T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Fencing Solutions Owner Steve Slifer, left, and Sales and Operations Specialist Todd Bolar, right, pose for a photo outside of the company’s headquarters at 507 Iowa Ave. W. in Marshalltown. Fencing Solutions has added six staff members in the last year or so and is also looking to expand its offerings with new services and reaching a broader territory across the state.

Fencing Solutions, a family-owned business located at 507 Iowa Ave. W. in Marshalltown, has seen an increase in demand for its services in recent years, and as a result, the company is expanding its staff.

Todd Bolar has joined the team as the sales and operations specialist, and Owner Steve Slifer’s son Noah is the engineering specialist. Additionally, Slifer’s nephew Evan Roberts has come onboard as a supervisor alongside fellow supervisors Xavier Slifer (Steve’s son) and Baylee Waldo. According to Steve Slifer, the company has added six staff members in the last year or so, and his twin sister Stacy Roberts is serving as the office manager.

In addition to the Fencing Solutions business, which, as its name suggests, focuses on building fences, they also operate a screenprinting and embroidery business out of the same headquarters, and Bolar will assist with sales there as well.

“It’s been great because (Slifer) has given me the opportunity to learn how to build fences. It’s not as easy as it looks. So yeah, all summer long I’ve been building fences,” Bolar said. “We’ve got great crew leaders. They take time, and they’ve taught me quite a bit — enough to be able to know what I’m talking about with the customers.”

Because of high interest rates, Steve Slifer said home sales have dropped somewhat in recent months, but he’s confident that they will pick back up once those rates go back down.

“Once they start dropping again, here we go because people can start to afford the interest rates versus seven percent, they can get back down to three (or) four percent, and I think it’s just gonna explode,” he said. “But we’re looking at different things. We do, kind of, anything. We’re kind of looking at possibly starting to do some landscaping with it. We kind of do whatever they ask. We do small construction jobs to repair things and stuff, but it’s so hard to find businesses out there that ain’t swamped, and the ones that ain’t busy, you probably don’t want to mess with anyway. We’re kind of a family owned and ran business, and we want to take pride in what we do. We want to do it the way we do it for our own property, and people see that and they like it. So they’re always asking, ‘Hey, is there anything else you guys do? Can you do anything else?’ We can do a lot of things, it’s just (that) you’ve got to add the people and have the people to do it.”

The long-term plan, he added, is to have three divisions for the east, central and west areas of the state while exploring franchising options in other locations across the country as far away as Birmingham, Ala. Other potential future services include staining fences and decks, power washing, small tree work and stump grinding, drawing on Bolar’s previous experience in the tree business.

Slifer, whose wife runs a chiropractic clinic inside the same Iowa Avenue headquarters, is also working to add four more rooms for a hairstylist to accommodate an expansion of her business. He is constructing a new warehouse at his property just south of Marshalltown, and he plans to move the Holy Grounds Coffee truck inside the building at some point down the line. For more information, Fencing Solutions can be reached at 515-499-5578 or 641-750-0478 or found online at https://www.fencingsolutionsiowa.com/.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.