Authorized Montel Distributor Spotlight: Doug Winger of Workpointe

Doug Winger started in the furniture and storage industry as an installer, working with his hands and staying active. This would pay the bills, he thought, until something better came along.

“I ended up working 60 hours in my first week,” Doug said, “and I just kept working.”

What started off as a part-time job—though you wouldn’t know it from the hours that Doug put in—has since become a storied career. Now, nearly 35 years later, Doug is the director of storage for Workpointe, an Authorized Montel Distributor. More than just a furniture company, Workpointe is an all-in-one workplace space and operations optimizer for corporate office buildings, warehouses and everything in between. They also offer design services, project management, asset management and more to schools, health care facilities and government offices.

Doug and his team at Workpointe always knew Montel was a big deal in the storage industry, so two years ago when Workpointe sought to expand their product offerings, Montel was at the top of their list. The two companies struck a deal, and the rest is history.

Doug works mostly with Workpointe storage clients in the fields of education and health care. He also trains his salespeople on the entire Montel catalog so they can match the right equipment with the right project. This is no small feat. Montel makes a lot of space-saving products, many of them customizable. Luckily, Doug is naturally mechanically minded. In his downtime, he enjoys working on cars and bikes—mountain bikes, dirt bikes and motorcycles.

Montel’s menagerie of storage solutions, however, have helped Workpointe overcome many complicated challenges in their industry and immediate market. As a furniture and storage provider based on the West Coast, in Seattle, Washington, Workpointe must always keep earthquakes in mind. 

“Everything we do out here is seismic,” Doug said, “which means all the rails have to be seismically anchored and the system has to meet seismic requirements.”

All Montel products are seismically tested for strength and safety. Another element that complicates any furniture or storage installation is ADA compliance. To ensure that anyone can use next-generation space-saving storage and racking equipment, Montel meets ADA compliance for all its products. Thanks to Montel’s commitment to engineering high-quality products, AMDs such as Workpointe can spend less time poring over technical details and more time getting to know their clients and understand their struggles.

Workpointe recently completed two large-scale projects for a major airline who sought storage capable of holding cumbersome aircraft components that would otherwise crowd and stress traditional heavy-duty industrial racking. After much deliberation, Workpointe, Montel and the airline decided on a high-density Mobilex racking system, combining strength and space efficiency into a single powered solution.

“To win in storage,” Doug said, “you have to customize the box to fit the needs of the client, and get them involved in the decision and design instead of just telling them what it is.”