Up a cobblestone-lined brick pathway and behind an elegant 10-by-10-foot bifold door covered by a steel-supported flat roof, an old warehouse at 6 Dodge Street in Essex is in the final stages of a makeover. With high ceilings, exposed ductwork, polished concrete floors, and historic windows adorning steel displays, the aesthetic of the industrial space straddles a line somewhere between antique and modern. “This place has been any number of things—a machine shop, an embroidery shop—and now, it’s a window and door showroom,” says Jason Neuffer.
For Neuffer, the October opening of the Essex showroom represents a noteworthy moment in the history of Openings Millwork, the high-end window and door distributor he started 18 years ago. With an inventory that includes a small collection of brands, including Lepage Millwork, Vue, and a few other small manufacturers, the new space enables clients to become acquainted with an array of elegant building materials long before they’re installed between 2×4 studs.
Originally from Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada, Neuffer grew up helping his carpenter father on jobs. (A conference table prominently placed in the showroom was crafted his late father.) After a stint studying and working in finance, he returned to the building industry, taking an opportunity to expand the presence of Lepage Millwork—a Canadian artisanal window and door maker based in Canada—into eastern Massachusetts. When he started Openings Millwork in 2007, he essentially ran the operation out of his pickup truck, loading the bed with window and door samples cushioned with moving blankets and rolling up to architects’ offices around Greater Boston. “That’s how I—later, we—got the brand out there,” Neuffer says.
In rounding out Openings Millwork with a small support staff, Neuffer says, “We bring a consultative approach to the sales process, and we try and use our experience to help drive the design of a project while respecting the architect’s vision. At the end of the day, we want to give the best window and door package that will last the longest and perform the best.” That means asking lots of questions, particularly since clients’ homes routinely need to account for the harshness blowing in from the Atlantic. (Neuffer’s first inquiry when determining project materials and design: How close to the water is it?) It also means accounting for specifics all too easy to overlook as planning gives way to execution. “Even if a window fits on a piece of paper,” Neuffer says, “it doesn’t mean it’ll fit in the truck.”
As Neuffer’s client base grew from Nantucket to New Hampshire and points between, the industry changed profoundly; that bifold door, he says, couldn’t have even been constructed 18 years ago. “The size and scale and grandeur of the products that we make today—they’re just not represented on pages in a catalog or in a corner-cut sample.” Then in 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic scrambled old ways of doing business and restricted opportunities for interactions, Neuffer invited clients from architecture firms to check out the Lepage windows and doors at his house in Essex. That helped spur the idea of giving the business a new, brick-and-mortar dimension. Along with providing a way for clients to stay abreast of leading-edge technology, a showroom offers in-person opportunities for builders, architects, and clients to touch and comprehend the details that distinguish big-ticket models from their big-box-store counterparts, Neuffer says.
For companies like Lepage—a manufacturer large enough to produce with economies of scale, Neuffer says, but small enough to prepare custom orders that are truly custom—the showroom provides up-close exposure to products that are the most heavily engineered elements of a home as well as their greatest single material expense. To that end, Neuffer says, the showroom inventory reflects larger trends in the industry’s highest ends, leaning toward hardwoods over PVC (or, for that matter, eastern white pine) and lending primacy to tradition. “Old-school technology is still the best,” Neuffer says. “The very best double-hung window we have utilizes weights and balances and chains. There’s no better way to make a double-hung window today.” With only finishing touches before the grand opening, Openings Millwork is on the cusp of a new chapter. Just walk up that brick walkway toward the door that opens like an accordion to experience it for yourself. “When you open that 10-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide door with one finger,” Neuffer says, “it moves like a cabinet door in your kitchen.”