Garnett Station-backed FirstRidge adds Weddle & Sons as its eighth roofing brand and names a new CRO

On June 24, 2026, FirstRidge Service Partners announced a partnership with Weddle & Sons, Inc. Roofing, a premier roofing contractor headquartered in Manhattan, Kansas with operations across five states. The deal marks the eighth brand to join FirstRidge since the platform was founded less than three years ago. In the same announcement, FirstRidge named Erik Zadrozny — a more than 20-year veteran of the roofing, construction, and building materials industries — as its Chief Revenue Officer.

With Weddle & Sons on board, FirstRidge now operates eight premier roofing contractor brands across 11 states, concentrated in the American Midwest and Mountain West. The platform is backed by Garnett Station Partners, a New York-based principal investment firm that manages approximately $4.5 billion of assets.

Founded in 1999, Weddle & Sons is a family-run provider of roofing, gutter, and solar panel installation, maintenance, and repair services for communities across Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado. President Allyn Weddle said the company spent roughly two years in conversations with FirstRidge before partnering, citing alignment on culture, quality, and customer relationships as the deciding factors — and the ability to scale and invest in its team without sacrificing the brand the family built.

The platform: launched in 2023, built through partnership

FirstRidge was launched in November 2023 by Garnett Station Partners in partnership with Abe Hidary, who served as the platform’s founding Chief Executive Officer and now serves as its Founder & Chairman. The platform was created around a simple observation: the residential roofing and exterior services market is large and highly fragmented, and a well-capitalized acquirer that treats founders as partners could build a leading national network by bringing best-in-class local contractors together.

Crucially, FirstRidge does not rebrand the companies it partners with. Each acquired business continues to operate under its own name and local leadership, while gaining access to shared investment in talent, infrastructure, and technology — procurement scale, marketing, recruiting, and back-office support that few independent contractors could build alone. The company frames this as “national strength, local roots”: preserve the founder-built brand and culture at the customer level, and layer on the resources of a larger organization behind it.

The platform’s leadership team has been built out alongside its acquisitions. In addition to Founder & Chairman Abe Hidary, FirstRidge is led by CEO Seth Wartak and CFO Mark DuRei, both of whom bring platform-building and integration experience. The newly appointed CRO, Erik Zadrozny, spent much of his career at QXO and its predecessor organizations in marketing, e-commerce, sales enablement, and sales roles — experience the company expects to apply to technology-enabled growth across its partner brands.

FirstRidge’s sponsor, Garnett Station Partners, was founded in 2013 by Matt Perelman and Alex Sloane and invests across consumer and business services, health and wellness, automotive, and food and beverage. Roofing and exterior services have become a visible theme in the firm’s portfolio: beyond FirstRidge, Garnett Station launched Skybound Service Partners, a commercial roofing platform, in 2025, and True North Fleet Services, a fleet maintenance platform, the same year.

The eight brands

The list below captures the eight roofing and exterior brands operating under the FirstRidge platform, along with each company’s headquarters.

AMRG Exteriors (Ashton McGee Restoration Group) — Minnetonka, MN. Founded in 2013, AMRG was FirstRidge’s first partner, announced at the platform’s launch in November 2023. The founder-led, Minnesota-based general contractor anchored the platform’s entry into the Upper Midwest.

NexGen Exteriors, Inc. — Anoka, MN. A residential roofing and exterior services contractor serving the Minneapolis–St. Paul region, adding density in the platform’s original Minnesota market.

Qualis Roofing & Construction — Arlington, TX. A Dallas–Fort Worth-area roofing and construction contractor, extending the platform into the Texas market.

Andrus Brothers Roofing — Amarillo, TX. A roofing contractor serving the Texas Panhandle, one of two Andrus Brothers locations on the platform.

Andrus Brothers Roofing — Lubbock, TX. The South Plains counterpart to the Amarillo operation, deepening the platform’s West Texas presence.

Birdcreek Roofing — Belton, TX. A roofing contractor serving Central Texas, adding to the platform’s concentration across the state.

Randall and Son — St. Charles, IL. A roofing and exteriors contractor in the Chicago metropolitan area, extending the platform into Illinois.

Weddle & Sons, Inc. Roofing — Manhattan, KS. Founded in 1999 and announced on June 24, 2026, Weddle & Sons is the platform’s eighth brand, with roofing, gutter, and solar operations spanning Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado.

The investment thesis

FirstRidge’s footprint is no accident. The platform is concentrated in the Midwest, Mountain West, and Texas — the “hail belt,” where frequent severe weather drives a steady, largely non-discretionary cycle of roof repair and replacement. Roofing demand in these regions is less tied to housing turnover or discretionary spending than to storm activity and insurance claims, which makes revenue more durable across economic cycles than many other home-services categories.

On top of that demand backdrop, the strategic logic mirrors what is now a familiar pattern across the residential trades: the market is fragmented into thousands of independent, founder-led contractors, many of whom lack a clear succession plan or the capital to invest in technology, recruiting, and brand. A platform that can offer those resources — while credibly committing to preserve the founder’s brand, team, and reputation — positions itself as the partner of choice for owners weighing a transition. The appointment of a dedicated Chief Revenue Officer, with a background in technology and data-driven sales, signals an intent to push that operating model further: standardizing best-in-class sales and marketing practices across the partner brands while keeping each one locally branded.

What it signals for the market

The residential roofing sector has drawn an unusual amount of private equity interest over the past several years, and FirstRidge is one of a growing number of sponsor-backed platforms competing to partner with the best independent contractors in storm-exposed geographies. The pace here is notable: eight brands across 11 states in under three years is a fast build, even by the standards of an active roll-up environment.

For owners of independent roofing businesses, the practical takeaway is that the number of credible, well-capitalized buyers has multiplied — and that the platforms increasingly differentiate less on whether they will keep your brand and team (most now promise to) and more on what they actually deliver after closing. For a seller, that makes the real diligence question less about the headline and more about substance: which platform’s scale, systems, and support will genuinely move the business forward, and which is simply assembling logos on a map. That is exactly the kind of question worth pressure-testing before signing anything.