The Quiet Crisis in Historic Window Restoration
- Steve Quillian
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Why Zero Competition Is Destroying the Craft — and Why Mirrors Matter More Than Monopolies
Every once in a while, I receive a message that feels less like a routine inquiry and more like a small diagnostic gift.
This week, it came from a homeowner in Bradenton, Florida.
She wrote to ask if I still hosted First Friday window restoration sessions for the community. She had previously had several of her historic windows restored by a well-known company, Austin Historical. But now, she said, their prices had increased almost six-fold. Whether that number is exact or emotional doesn’t really matter. The meaning is the same.
She wants to continue stewarding her historic home.
She believes in restoring real wood windows.
But the market has priced her out.
So her conclusion was simple and sobering:
“I need to do it myself.”
That single line exposes a quiet crisis in the historic window world.
This Isn’t About One Company
It’s About a Market Void
This is not a story about Austin Historical.
And I don’t say that defensively or sarcastically.
If nobody is there to stop someone from building a monopoly, why wouldn’t they build one?
Why wouldn’t they expand regionally?
Why wouldn’t they take over entire markets?
There’s no moral criticism there.
Austin Historical is based in Orlando. They are trying to take over Florida. Fair enough. There aren’t many other people who have done what they’re doing. They modeled parts of their operation after Double Hung Window Restoration in North Carolina. There’s Hull Historical in Fort Worth, which is kind of an outlier. And really, Austin Historical itself is an outlier in this world.
The deeper problem isn’t that they expanded.
The deeper problem is that there is no one else.
And when there is a void, someone will always fill it.
What Happens When There Is Zero Competition
When there is zero competition in a region, several destructive things quietly take hold:
• Prices become detached from productivity and efficiency
• Speed never has to improve
• Systems never have to be refined
• Teaching never has to scale
• Accountability never has to exist
• Outcomes never have to be benchmarked
• Economization never has to happen
In a zero-competition environment, a provider can remain slow, opaque, mystified, inefficient — and still win every job.
That’s not craftsmanship.
That’s rent-seeking with tools.
And it creates exactly the kind of pricing environment that forces homeowners like the woman in Bradenton into bad DIY or total abandonment of real restoration.
The Homeowner Nobody Is Designing For
Here’s what that homeowner actually represents:
She already believes in historic windows.
She already paid for real restoration once.
She wants to continue stewarding her house.
She’s not value-constrained — she’s price-constrained.
She’s geographically stranded.
She’s open to learning and doing.
She is not an edge case.
She is the actual majority.
And the existing industry structure has no answer for her.
The Second Category of Competition Nobody Talks About
There’s a deeper layer here that has nothing to do with monopolies.
Even among honest, skilled, well-intentioned artisans…
Zero competition still damages the craft.
I know people doing excellent work.
No one can criticize the quality of what they produce.
A skilled artisan friend of mine constantly posts his window restoration work. He does a good job. Nobody should criticize it.
But there’s no competition.
There’s no incentive for him to get faster.
No incentive to build systems.
No incentive to economize.
No incentive to tighten the workflow.
No incentive to rethink the production model.
Not because he’s lazy.
Not because he’s unethical.
Not because he doesn’t care.
But because there is no mirror.
And without a mirror, even good artisans remain slow artisans.
This is bigger than fighting monopolies.
This is about restoring craft pressure.
When There Is No Mirror, Anything Can Exist
This is why slow, unchallenged providers are allowed to exist in nearby cities.
This is why there are one- or two-person outfits with three-year waitlists.
This is why people can be slow, inefficient, opaque, and expensive — and never have to change.
There is nobody else for homeowners to go to.
There is no pressure to economize.
There is no pressure to systematize.
There is no pressure to modernize methods.
There is no pressure to train successors.
There is no pressure to serve more people.
Because there is no competition.
Pointing the way doesn’t work if there’s no one else pointing another way.
And as long as the status quo is maintained, there is no way to challenge a monopoly anyway.
You can’t insert yourself into a vacuum that already belongs to someone else.
A Craft Without Competition Turns Into a Priesthood
A craft without competitive pressure slowly turns into a priesthood.
And priesthoods always end up pricing people out.
They don’t have to be evil.
They don’t have to be corrupt.
They don’t have to be malicious.
They just have to be alone long enough.
Why I’m Building Window Craft
This is the deeper reason behind everything I’m doing.
Workshops.
The Five Pillars of Window Craft.
The Sash Factory.
Outposts.
Apprenticeships.
Three-person teams.
Leadership pipelines.
I am not just trying to preserve windows.
I am trying to restore a craft ecosystem.
I am trying to replace the “one high priest per metro area” model with a distributed guild of capable artisans who can:
• Work faster
• Charge fairly
• Train others
• Serve locally
• Compete honestly
• Raise standards
• Increase access
• Multiply capacity
Not through regulation.
Not through lawsuits.
Not through public shaming.
But by outproducing the monopoly model
and outgrowing the zero-competition craft model.
The Ethical Problem Nobody Talks About
Zero competition isn’t just inefficient.
It’s unethical.
Because it traps historic house stewards in a false dilemma:
Either pay whatever the monopoly charges
Or abandon proper restoration altogether.
That is not stewardship.
That is coercion by scarcity.
Historic house communities deserve real choice.
They deserve multiple capable artisans, not one untouchable provider.
They deserve mirrors, not monopolies.
The Vineyard Doesn’t Lie
That small message from Bradenton wasn’t a fluke.
It was a market signal.
It confirmed:
• the failure of the existing craft structure
• the unsustainability of monopoly pricing
• the geographic scarcity of skilled artisans
• the silent demand for alternatives
• the necessity of competition
• the moral legitimacy of scaling training
• the urgency of multiplying local teams
• the damage caused by zero mirrors, not just zero rivals
This is already happening quietly all over the country.
Homeowners don’t hate restoration.
They hate being trapped.
The Real Fix
The fix is not to tear down existing companies.
The fix is to outgrow them.
To multiply capable artisans.
To train leaders.
To build outposts.
To speed up the work.
To lower the barrier to entry.
To preserve quality.
To restore competition.
To create mirrors.
To make stewardship possible again.
Zero competition is destroying historic window restoration.
And the only ethical fix is to multiply capable artisans —
not protect monopolies
and not preserve priesthoods.
A Different Future Is Possible
I look forward to the day when homeowners like the woman in Bradenton have real choices again.
When restoration is not a luxury reserved for the wealthy.
When speed and skill improve together.
When local teams serve local communities.
When no one provider can hold a region hostage.
When craftsmanship becomes competitive again.
When mirrors exist again.
That’s the future Window Craft is being built for.
And this quiet little message from Bradenton proves the soil is already ready.
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