This small Shreveport business provided windows all over the U.S. for 40 years. Here’s how.

A small facility just north of downtown Shreveport may be responsible for more historic replica windows than any other company in the country.

Over the years, Seal Craft, now known as Seal Craft by Contour Windows LLC, has hand-built tens of thousands of windows and made tens of millions of dollars.

“When I left in March (2024), we were at 5,350 projects since we started numbering them in the 90s,” said Ray VanNess, founder and former owner. “I was in business for 10 years before that.”

His first job, at a little shop in Bossier City, almost ended right as it started.

“One day everybody got frustrated and quit, except for me, I was still back there cutting glass.” VanNess said. “The owner comes through there and says, ‘I guess you’re quitting, too?’, and I said, ‘No sir, I need a job.’ He says, ‘Do you know some workers?’ The next day I brought my roommate and my brother, and we started over again.”

By 1981, for $10,000 cash and $20,000 worth of windows, the business was his. In the 1990s he moved it to its current location at 1207 Airport Drive.

The job and business turned into more than he ever imagined and led to adventures he never expected. 

His company has built blast mitigation windows, windows made to withstand pressure waves from explosions, for 15 to 20 forts and bases from Fort Hood, Texas, to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina.

He has also made hurricane impact resistant windows for multiple projects along the U.S. coast, and the company has become known for windows in a legion of smaller new construction hotels at interstate exits from Florida to Oregon.

For a period of years, Seal Craft was the go-to for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, which is responsible for the largest job he ever did which also happened to be the one with the saddest ending.

“The biggest job I ever did was for the Housing Authority in New Orleans and was 12,700 windows,” VanNess said. “It was for HUD back in the day, some of the oldest public housing units in the U.S. We did those in 2002 and a couple of years later Katrina comes through and floods the whole area and they tore a bunch down.” 

He is proud of each of his jobs, but the ones he enjoyed the most were some of the most challenging — those historic buildings with hundreds of windows in which every window was a slightly different size. Bringing those buildings back to life was a particular passion.

“I love it. I’ve been walking through buildings all my life and I know what can be done,” VanNess said.

Seal Craft company became known for window installations in the renovations of the many textile mills along the East Coast, from Georgia to Massachusetts. 

His job has taken him from installing windows at a ski resort at Copper Mountain, Colorado, to a historic machine shop in Jersey City, New Jersey to the American Electric Lofts in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Seal Craft windows can also be found in downtown Shreveport’s Andress Building, the Uneeda Biscuit Lofts, the Southern Belle apartments and more.

His company was so unique it was featured on the television show “Manufacturing Marvels” in 2020.

He is quick to say that, as in any business, not everything was perfect. After windows installed in a project in Fort Worth started leaking, his company was sued. He eventually won the lawsuit, but the litigation expense was $852,000.

Since selling his company three years ago, he has done some consulting work for the new Michigan owners. He hopes they will see the value in the company and do what needs to be done to keep it strong and viable.

“It’s been a wonderful career. I never went to college; I was just a tradesman. It took me all over the United States. It was quite a liberal education for me.”

“The people are the company,” he stresses. It was a great career and one he said he never second-guessed. “I didn’t know how to quit and didn’t have anything else to do.”