The Viking Fence nameplate is a well-recognized sign all over the Kitsap Peninsula

Twenty-eight years ago, four California men who knew Puget Sound from vacationing there decided to move to Poulsbo to “get out of the California rat race” and start a fencing business. Many have told them it can’t be done, others said Poulsbo is the last place that needs fences. But they didn’t listen.

So they set up shop, drawing on their welding and fence building experience, and opened Viking Fence, named after the long-running Viking Fest in Poulsbo. Driving through Poulsbo today — or any other area of the county for that matter — one could easily notice the abundance of a sign on fences saying “Viking Fence.” In fact, one customer once said when she first moved to the area, she thought it was a law that everybody had to put up a “Viking Fence” because all her neighbors had one.

Despite such a tremendous success and a reputation that has traveled across the country, company owners Bill Sloman and John Rosebeary say building a reputation is a work in progress. “You have to work at it constantly,” Sloman said.

“It does not matter what size the job or really the profit, what does matter is the fact that people put their trust in us to do a fair and professional job for them,” Rosebeary wrote in a “Christmas Reflections” letter last year.

Rosebeary is a second-generation owner who took over from his father-in-law, Richard, a few years ago. After owning a trucking company for two decades, Rosebeary became the operations manager of a Tacoma firm. When that company was sold to an Oregon buyer and asked him to move, his father-in-law was contemplating retirement, and things fell into place.

Rosebeary and Sloman had known each other for 20 years but not in a work context. While the partners have different styles and sometime different ideas, they say they complement each other well. Plus, it all comes down to responsibility and good work ethics. Rosebeary, who grew up on a farm, recalls working side by side with his father, who taught him the value of work along with problem solving. In modern families, with both parents usually working outside of home and coming home tired, values have changed — and the company sees that shift reflected in its work force.

One of their biggest challenges, as for anyone else in the industry, is finding new workers. Prospective employees must own a driver’s license and be completely drug-free. That in itself whittles down a pile of several dozen applications to barely a handful.

“Construction is like the fast food industry, young people don’t look at it as long term,” Rosebeary said.

That challenge of finding skilled tradesmen in a way keeps the company from growing. There are 13 crews currently, and they could use another four. Some work has to be turned down as a consequence. The company stays busy year round, although summer time has a backlog, with jobs taking six to eight weeks to schedule. The partners said they’ve been fortunate for the last three years to not have to lay off staff — the last thing anyone wants to do at Christmas time.

The company’s work stretches all around Puget Sound, with residential and commercial projects that vary from chain-link and vinyl fence to wood and ornamental iron. Commercial customers include the U.S. Navy and state of Washington’s Hood Canal Bridge project. Although the products have changed through the years, leaning more toward man-made offerings, Sloman said the work itself is the same. But because anyone with a pickup truck can practically get started and keep the overhead low, it’s become more challenging to keep prices down as a bigger company. Still, Sloman has seen many fencing companies that are here today, gone tomorrow. Viking Fence, on the other hand, continues to grow each year and execute larger projects as well.

“You have to do it right and quick,” Sloman said. “We try to use the best materials… We stress to our employees, more than anything, to do it right.”

Rosebeary is pretty straightforward about the nature of the work: No human is perfect, and they are guaranteed to make mistakes. But they also guarantee to fix them as soon as they come up.

Growing success doesn’t eliminate challenges. Sloman says that is one aspect that still keeps the job interesting for him. “Every day is different,” he said. “You can’t come in here and figure that’s it’s going to be the same as yesterday.”.