Sealcoat Specialties Improving Through Experience

When sealcoating a parking lot, one of the biggest challenges can simply be other people. Businesses usually want to avoid hindering their customers. Users of the business can be difficult to work around. Navigating business hours while still accommodating your crew's needs and weather variations is not an easy task. For a grocery store, the customer is of utmost importance, and having the parking lot resealed during peak hours is not wanted.

For Sealcoat Specialties Inc., sealcoating a busy grocery store parking lot was a task it had faced before, but this time it had a new game plan. 

A Job Passed Down

In 1979, Sealcoat Specialties was started. With over 40 years of service, the company offers sealcoating, crack filling, pothole repairs, and parking lot line striping. This was a company that Cody Helstern, president of Sealcoat Specialties, had been working at since 1999. Helstern has his grandfather to thank for pioneering the company.

Helstern started working for the company when he was just 12 years old. He wanted to be included in the family business and Helstern said he would always ask if he could come to work too.Sealcoat Specialties Inc.

“I still remember my first job that we worked on and everything,” Helstern said.

For 17 years, Helstern worked for his grandfather before proceeding to buy the company from him in 2017. 

A Change in the Market

When Sealcoat Specialties first sealcoated and striped Schmitz’s Economart in Spooner, Wis., the team had a difficult time working around peak hours. With Schmitz’s Economart being the largest grocery store for two counties and the biggest privately owned parking lot in the county, the main concern was disturbing customers as little as possible. But this meant working long shifts and doing overnight work. 

Helstern recounted, “The first day was really long. It was 18 hours or so and then we took a [short] break. Then we got back into it again and that second time, we were there for 32 hours straight…, and that was miserable. Then we took a 14 or 15-hour break and went back again for 23 hours.”

On top of the long hours, the Sealcoat Specialties crew struggled with troubleshooting new equipment. Equipment that was supposed to make the process easier and faster ended up making everything slower and more daunting. Sealcoat Specialties Inc.

When the opportunity came to do the parking lot again, Helstern knew he had to make some changes this time around. There were a few things that were already different for Helstern. For one, he had taken a class by B&E Sealcoat Products about dialing in laser equipment to better understand the line striper he had. The other different thing was his approach to getting the work done. Helstern realized that working through the night and only working when customers were sparse was not the most efficient route. The last main difference was that Helstern now had a baby, waiting for him to come home.

Inspired by New Life 

Having a new child back at home was a strong motivator for Helstern to make a change to the schedule that he and his crew were working on. 

“I got to go out, work, get everything done, and then come home and be with my little guy. Then get up early the next morning and go back after it and come back home again and be with my little guy,” said Helstern. 

Helstern said the new way that things were running was fantastic. Helstern’s wife Alissa shared the sentiment and said it was nice having him back home before dark. 

With a baby in his life, Helsterns faced his previous challenges in a different light - looking to get home sooner and get his crew home as well. Instead of doing work overnight and reopening the area to customers in the morning, the crew would close off an area, let it cure properly, and then reopen it and move to a new area. This allowed the fresh sealcoating and striping to dry in daylight and warmer temperatures and eliminated the issue of cool temperature and dew at night from the previous time. 

Smooth Riding

Since the changes were made to the sealcoating process, Sealcoat Specialties was able to complete the job quicker and open the parking lot back up to customers with fewer hiccups. This advancement was a welcome shift for not only the grocery store owner but also for the customers.

“There [were] so many customers that were stopping and telling us how good it looks and also telling the owner how good it looks too and they're happy to see that a company is taking care of their property,” said Helstern. Sealcoat Specialties Inc.

Having a freshly done parking lot can elevate an establishment and it often pleases the customers. For the grocery store, the construction may have come as a relief for customers.

Alissa Helstern said, “[The customers] can push their carts nicely and it's easy for them to park. When you go to a grocery store and you can't even push your cart through the parking lot it's kind of a miserable experience.”

The changes and growth that Helstern and his team had in order to better the sealcoating process showed an eagerness to improve. This advancement in addition to the nicely done job won Sealcoat Specialties the 2025 Seal & Stripe: Small Job Award.