Survival of the fittest is an evolutionary business concept that one Grand Rapids company has embraced since automobiles had fins.

 

For 45 years, Scarlett Machinery has cast a wide net over the woodworking industry in the Upper Midwest. But as business paradigms morph and the economy evolves, this third-generation machinery supplier, headquartered on Grand Rapids’ southeast side, has creativity addressed new challenges and opportunities in a still uncertain business-to-business climate.

           

Current president, Jim Scarlett, says “lean” manufacturing also applies to machinery distributors, like Scarlett, who serve the multi-faceted woodworking industry.

           

“In our day and age, successful vendors have to be specialists,” says Scarlett, whose father founded the company in 1966. “The days of being a multiple-line distributor may, in some cases, be a thing of the past. Relatively small companies like ours can’t be everything to everybody. The key is to focus on specific market sectors and key on problem-solving, service and training.”

           

 Scarlett maintains an office, showroom and warehouse near the airport in Grand Rapids.

The company serves the Grand Rapids area, as well as Greater Michigan, Indiana, Northern Illinois and Western Ohio. The sales focus is on medium- to high-end manufacturers of furniture, cabinets, millwork and other wood-based products; yet, the plastic and metal industries are also part of Scarlett’s customer world. CNC equipment is a strong focus.

           

“The machinery we sell and the service translates to other material mediums,” Scarlett says. “Diversity is a big key to our success. There’s a lot of overlap, in terms of manufacturing technology, in the various industries we serve.”

 

Scarlett Machinery began as Scarlett Associates Corp. in 1966 by Wally Scarlett, Jim’s father. Wally gained his experience in the woodworking industry as the sales manager for the C. O. Porter Machinery Co. of Grand Rapids.

           

 “My dad specialized in the design and fabrication of material handling equipment used in the manufacture of interior flush doors and rough mill,” says Jim. “After expanding the company to include the representation of Mereen-Johnson, a U.S.-based solid wood machinery manufacturer, as well as Ramco, and Newman-Whitney, both highly-regarded machinery manufacturers. My dad also began offering used machinery, a rebuilding service and parts and supplies.”

 

The elder Scarlett was a founding member of the still growing United Woodworking Machinery Exchange that was the first association of used machinery dealers in the United States. As a full-line woodworking industrial supplier, Scarlett Associates added sales and technical staff along with a satellite operation in Edwardsburg, Mich. to serve the Indiana and Ohio markets. 

           

In May of 1978, Jim Scarlett joined the company in an administrative role to meet a growing customer base. Soon thereafter, Wally Scarlett was diagnosed with cancer and, after a short illness, passed away, leaving Jim to run the company. 

           

Scarlett Machinery then switched its emphasis from engineering and systems design work to include the quickly-growing European import market led by Germany-based Michael Weinig company, a producer of a broad line of solid wood woodworking equipment.

           

In 1984, Scarlett moved to a larger facility in Grand Rapids to accommodate the need for storage, showroom and demonstration areas. Scarlett then built specialty machine divisions to serve the woodworking industry with chemical-based products such as cutting lubricants, release agents and metallic bed lubricants. 

 

Later, a division was established to serve the retail woodworking community as well as small shops and cabinetmakers. Chemwood and Cabinetmakers Supply were under the Scarlett umbrella for nearly 10 years before being sold. During this period, the market area of Northern Indiana was established with the purchase of Honeyville Machinery Inc. in Topeka, Ind. Within a year, the Topeka operation was moved to Elkhart Indiana and became Scarlett Machinery of Indiana (SMI). A 15,000-sq.-ft. warehouse and showroom were purchased to headquarter the SMI operation, which primarily served the small shop and RV markets.

 

During this period the Cantek line of Asian import products was also given life in a joint venture with Akhurst Machinery out of Vancouver, British Columbia. Scarlett marketed the Cantek line in the eastern United States. Akhurst and Scarlett sold in the west. After 12 years of operation, the Scarlett interest in Cantek was sold to the Akhurst company. 

 

This sale was made as Scarlett began its shift in emphasis from the broad, all-inclusive model of distributor, to a more focused specialty group. 

           

Says Scarlett; “The broadening product lines of our key suppliers, through acquisition of complementary products led to much higher technical demands on our selling staff. With the change in direction came the addition of my son, James E. Scarlett, an engineering graduate of Michigan Tech University. James brought a different approach to sales with his experience in lean manufacturing techniques practiced at his former employer — Entex.”

           

James began his role servicing the broad range of products sold by Scarlett over the past 45 years, which soon narrowed the real focus of the new staff in CNC routers. After spending much of his early attention on CNC and process evaluations of rough mill modernizations, James moved from the service department to sales. Within a year, the sales staff grew to include a colleague of James from Gentex, Chris Timmer. 

           

Chris’s background as a graduate of Western Michigan University with an undergraduate and master’s degree in industrial engineering goes hand and hand with new direction of the company in its applications approach to shop floor improvements, Scarlett says.

             

Jim Scarlett was asked a number of questions relative to his company’s history and future growth plans.

 

Scarlett: In 1966 Scarlett Associates Corp. began selling woodworking machinery much like most other distribution companies. The model of the average distributor was to basically manage a one, two or three state area for new machine manufacturers as well as a possible field repair or shop rebuilding service. Sometimes these companies supplied spare parts, certain supply items or maybe tooling and quite often second hand machinery. 

           

Our early approach to providing machinery was one of incorporating individual machines with various material handling devices. The largest market was in rough mills and door production. With a fabrication shop to build conveyors, lifting and stacking equipment along with material returns, we were able to offer complete engineering services in order to compete. 

