Strang has been keeping the heat on, the water running and the lights working in this corner of Wisconsin for 122 years. Five generations of local families have called us. We still answer from three shops in Richland Center, Viroqua and Highland, with about twenty people who live inside the area they serve.
Someone is on call 24 hours a day, and estimates are always free.
A bicycle shop that kept adding trades
Charlie Strang opened a bicycle and mechanical repair shop in Richland County in 1904. Over the years he sold gas engines, water pumps, gas lights, and eventually electrical equipment and installation. He sold some of the first milking machines ever manufactured, had one of the first automobiles in Richland Center, and became one of the area’s first major appliance dealers.
His son Myron joined in the 1930s. In 1948 the business passed to Forrest and Oleta Hinds and Holly and Eleanor Strang, with Forrest specialising in electrical work and Holly in heating, cooling and appliances. Dick and Barb Marshall took over in 1986, and the Viroqua shop opened in 1993.
The thread running through all of it is that Strang tends to be early. Charlie pushed rural electrification. Holly promoted residential heat pumps before most people had heard of them. Dick was one of the first geothermal dealers in the area. That instinct is why a company that started with bicycles now installs ductless mini splits and EV chargers.
The fifth owners
Art and Sarah Winsor bought the business in January 2024, on its 120th anniversary.
Art grew up in Gays Mills. He started plumbing at Gundersen Lutheran in La Crosse in 2012, moved to Crossing Rivers in Prairie du Chien, and came to Strang in October 2014. He is a master plumber and he still works. If you have a plumbing job at your house, there is a fair chance the owner of the company is the one under your sink.
He has also served on the Gays Mills Fire Department since 2006. Sarah was raised in Boscobel, and the two of them have lived in the area since they married in 2010.
Buying a 120-year-old company came with an obvious question: what to change. The answer was mostly nothing. Every employee stayed. The trades stayed. What has changed is the equipment, which keeps getting better, and the standards it has to meet.
We train our own
We run plumbing and electrical apprenticeships in house. That matters more out here than it would in a city. Skilled tradespeople are scarce in rural Wisconsin, and a company that only hires them rather than making them eventually runs out. Our apprentices learn on local jobs, in local buildings, on the kind of equipment this area actually has.
It is also why our technicians carry more than a hundred years of combined experience. People stay.
Everything under one roof, because out here that is the only thing that works
In a town of five thousand you cannot line up four specialists and expect them all to show. So Strang does heating, cooling, plumbing, electrical, well service and business phone systems, and has for decades.
The practical benefit shows up when trades overlap. When a well pump trips a breaker, you do not want a plumber and an electrician pointing at each other. One company owns both sides of that problem.
We are fully licensed and insured in every trade we practise, we cover forty miles from each shop, and someone is on call 24 hours a day.
Come see us, or call the shop nearest you.
Estimates are free and we reply to quote requests within one business day. For an emergency, call any time of day or night. Someone is always on call.
Richland Center
6 Veterans Drive · Mon–Fri 8–5
Viroqua
802 Hwy NN · Mon–Fri 8–5
Highland · Strang Hardware
540 Main St · Mon–Fri 8–5, Sat 8–12