Glenda Everard and her daughter, Deane Sandvold, founded EZ-ACCESS, a division of Homecare Products Inc., in 1984. Son Don Everard joined the family business in 1988, bringing his marketing expertise with him. This pioneering family has been leading the access solution industry ever since and has an unwavering commitment to manufacturing in the United States.
“Innovation is our biggest thing,” Don Everard says. “We continue to evolve with our [solutions]. We’re constantly looking for ways to make our products easier and faster to install, with features and benefits that meet or exceed the customer’s expectations. I think to be made in America, you have to be innovative. You can’t become stagnant and allow your products to become stagnant. I think our claim to fame is just constantly moving the line forward.”
The EZ-ACCESS story began by filling a gap in the market with a straightforward but overlooked idea. “We started with an inflatable shampoo basin and an inflatable bathtub called the EZ-SHAMPOO® and EZ-BATHE®,” Everard explains. These innovative products simplified home care and proved an immediate—and lasting—hit. “We still sell those products today,” he says.
The company introduced portable folding wheelchair ramps three years later, then quickly experienced growth in yet another new product category primarily due to the establishment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) as well as a collaborative partnership between EZ-ACCESS and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs over 20 years ago. The development of aluminum modular wheelchair ramps made way for the company to secure these opportunities.
The family continued to explore new solutions in order to keep meeting its customers’ needs. “We were the innovators of the ramp market,” Everard says. “We were constantly developing new products to meet the growing needs of the changing access world.” This led to significant product expansion throughout the decades. “We had to evolve,” he tells us.
Building on a wealth of experience, EZ-ACCESS transitioned into the commercial and industrial space about 10 years ago. “That has been very successful for us,” Everard says. This commercial market includes ramps for school portables, construction trailers, mobile homes, and more. “And then on the industrial side, we’re in plants providing safer access to equipment by way of work platforms and stairs.”
About a year and a half ago, the team began looking for new areas to expand into once again. This time, the company ventured beyond the traditional accessibility spaces, to provide solutions for a wider range of customers. “There are three new channels that we’re focused on,” says Everard. “One is the recreation market, supplying ramps for motorcycles, ATVs, and other power vehicles, so that users can load them easily into the back of a truck. The second is the lawn and garden market. EZ-ACCESS provides ramps for loading equipment such as lawnmowers or wheelbarrows into sheds or trucks. The third new area is the pet market, providing access stairs for horseback riders and ramps for dogs who are unable to climb stairs or jump into vehicles.”
Today, EZ-ACCESS makes its products available via its website, online retailers such as The Home Depot, and a loyal network of more than 1,000 durable medical equipment dealers to provide a wide range of proven, American-made access solutions for the residential, commercial, industrial, and recreational markets. These products have earned the company name recognition throughout the industry. “Our brand names are really strong,” Everard says. “We’ve done a great job on the marketing side of developing the EZ-ACCESS brand, so customers are looking for that product because we’re really the only ramp line out there that has a brand name.”
Being a well-known, dependable brand, as well as streamlining production, has helped the team continue to manufacture in America despite the higher costs associated with domestic operations. “We have established a good infrastructure of marketing, salespeople, and our manufacturing process. We’re lean as we can be in manufacturing, and we are constantly looking for ways to remain lean. We’ve had great success in building our products both in Washington and now in Kentucky, and in maintaining a good workforce that prioritizes quality, service, and innovation. I think to be in the U.S., you’ve got to have all those three things.”
A commitment to customer service is another key contributor to success. “We provide great customer service,” Everard says. “My sister has always been very involved with customer care, and she’s always been a true believer in providing great service. I think if you were to ask our dealers and the people who sell our products, that is probably one of the reasons that they buy from us—because of the quality of our service.”
The Everards believe in giving back to their community, supporting people in need through a family foundation that supplies wheelchair ramps and other accessibility solutions. “Typically, we do this as kind of a collaboration with our team here at EZ-ACCESS, where our team will actually go out and do the install,” Everard explains. “So, we use it for training, we also use it for community connection, and then we actually pay to have the ramps put in. It’s been a neat way to get our own internal team excited about what we do and to get them connected with the consumer and with the products. This makes them, I think, better at their job when they understand the application and they understand who we’re serving on a one-to-one basis. We’ve used the foundation to reinforce that.”
And the team continues to find new opportunities to serve the community. “[We are] always looking for ways that we can connect not just our B2B customers, but our employees to the end user and just give them that experience,” Everard says.
Moving forward, EZ-ACCESS is well placed to remain at the leading edge of new trends while staying loyal to its many customers. “It could be access at a school, access for an ATV, access for a raised landing, for a garden, or into a trailer. Our goal is to provide access beyond barriers. We’re always looking at the barriers that are in people’s lives… How do we serve the needs of people to give them accessibility?”
The goal is to provide accessibility solutions in all areas of life so that customers can “remain active and keep their life moving.”
As the team continues to serve customers, it seems likely a family member will remain a part of the business long into the future. “We’ve been very fortunate,” Don Everard says. “We’ve got a really, really good group of people that are carrying on the legacy.” This includes non-family members who “want to stay with us for a long time. We also have our kids that are involved in the business. They’re wanting to push the company forward. And then hopefully, someday, the grandkids will come in and want to be part of the organization,” he shares.
“We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve been able to stay viable for 40 years as a family-owned business. And now we’ve got family members, and even non-family members, that continue to drive the business forward.”