           

As the cast of characters managing and selling for Scarlett changed so did our product offering. With me taking over in 1979, the emphasis changed from engineering to marketing. The import machinery was gaining in popularity and the company went to a “delivery from stock” program with a showroom for machine demonstrations and production trials. 

           

In both the old and new ways of doing business, the key to our approach is and has been customer service. We’ve always worked toward being a resource to its customers. As the company grew through the years, adding services and accessories was a natural thing to do. 

           

At the same time, other specialized providers of those supply items and accessories came on the scene and provided a better service. We moved away from being a secondary supplier of these redundant products and back to the heavier equipment side. Analyzing the needs of each shop independently and providing modern solutions is our mission.

 

 

Scarlett: We’re concentrating primarily on Weinig Group and C.R. Onsrud. Two key factors play the major role in the decision to focus on these lines. Both are offering highly sophisticated solutions that require a much higher technical background and education than with the more traditional machines and both are expanding their product lines with both organic growth and by acquisition. 

           

In the case of Weaning, the most obvious example is the recent acquisition of Hole-Her, a major Austria-based machinery manufacturer. This brings a whole new dimension to the Weinig Group with the addition of several lines serving the panel processing side of the industry. Within the existing line up of solid wood machines, Weinig continues to develop more and better ways to improve productivity for the lineal moulding and architectural millwork producer. With the recent addition of Mill Vision software products, Weinig now offers a complete shop floor management system from order-entry to finished product.

           

C.R. Onsrud, a domestic producer of CNC routers and other machinery, has grown up from a novel but small machine company, selling inverted pin routers to one of the premier CNC machine lines in the United States. The product range has grown continuously from a basic single table, fixed bridge machine, to a multitude of machines for small shops through fully functional 5-axis machining centers. Customers range from the corner sign shop to Fortune 100 companies serving the likes of Lockheed Martin, Fed Ex and Boeing. 

           

As the products for each of these companies grows more technical, the need to concentrate on their best application becomes more difficult. Having just two lines has improved our ability to more thoroughly understand the products and the applications.

 

 

Scarlett: In the earliest years the last half-century, the changes were actually few in terms of technology and marketing philosophy. In the early years, many decisions for machinery purchases were made on the basis of replacing a machine when the repair costs became too high or breakdowns happened too often.

           

Today you could say the opposite is true. Many machines become technologically outdated long before they wear out. This is especially true of the CNC equipment where software programs are being developed daily that make older versions extremely slow or are so much easier to use or train on that a real competitive advantage happens for companies that invest consistently. 

           

The most apparent examples of lack of investment have occurred in U.S. furniture industry, which has made an almost total migration to Asian countries. U.S. companies ignored how outdated their equipment was and how high the labor components were. As the global economy expands, cheaper labor will be readily available for all industries.

 

           

Scarlett: The evolution of our company has taken us from the upstart phase of representing small secondary lines to the offering of premier, industry leading lines. This progression has taken place as economic winds have blown hot and cold and as technological advances reached the woodworking industrial population. We’ve looked at and taken into account several factors that we think makes the real difference in our ability to be a valuable resource. 

           

First, we no longer feel the best resource is offering a cadre of product from soup to nuts with only a basic understanding of any of the products sold. We think it is critical that a thorough understanding and an ability to explain the features and benefits of every product offered are essential. 

           

Second, we know that the Internet has changed the world, including our role as providers of machinery solutions, insofar as being simply a purveyor of information is no longer a huge benefit. The Internet provides such a wealth of information that the new problem becomes data overload. We see our new role as being able to help sort out this tremendous amount of information by analyzing the process and applying our product knowledge to the application. 

 

           

Scarlett: Simply stated, we hope to be the leading experts in our field for the products we represent. Since our model has changed from a broadly-based, all inclusive house, to one of a much narrower focus, we’ll spend much more time learning both the features of our products and their relative benefits to our customers. With the emphasis shifting to leaner production methods and less inventory at every level in the chain of commerce, it will be more important than ever to understand the goals of each customer. We intend to be the guys who understand getting the most out of each capital investment, all day, every day. 

 

           

Scarlett: Five years is a huge time line in this age of constantly changing technology. The futurists of just a few years ago predicted the acceleration in the pace of change and tried to explain the impact on our daily lives. Only now are we beginning to realize just how fast these events are taking place. Witness the use of smart phones as computers, email as faxes, voices being converted to text, and the list goes on.

           

We have to commit to being aware of the need to change with this rapidly changing world. Professionally, we have changed dramatically already. The staff of 20 is now only four. Adapting to the changing work world has become our reality with so many repetitive tasks involving communications, administration, telephone service and certain marketing and sales being handled by computers. The world of 2020 will certainly be a very interesting time.

 

           

Scarlett: We’ve always been and will continue to be a valuable resource for our customers. Many cabinet and furniture makers grew up without many year-to-year changes occurring on their shop floor. Advancing technologies and a global market has changed all that. The marketplace has now become accustom to finding the best source of information in the specialty firms. Along with narrowing our own focus to fewer products, we’ve developed relationships in complementary areas of expertise that allows our customers to have access to the best of a particular discipline. 

           

We’ve found that the ever increasing technical complexity of the machines today are requiring a much broader set of skills and a more diverse team. If we can assemble the best of breed within the machine lines that we carry, the end user can pay a competitive price for the highest skill level available. We endeavor to bring the best value to its customers and be the most resourceful choice available

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When the cards are tallied, this Southwestern Michigan family-owned company with 45 years of service to the woodworking industry has always anticipated change and adapted accordingly to the challenges – a record successful survivors of the economic slowdown understand and the still-struggling entrepreneurs seek as a goal.