Custom Wood Products (St. Marys, Kansas)

“Can I take pictures?” I always ask before touring a manufacturing facility. To me, pictures are a representation of the industrial aesthetic that I admire and an embodiment of the creative process at work (and I mean, “creative” in the literal sense!). However, pictures may give away trade secrets to competitors – the secrets of the trade that are NOT in the air, to paraphrase Alfred Marshall. When I asked Kevin Gray, CEO of Custom Wood Products if I could take pictures during the tour of his 100,000 square foot cabinet making facility, he readily agreed. Then he paused and qualified it, “There’s some things that I would like for my competition not to see…I’ll let you know.”

At about 135 employees, Custom Wood Products is one of the largest employers in St. Marys. There are complementary businesses in the area, such as the Onyx Collection, from which Custom Wood Products sources some counter tops. But other suppliers are located in the upper Midwest, the Northwest and other parts of the country. Those firms, in turn, source wood from all over the country. The finished cabinets are delivered across the central plains, Florida, Texas, and Arizona with the possibility of expansion to the West Coast soon. The secrets learned by employees at Custom Wood Products may be in the air in St. Marys but there are not many other places that they can be put to use without going pretty far away.

I was fascinated to learn that the secrets Kevin referred to are not in the fabrication of the cabinets. The machines – industrial table saws that will not cut your hand when you run your fingers through the moving blade, enormous tools that can make tens of feet of French dovetail joints in minutes, devices that detect flaws in the wood and maximize each board for the day’s projects – are available to any cabinet maker. The secrets are in the organization of the shop floor and the process of moving projects through from unloading the lumber to loading the delivery truck. The specialized format allows the company to focus on the crafting of the product instead of moving it around the shop (because 100,000 square feet is a lot of shop to move around!). The secrets are also in the employees who still do some of the process by hand. All of the cabinets are custom. The designers’ imaginations may not have limits but the machines do. Special pieces are crafted by hand and the cabinets are finished by individuals applying a particular combination of finishes or distressing techniques to the doors for an antique, lived-in feel.

In an agglomeration economy, the trade secrets are supposedly are no longer secrets at all, but common knowledge among the skilled labor pool. Often when economic developers discuss agglomeration, they are talking about many firms in one industry NAICS code. But agglomeration, in the sense that Alfred Marshall speaks of it, is a group of complimentary firms. This is especially apparent in rural areas where the market and the labor force will not support multiple firms engaged in creating similar products. Custom Wood Products was started in 1981 by Don Lake, a local home builder. The construction industry (though it has taken a hit in recent years, consistent with the rest of the country) still employs close to 2,500 people in the Manhattan metropolitan area (St. Marys is on the edge).* In addition, there are firms like the Onyx Collection that have commercial relationships. Custom Wood Products is located in an industrial park-like area on the edge of St. Marys. The businesses there may not have formal relationships but all benefit from the public goods, such as the easy truck access, that St. Marys provides. 

In the shop, most employees are from around St. Marys but some travel for almost an hour for work every day, a commute that rivals that of many urban workers.. They come in with unfinished wood and, each doing his or her piece of the process, create kitchen cabinets, home entertainment cabinets, bathrooms, and other storage areas. They are the true creative class. They literally create.

* County Business Patterns 2010. Construction industry includes the establishments in NAICS codes 236, 237, and 238.