I said, ’Your dad wants to sell everything; how would you like to go to work for your dad’" Ann Mariotti said.
"In one voice they all said, ‘Mom, we’ll go to work for dad, we’ll stand by him.’"

The boys chopped firewood every night after school and on weekends. "They used to come home and they’d be sooo hungry." Ann Mariotti recalled.

The family commitment to the business has paid off for the company, John Mariotti said. The family members and other employees know their craft and can answer just about any question regarding windows and doors, their main products.
Arlington Heights resident Bob Spratt said the sense of family and quality he received from the company prompted him not only to replace the windows in his house but also return for a large bay window and the replacement of all the doors in his home.
"What impressed us was it is a family business, and you pick that up right away," Spratt said. Spratt was particularly dazzled by the company’s bay window installation. Crews installed the bay window on a Tuesday to Spratt’s satisfaction, but returned on Wednesday and pulled the bay window out again. Much to his surprise, Spratt learned that the workers who installed the window were worried that the molding on the inside might cause problems down the line and, rather than chance it, they decided to pull it out and start from scratch.

It’s stories like that, that enable the company to compete with major remodeling store chains, John Mariotti said. "A happy customer is going to tell 50 people about us," he said. "We make sure every customer is happy."