As one of nine daughters born to Wisconsin dairy farmers, Diane Hendricks loved her all- American upbringing, but always yearned for more. “I had a beautiful life, living on the farm. Nice house, big square white house,” the roofing queen recalls to Forbes. “But… I always wanted to go to the city. I wanted to wear a suit.”
Hendricks ended up settling down in a small town -- she lives outside of Beloit, Wisconsin -- but she’s certainly made it to the big leagues. With her husband Kenneth Hendricks, she built ABC Supply, the largest wholesale roofing distributor in the nation. The privately-owned firm hauled in $7.2 billion in sales last year, giving Hendricks a net worth of $4.9 billion and a ranking of #122 on the 2017 Forbes 400 list. She is the second richest self-made woman in the country after Marian Ilitch of Detroit.
Her path to this point might surprise some people. An average student in high school (she jokes the subject she liked best was boys), Hendricks became pregnant as a teenager. “At the time, you couldn’t go to school and be pregnant,” says the 70-year-old, who studied at home during her senior year to get her diploma. “I would go up after the other students had left, and do my test and hand in my school work,” Hendricks says. “It was embarrassing but it was okay.”
The young mom gave birth a month before her 18th birthday and soon started working, doing stints as a waitress and a factory worker for pen manufacturer Parker Pen. “Motherhood got in the way real quick and I grew up real fast,” says Hendricks. “It didn’t stop me from wanting to reach my dream. In fact I think I became even more focused on what I wanted to achieve.” She credits her work ethic to watching her parents run the farm -- a 24/7 responsibility -- only breaking for two weeks a year to take the kids on road trips.
She eventually got into selling custom-made homes, where she met her future husband Ken, who had dropped out of high school to go into the roofing business with his father. The couple married and built up a successful business; Hendricks remodeled rentals with her father-in-law, knocking down walls and putting in windows, while Ken grew the roofing business. They also added a trucking operation and a wholesale store, selling carpets and appliances to other landlords. By the early 1980s, Ken and Diane had made enough to kick back and consider their next steps.
Years of working in the roofing industry enabled the Hendrickses to spot a need for a wholesale distributor that consolidated all brands of roofing at one location, instead of making contractors visit each manufacturer’s shop individually. They began mapping out locations across the U.S. -- aiming to bring roofing distribution nationwide -- then opened their first store in Beloit in 1982.
Business grew rapidly. ABC Supply topped 100 stores by 1994, and reached $1 billion in sales four years later. “We knew what the contractor wanted,” Hendricks explains. “They needed choices, they needed to be treated with respect and professionalism. Even though they might be in a pickup truck, they were running a business and we appreciated the hard work it took to be a roofing contractor.”
Tragedy struck in 2007 when Ken died after falling through the roof while checking on new construction at the couple’s home. The housing market was already showing signs of a bubble, but Hendricks decided to hold on and steer the ship through the choppy waters of the recession. Revenues dipped in 2009, but ABC rebounded and purchased rival Bradco Supply the following year, adding 128 locations to the business.
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In 2016, ABC made the biggest acquisition in its history, buying L&W Supply for $674 million, adding interior products like drywall and steel framing to a portfolio that already included windows and sidings. The Wisconsin firm now boasts over 700 locations and is on track to reach $9 billion in revenue for 2017.
Hendricks has since taken on new challenges -- revitalizing Beloit by renovating vacant factories and storefronts into offices and community centers while also helping bring technical education back to local high schools. “The workforce has been pretty well eliminated when it comes to manufacturing, construction, all of the trades. Those aren’t being taught in our schools anymore, they haven’t for probably 30 years,” laments Hendricks. “Our workforce in our nation has never been lower. It is very difficult to hire qualified tradesmen.”
To fill the skills gap, the mother of 7 (including 4 stepchildren) started working with schools in the area around five years ago, pitching in funding for an auto mechanic shop at Beloit Memorial High. She also helped launch a construction program in which students learn the academic side of construction in a classroom, then participate in demolishing, rebuilding and selling a new home. Hendricks donates the labor -- staffers from her contracting firm, Corporate Contractors Inc., show the teenagers the ins and outs of the trade like plumbing and electrical work -- but the kids are in charge of keeping the project on budget. Proceeds from selling the house go back to Beloit Memorial.
Hendricks also hires student interns at Corporate Contractors and encourages other companies to do the same. In February 2017, she opened a career center for middle and high schoolers at Ironworks, a former foundry complex she repurposed to house a business incubator and tech startups. The facility provides tutoring and workshops ranging from coding and healthcare to construction and manufacturing. Last summer, one program trained students to design and build picnic tables that were later donated to the city, while another took local youths on a tour of a fire station, where they learned basic skills such as CPR and trauma care.
“It’s just exposure… showing them the value of a job,” Hendricks says. “We take children and show them the inside of a hospital, we show them the inside of a manufacturing plant, we show them the back room of a restaurant. Work here for a while, see what it’s like.” She continues, “Children are like, wow, is that how a welder works… They can go to vocational school and become a welder that’ll pay $50,000 a year. Those are good jobs,” emphasizes Hendricks. “Really good jobs.”
The ABC chairwoman hopes to equip every child going through high school with the resources and education they need to choose the best career paths for themselves. Her dream scenario? “By the time [students] get out of high school, they know what they’re going to do with their lives,” she summarizes. “That they don’t just graduate, but they graduate with a future. Something that they can really put their souls into.”
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