
March 19, 2024
APPLETON — Looking at Excellerate’s new 389,000-square-foot manufacturing facility along U.S. 41 in Little Chute, it is hard to imagine the company that built it — The Boldt Company of Appleton — began 135 years ago by building components for houses.
Today, Boldt — under the leadership of CEO Tom Boldt, the fourth generation of the family to lead the company — has 17 offices across the country and has participated in building projects across the globe.
“In business, you encounter challenges and opportunities,” he said. “How you address them makes a difference.”
The construction company — which is celebrating 135 years in business in 2024 — works in a variety of market sectors, including commercial, community, corporate offices, education, health care, industrial, municipal, power and energy as well as science and technology.
The company’s commitment to its purpose and values — honesty, fairness, hard work, performance and a love of construction — is at the heart of what makes Boldt the success it is, Dave Kievet, president/CEO of The Boldt Group, said.
The Boldt Company, which has 17 offices around the country, started operations 135 years ago in Appleton. Photo Courtesy of The Boldt Company
“Our values are at the heart of everything we do,” he said. “Our owners trust us to do the right thing. Our values guide us to achieve our purpose, which is to build a better world for our employees, customers and communities. We build trust, bring new ideas and get jobs done on time and on budget as expected.”
Company-wide, Boldt employs 2,468 craft and non-craft workers, with about 975 in Northeast Wisconsin.
Creating partnerships with clients has been key to Boldt’s growth, Kievet said.
“We build relationships as we build buildings,” he said. “We’ve managed to grow as we followed our clients out-of-state.”
Challenges and opportunities
The Boldt Co.’s humble beginnings trace back to 1889 in Appleton when Martin Boldt — Tom’s great-grandfather — used his carpentry skills to start a business focused on building different components for houses.
He soon realized instead of only building components, his business could build homes.
“He saw an opportunity and went after it,” Tom said.
He said his great-grandfather, grandfather and father all faced challenges and opportunities running the company, but their response grew Boldt into what it is today.
Tom Boldt
Tom’s grandfather, Oscar J. Boldt, faced the challenge of running the company through the Great Depression and World War II.
After building a canning plant in Appleton, the owner presented Oscar with the opportunity to build a plant in Illinois.
“My grandfather could have said no — they hadn’t done work more than 10 miles outside of Appleton — but he took it on,” Tom said. “Here’s an opportunity that comes your way- It kept people working at a time when there wasn’t much work.”
During World War II, Oscar saw a sign in a lumber yard about the government looking for companies to build ammunition boxes.
He submitted the proposal and won.
“That was another example of seeing an opportunity and taking it,” Tom said.
When Tom Boldt’s father, Oscar C. Boldt, returned from World War II, he attended the University of Wisconsin before returning to Appleton to be involved with the family business.
“My dad came back and said ‘this home-building thing isn’t for me,’ and he focused instead on opportunities in the commercial, institutional and industrial sectors,” Tom said.
Boldt led the company into several key sectors, including the pulp and paper industries, which before the late 1990s, was the Fox Valley’s largest industry.
Tom said his dad took the opportunity of building an office building at Thilmany in Kaukauna to get involved with rebuilding and installing paper machines.
“We rebuilt one of their paper machines, and that led to more work in the paper industry — not just in the Fox Valley — but in the Wisconsin River Valley, too,” he said. “In that instance, it was not only an expansion into a new sector — the paper industry — but a new region, too.”
Oscar C. Boldt built a strong business in the pulp and paper markets, but as the industry contracted in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the company took that expertise and applied it to the power market.
Oscar C. Boldt
“The power market plays a significant role in our company now,” Tom said. “Again, we took the challenge of a declining industry — paper — and turned it into an opportunity in the power sector.”
As the fourth generation of the family to lead the company, Tom faced a daunting challenge of his own — what to do with the company’s ownership and leadership given his own children were not interested in running the family business.
He, his father and Bob DeKoch, Boldt’s longtime president, met to look at different options, including selling the company and employee ownership.
“Our consultants came to us with a list of possible buyers, and we felt none of them were a good fit with our values,” Tom said. “The culture at Boldt is what makes it successful, and after working through a lot of issues, we decided on an ESOP.”
Tom said they worked to eliminate problems that commonly plague ESOPs to make the venture as successful as possible — he believes they succeeded.
The company transitioned to employee ownership Jan. 1, 2016.
“When I meet with new employees, I tell them ‘you’re the first line of defense. If you’re doing a good job, you’ll have a significant impact on the success of the company you own as opposed to just putting in your time here,'” Tom said. “Another reason it has been successful is we have a good pipeline of leaders in the company who all have relationships with our clients. It wasn’t just me, or my dad or Bob.”
Boldt today
The Boldt Co. has offices in Phoenix, Sacramento, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit and Oklahoma City; four offices in Minnesota — Cloquet, Minneapolis, Rochester and St. Paul; and seven in Wisconsin — Appleton, Eau Claire, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Madison, Waukesha and Stevens Point.
Appleton is also home to the company’s corporate office.
“We’ve worked in 38 of the 48 states in the continental U.S. — being geographically diverse is helpful because some areas may see growth while others aren’t, so it helps with the balance,” Kievet said. “We work hard at being one Boldt, so whether we are doing something in Appleton or San Francisco, it’s being done the same.”
The company’s business is split evenly between commercial and institutional work and industrial work, including energy, Kievet said.
“It’s a nice balance,” he said.
Throughout its history, Boldt has been known for its innovation, something Kievet said continues today.
The Boldt Company, headquartered in Appleton, is a construction company working in a variety of market sectors, such as corporate offices, education, health care, industrial and municipal. Photo Courtesy of The Boldt Company
“Innovation is at the heart of what we do,” he said. “Our trademarked Integrated Lean Project Delivery method is a perfect example of our innovation at work. Our process is a marriage of methods that ensures open, honest teamwork around a common vision and getting everyone on the project team to understand a problem and explore solutions. We also focus on eliminating waste at every step in the process.”
While much of Boldt’s work takes place today away from the Fox Valley, Kievet said the company still has key signature projects in the region, such as the work being done at Georgia-Pacific’s Broadway plant in Green Bay.
The company is also dedicated to the communities where it works, he said.
“We invest in our communities to make them a better place, which will help us attract and retain talent,” Kievet said. “One way we do that is through support of the United Way. The organization helps those needs we’ll never know about.”
To learn more about The Boldt Company, visit boldt.com