On Aire Ep. 5 w/ Rebecca and Toby Stowe – The Art of Industrial Real Estate Podcast featuring Rebecca and Toby Stowe from Design Supply Doors
🚪 Opening Doors in Kansas City: An Inside Look with Rebecca and Toby Stowe of Design Supply Doors🎙️ Episode 5 of On Air with Team Jensen
In the fifth episode of On Air with Team Jensen: The Art of Industrial Real Estate, the team sits down with Rebecca and Toby Stowe, the husband-and-wife ownership team behind Design Supply Doors. With deep roots in the Kansas City area, Rebecca (CEO) and Toby (President) offer a candid look into taking over a legacy family business, navigating unprecedented supply chain chaos, and scaling a highly specialized construction supplier for the future.
🤝 From Childhood Friends to Business Owners
Rebecca and Toby’s story goes far beyond a typical business partnership—they’ve known each other since they were 10 years old, attending the same grade school and high school. While Toby grew up playing in the warehouse of the door company his parents founded in 1984, Rebecca built a career in corporate marketing and finance with no initial plans to enter the construction industry.
About seven years into their marriage, Toby’s parents were ready to retire. The couple decided to take a leap of faith, officially taking over operations in 2017 and fully purchasing the company in January 2021.
“We had that God moment… we said the marriage comes first, but we’ll give it three years. If it works, we’re in. And it worked. We’re still in.”
🛠️ Mastering Division 8 and 10
Design Supply Doors is a Division 8 and Division 10 supplier and installation group. They specialize in commercial doors, frames, and hardware (Division 8), as well as toilet partitions and accessories (Division 10). From hospitals and schools to industrial warehouses, their work touches almost every sector of commercial real estate.
While they have a national reach—supplying projects as far away as Alaska and Hawaii and collecting tax in 27 states—their primary focus remains the Kansas City metropolitan area. They pride themselves on taking the headache out of the punch list for General Contractors, boasting an 85% repeat business rate.
“It’s kind of a joke in the door industry… you have so much specialized knowledge, you never get out. We’re door nerds, and we’re building nerds.”
📦 COVID and Supply Chain Chaos
The pandemic hit right as the Stowes were preparing to finalize their purchase of the business. The construction industry faced a massive uphill battle, with lead times for wood doors skyrocketing from a standard 4 weeks to an agonizing 35 weeks.
Instead of panicking, they used their position as a stocking distributor to their advantage. They proactively beefed up their inventory, ensuring that when other suppliers ran dry, Design Supply Doors had the materials ready to keep projects moving.
“Through chaos, there’s also opportunity. We got ahead of it… so where others couldn’t get material, we had material. That was really our saving grace.”
🏙️ Kansas City on the Rise
As lifelong Kansas City residents, the Stowes are heavily invested in the local community, serving in organizations like the Blue Valley Industrial Association and the Kansas City Industrial Council. While they are excited about the city hosting the World Cup, they see the real long-term value in the region’s industrial boom.
With the influx of EV battery plants, massive manufacturing facilities, and major distribution hubs moving to the Midwest, they believe the city’s robust infrastructure and affordable cost of living are making it an unstoppable force.
“Kansas City is on the map with major corporations in a way that it was not even five years ago.”
🏕️ Family, Coaching, and “Me Time”
Running a fast-paced business together requires strict boundaries. Rebecca handles marketing, finance, and big-picture strategy, while Toby leans into his technical expertise to manage sales and operations. To maintain their sanity, they have a strict “drive separately” policy for their commutes.
Outside of the office, they stay busy coaching their kids’ volleyball teams, leading Boy Scouts, and escaping the city’s humidity by camping off the grid in Missouri and Arkansas.
“People ask how we ride to work together. We don’t! We drive separately everywhere. That commute is my only ‘me time’ and my audiobook time.”
🚀 What’s Next for Design Supply Doors
The future for Design Supply Doors is all about strategic scaling. They are currently overhauling their ERP software, installing advanced CNC machinery for wood door customization, and bringing in a dedicated layer of directors to help manage their rapid growth.
Additionally, Rebecca recently secured the company’s WBE (Women’s Business Enterprise) certification for Kansas City, which has already started opening doors to private invites on massive regional projects.
“We are trying to work ourselves out of a job, ultimately. The less important we are to the daily grind, the more the business has the ability to scale and function.”
Learn more about BluHawk at www.bluhawk.com
Follow Team Jensen for more insider episodes on Kansas City CRE.
