Quality Record Pressings (Salina, Kansas)

In a cluttered office, Chad Kassem, owner of Quality Record Pressings (and Acoustic Sounds, Analogue Productions and several other vinyl-related businesses), said to me, “Sit here,” pointing to his own chair. As I watched him load one of his reissues of a Shelby Lynne record onto the player he commanded, “No, face the speakers.” As the music began, I instinctively glanced around for Shelby Lynne herself – her voice was so clear and immediate. I likened the experience to the first time I put on glasses. “I didn’t know you were supposed to see this well!” I exclaimed to my mother.

At home, we play old records. By “old,” I mean the type you pick up at a garage sale or thrift store. I enjoy the round, mellow sound of vinyl but I never imagined how much of the sound I was missing. Analogue Productions has reissued many old favorites from the Doors to Nat “King” Cole to Elvis Presley, and even some relative newbies like Norah Jones. Chad started Quality Record Pressings because his small company, Analogue Productions was dropping to the back of the line at record pressing companies as records have become a popular way to release albums at large record labels. For a vinyl-o-phile like Chad, the only option for pressing his own records was to make the best pressings possible. They now not only press their own reissues and the artists they produce, they also press records for almost every major label out there. They have been featured on NPR and in the New York Times with awed confusion. What is the best record pressing company doing in rural Kansas?

It is what I call historical accident. There is no reason that the company is here except that it is where Chad moved in 1984 from Lafayette, Louisiana. He did not move to start a business, or for some spectacular incentive package, but, “to get sober.” He started buying and reselling records. As he expanded he moved from his apartment, to a house, to a commercial space. Then he started adding more businesses to his portfolio. He reissued vinyl albums. Then he produced his own artists, such as legends like Honeyboy Edwards and Weepin’ Willie as well as young blues artists like Noah Wotherspoon and Marquise Knox in his Blue Heaven Studios, a renovated church down the road from Chad’s offices. His most recent addition has been Quality Record Pressings (QRP).

“You can say it’s in the middle of nowhere or you can say it’s in the middle of everywhere.” Chad said about Salina Kansas. Perhaps that was his pitch to Gary Salstrom (pictured above inspecting a master after the initial bath). Gary left RTI in Southern California to join Kassem and manage QRP. He takes the master through the plating process to produce the stampers. The stampers are then used in the room next door to stamp the records using vintage record presses (new record presses have not been produced since the early 1980s). The presses have been re-engineered and include electronic sensors to gauge temperature so that the operator now has even higher quality control of the record. The records are tested for quality and the ones that do not meet the exacting standards are recycled.

Chad brought in Gary to manage the plant but the people who operate the machines are not specially trained in record making. Many have backgrounds in HVAC systems and are comfortable with the types of operations that record machines perform. The re-engineering of the machines was also done locally. The innovation happening “in the middle of everywhere,” is a combination of Chad’s vision, Gary’s expertise and about 50 employees who were able to adapt to a “new” product. Would it be possible for this company to exist anywhere?

Probably not. Chad is committed to Salina because of his employees and his daughter. He likes the quality of the workforce and the quality of the schools. Though he speaks longingly of Southern Louisiana, he seems disinclined to move his family and employees down there despite its well-established blues music industry. “You meet a child here and they are very educated and very smart and very well spoken, you know….This is a good place to raise children, I think….The schools are better. It’s a big plus.” When I look at a company like Chad’s suite of businesses and listen to his story, I see the future of rural America. It is not a call center or an auto plant or a distribution center that will save Small Town, USA. It is the guy out of rehab that has a passion for records.

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.

Box Lab (Manhattan, Kansas)

The blessing (or curse) of being an academic is that whenever I am talking to a small business, business association or local government about their activities, I am always comparing their practices with economic development theory. When I went to visit Christopher Spaw at Box Lab I was contemplating Adam Smith’s pin factory and how businesses increase productivity. Smith’s basic thesis is that the more stuff a community can make per person, the more prosperous the community is and a community can accomplish this by specializing. Smith’s famous example is the pin factory where, he says, one person can make one pin a day if he is to do each of the steps himself. If 8 people work at it, each focusing on a different step in making the pin (one person stretches the wire, one person cuts the wire, another sharpens it, another adds the head, etc.) they can make 1,000 pins a day. Specialization has increased to the degree that it is not one person dedicated to stretching the wire but one company. Another company cuts the wire and another assembles the pin. Within each of those companies, people focus on even more specialized tasks.

And then I walk in to Box Lab. Box Lab is part architectural office, part contractor, part landlord, part retail shop, part building material dealer; in short, the opposite of specialization. Christopher says it evolved this way because he wanted to demonstrate possibilities. As an architect, his design aesthetic evolved in a European context. He designed summer homes for Norwegian clients, drew inspiration from European cities. But he is a K-State grad and wanted to bring innovative modern design and cutting edge materials to Kansas. And not the bustling, metropolitan Kansas City but two hours west, in little ol’ Manhattan.

Box Lab began as a specialist, a modern architectural office. Christopher designed buildings that were modern and environmentally responsible. Then the client would have to find someone to build the building and find a supplier of the innovative and technologically advanced materials such as the Quad-Lock insulated concrete forms or the Alpen windows. In the middle of Kansas, that can be difficult. But Christopher located here because he believed that Kansans should have access to the same forward thinking design that is available in Europe or big US cities. Box Lab began building the buildings themselves and became a distributor for many of the materials used in the building. Now the client can get the building they want and get it at a lower cost than if they order each component separately.

Christopher said he wanted, “in a small-scale way to showcase what can be done, what we are talking about.” He is not just talking about a modern design aesthetic. He is talking about creating buildings that are environmentally responsible, have lower utility bills, resist fire and natural disasters. People come to Box Lab for many reasons. Opening the storefront on Poyntz Avenue (the main business district in Manhattan) and expanding their product lines is another way to reach people. They may come into the store for the Luceplan light fixtures or the Vola faucets. The store captures their imagination about what is possible in their home. Sometimes it leads to a remodeling project or addition. Other times it leads to ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the jewelry by Susan Richter-O’Connell.

How does a place like Box Lab fit into the quest for higher productivity? They do not specialize in a product but they do specialize in an idea. They demonstrate that my house does not have to be a sieve for warm air. I can protect my home and family from disaster. Our house can be designed for the ebb and flow of contemporary family life. Without the vision, without the research in and access to pioneering design that Box Lab provides, I may never know what is possible. “If you can show people other options, then they say, ‘yes, I get it.’” Christopher said.

 
When my family was in town last month, we visited Box Lab because my mother-in-law wanted to get some of the Haba toys for her (almost 9!) grandchildren. My parents, in the middle of a kitchen remodel were ogling the Miele appliances. Having downsized his tool collection, my brother-in-law was captivated by the Festool line of tools, and contemplated immediately rebuilding. My daughter, though 3, wanted to hold the Iittala glassware (and I followed her around repeating, “Look with your eyes, please.”) Box Lab began as an architectural office and became a curator of modern life.