The more customers who walk all over Huebsch Services Inc.'s business, the better.

Founded in 1891 as a retail and commercial laundry, Huebsch is now a facilities services company providing clients with employee uniforms and custom doormats.

Along the way, Huebsch learned that staying relatively small has its advantages.

"You can't be a small competitor and, on all fronts, be competing with huge companies," said CEO Jim Vaudreuil, whose great-great grandfather founded the company.

The company's fleet of 25 trucks and their drivers serve an area stretching from LaCrosse to Hayward, and from Abbotsford in the east to the Twin Cities in the west.

When Huebsch entered the Twin Cities market in 1985, it offered a full range of services, including uniforms. But it found out it was trying to do too much, Vaudreuil said.

Huebsch decided to cut back on its offering of uniform services in the hyper-competitive metro area, focusing instead on providing restroom supplies — a strategy that's worked well.

"We have a very solid base here now," Vaudreuil said.

The original laundry services that launched the company almost 120 years ago are still key to Huebsch's uniform rental service. But it's the easy-to-overlook doormat side of the business that's grown.

"We've rented entrance mats to businesses since the 1960s, and today it provides over 40 percent of our revenues," Vaudreuil said.

Huebsch obtained a franchise in the 1980s to print-dye customers' logos onto mats — something that up to that point had been an inlay in the mat and cost-prohibitive for many customers.

Earlier this year, Huebsch took those mat offerings one step further and launched a Web site that allows customers to design personalized mats online. At matistry.com, visitors can pick a design, size and color scheme and can add text. Prices range from $49 to $99 depending on the mat's size.

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