At a young 68, Tim Bock bikes an 18-mile round trip to Chicago's Lakefront Roofing & Siding Supply office. This, he says, along with seven children — three of them foster kids — keep him feeling more like he’s in his 40s.

It’s an appropriate age to feel, as Lakefront Roofing & Siding celebrates 40 years in business this year. The company has endured expansions, reductions, recessions, and more throughout the years to remain an independent distributor serving the Windy City and beyond.

Bock attributes this success to the fact that the business is about more than making money — it serves its community through donations to homeless shelters while treating its customers like royalty.

“It's a mission business, if you will. It's a business beyond just making money. It's something that gives back,” said Bock, Lakefront’s president and general manager.

Roots in Roofing

The original Lakefront Rooofing & Supply facility. Photos courtesy of Lakefront Roofing & Supply.

Bock’s roofing journey began in an unlikely place after becoming a member of Jesus People USA in 1978. JPUSA is a Christian intentional community located on the north side of Chicago, which has since run over 30 businesses in over 40 years.

Working as a foreman for a painting company with JPUSA, he came across coatings while working with a roofer on a project. Intrigued, Bock went to his company’s board and suggested it could enter the coatings industry. The company agreed, entering the roof coatings market with no intention of expanding into other avenues.

A month later, the company diversified into additional roofing products, such as hot tar. Around 1980, Bock made the full transition, launching JP Roofing.

“I started it from scratch and then learned the hard way about leaks and a lot of blood, sweat and tears,” he said.

Looking to expand, Bock purchased a building he thought would suit their needs. The facility had a large entrance that Bock described as perfect for a “drive-thru roofing supply.” In renovating the building, they learned of the other contractors who did business in the area, planting the idea of potentially serving those contractors as a supplier.

The idea remained just that until tragedy struck. In the late ‘80s, as JP Roofing worked on the roof of the Moody Bible Church, one of its workers died on the job due to a fall. As Bock tells it, the crew left for lunch, but one remained on the roof to move a beam. When the beam fell, so did the worker.

“I see the boom coming over and I’m like, ‘Okay, no one’s gonna get hurt, it’s just gonna hit the kettle.’ And then I saw somebody launch, one of my guys launch,” he said.

The tragedy shook Bock, causing him to reassess the roofing business. Not wanting to lose all the roofing expertise they had gained, he sought a way to repurpose that knowledge. The building they purchased, with its large doors and drive-thru supplier vibe, came to mind.

“We know roofing now, what if we just sell the material?” he said, recalling his thought process. “I don’t want my guys at risk.”

In 1985, Bock launched Lakefront Roofing & Supply, basing its name on the location’s proximity to Lake Michigan. He said they started with under $50,000, half of which he said went into purchasing the large doors needed for the building.

“We were very meager on the money, we had to self-fund everything,” he said.

That gumption paired well with having former roofing contractors shift to the supply side, giving the fledgling company an immediate advantage over its competitors.

“It’s the idea of the roofer knowing what a roofer wants,” he said.

Expansion and Consolidation

Lakefront quickly added sheet metal, propane and other services for its customers to cater to the roofing industry's many needs.

With a solid background in roofing, Bock set out to equip Lakefront with the services he knew Chicago roofers needed. They purchased a brake to establish a sheet metal shop, a knuckle boom crane and added the availability of propane.

“When I was a roofer, I would go to three different places every day. I had to go to the propane place, the metal shop, and I had to go to a roofing supply,” he said. “I thought, ‘Man, if we can put these two under one roof, what a win that would be.”

Today, having a diversified offering at a branch is commonplace, but as Bock said, distributors at the time were mainly vendors or manufacturers instead of dedicated roofing suppliers. Bear in mind, ABC Supply, one of the largest roofing distributors, was founded in 1982, three years before Lakefront.

In addition to knowing what roofing contractors needed, Bock based Lakefront’s customer service on his own experience as a smaller roofing operation. He said he often ran into suppliers who barely gave him the time of day when he had questions about projects. The experience stuck in his mind, inspiring him to treat Lakefront customers, regardless of size, like royalty.

“In my head, I just thought, ‘Wow, this is what these small, medium-sized contractors … have to live with? Nobody treats them right, and I'm going to treat people right,” he said.

As the business thrived, the company opened new locations, at one point manning five branches. In 2006, they opened two branches in Waukegan, Ill. and Schererville, Ind. Bock said in hindsight, it was one of the worst times to expand, thanks to the Great Recession. They had to close those locations and squeeze into two until finally settling in at Lakefront’s singular location on N. Kimball Ave.

“After a while, we just saw really, we have the assets of people,” he said. “People are our assets, our greatest assets, and they are very skilled — let's get them all under one roof. So we jumped into the one supply and it has been so great.”

Nowadays, Lakefront operates as a one-stop shop for roofing companies. Those who want to browse from the comfort of their office can go to Lakefront’s website and use its online store to purchase materials.

He said it can be challenging to compete with major distributors like ABC Supply, QXO (formerly Beacon) and SRS Distribution. However, as a member of NEMEON — a purchasing cooperative of more than 100 independent distributors — he can brainstorm with other like-minded owners on remaining successful. Bock serves on the NEMEON board of directors.

“The biggest thing that we probably have been able to say to everybody is that we're owner-operators, we are not salespeople that just are doing it for a paycheck, this is our livelihood,” he said. “We are people who really care as much as we can.”

He said it’s also all about friendly competition. Lakefront is opposite a Home Depot, and Bock said that thanks to a relationship with the general manager, the businesses will send customers to each other if they don’t have the materials they need.

A Unique Business Model

The entrance to Lakefront's facility denotes the business' attitude toward building with purpose.

As previously mentioned, Lakefront Roofing & Supply is owned by JPUSA. Thanks to its 501(d) status, Lakefront, alongside the other 30-plus companies under JPUSA, financially supports the church. The vast majority of profits come from Lakefront.

Bock calls it a “mission business,” a philosophy that encourages businesses to do more than seek profits but do good in the world. He said he didn’t receive a paycheck for 45 years working under JPUSA, often donating what he did receive. He left the JPUSA community a few years ago but still runs the business. During that time, he wrote multiple books on the subject of “mission business.”

The ministry has a shelter that houses about 200 to 300 people, which Lakefront’s profits have helped run for the past 30 years. Builders Warehouse, linked to Lakefront, works with Cornerstone Community Outreach, which serves Chicago’s homeless and low-income population.

In 2008, the supplier created Lakefront University, a program offered every winter to teach students on-the-job skills and best business practices. According to the company’s website, more than 100 people attend the university annually.

Although it has a distinct business model, like other distributors, Lakefront isn’t immune to the industry's consolidation efforts. Bock said they receive daily phone calls about acquisition deals, but Lakefront isn’t for sale.

“The reason we’re not selling is we support a mission of 200 people in the inner city of Chicago and 300 people who are homeless. You know what I mean? We're something bigger than that,” he said.

With 40 years under its belt, Bock said Lakefront isn’t slowing down. It aims to be a long-term company in the industry that still innovates. Earlier this month, the business launched new software called CPQ that allows customers from across the U.S. to order custom sheet metal and have it shipped through Builders Warehouse.

Bock won’t be alone as Lakefront works toward another 40 years. Some of its employees have been with the company for 15 to 35 years.

“I think they understand it’s something beyond just a roofing supply,” Bock said.