Hal Wing

by John Blodgett

Hal Wing had spent three and a half days at a tradeshow and had not sold a single ladder when inspiration struck. A hobbyist yodeler — he learned the skill in Germany — Wing donned lederhosen, climbed up one of the ladders on display and like a flashy songbird began warbling. People “were too stunned to move,” recalls Wing. And he sold three ladders.

Wing’s ladder wasn’t just any ladder. It was 24 ladders in one; German-bred and far more articulated than the standard-issue ladder Sears was selling for a tenth of the price. And Wing wasn’t just any salesman. In those days, he spent 300 days a year on the road, splurging one night a month on a cheap motel room and otherwise sleeping in the back of his station wagon on a foam mattress he had placed atop his ladders. Many a night he was stirred from sleep by a cop tapping on the window, asking that he move from the parking lot that served as his campsite. He recalls eating “lots of cheese and crackers.”

That was 1972. Hal Wing, founder and chairman of Little Giant Ladders, still loves those ladders, which he eventually licensed from the German inventor and began manufacturing in Springville in the late 1970s.

“There is a passion that’s been with me since the first time I held [the prototype] in my hands,” he says. That passion was the foundation of belief, and that belief allowed him to look people in the eyes when he pitched his product. Wing likes to say that he never had a person walk away from him. They didn’t always buy, but they listened.

There have been unsteady days. A partnership gone awry dragged the company under in the early 1980s, but Wing bought it back in 1986 and breathed new life into it. In 2003, when revenue was at a sturdy $20 million, he thought that infomercials, an ideal format for demonstrating the see-it-to-believe ladders, might generate new sales. Wing hired the hosts of the home improvement show “Hometime” to help him with his on-the-air product pitch. Revenue grew sixfold in 2004, another 40 percent in 2005 and today remains in the nine digits.

Wing says he never “chased the dollars.” His desire was to run a family business, after his farmer father talked him out of following in his boot-steps. His children started as “little shavers” by helping to fold brochures, and today many close and extended family members work alongside Wing.

Wing jokes that the company has a “great” family benefit — “Work or get fired!” In a more serious moment, he says it’s been great to work with family, sharing with them his father’s wisdom.