Almost the same as the Chinese

For more than 40 years, Maine Wood Concepts lingered in the background, turning hundreds of thousands of custom wooden Shaker pegs, toy wheels, dowels and other components for major game manufacturers, kitchenware makers and other customers who rarely knew the source of their products' parts. But with its purchase of Vic Firth Gourmet Kitchen Products division for upwards of $900,000 at the end of last year, Maine Wood is rebranding that company's rolling pins, salt and pepper mills and other kitchen items and striking out under its own Fletchers' Mill name.

The new business could help kick up Maine Wood's revenues by 30% this year, company President Douglas Fletcher, 58, told Mainebiz in a recent interview at the company's mill in New Vineyard. He's hired 30 new workers for that business.

A key part of that town of fewer than 1,000 residents, the mill buzzes with more than 100 employees and rows of lathes, spool machines, weinig moulders, back knife machines, CNC lathes, finishing processors and tumblers turning out every sort of imaginable wooden object. Wood-turning mills use a stationary blade to cut and shape wood while it spins.

The hum of the machines is music to Fletcher's ears

. But business hasn't always been that good. In the late 1990s through 2009, low-priced Chinese competitors silenced most of New England's wood-turning mills, and few came back. According to Fletcher, almost every town had a wood-turning factory in the 1970s, and now only three sizeable mills remain in Maine. They are his, Kingfield Wood Products, known for its music drum sticks, and Wells Wood Turning & Finishing Inc. of Buckfield, which gained fame for supplying about 100,000 wooden eggs for the White House Easter Egg Roll.

Nationwide, only a couple handfuls of the larger wood-turning companies remain, down from 85 mills in 2000, according to Mark Kemp, owner of wholesale crafts supplier Kemp Enterprises Inc. of Farmington, and a longtime customer of Maine Wood.

"If Doug sold an item for $1, China was able to sell it for 50 cents," says Smith, whose father started buying wood turnings from Fletcher's father, Wayne, some three decades ago. In the mill and distribution businesses, even a five-cent difference can be huge. "If we buy 50,000 wheels from Maine Wood, we'll sell them to 1,000 or more customers, 10-20 at a time," explains Smith. And that can involve holding the inventory up to two years.

Smith notes that most wood dealers bought from China to get the lower prices. Fletcher adds that the labor rates were so low that Chinese factories could afford to have extra people sand the turned wood if it wasn't smooth enough, something that was cost-prohibitive in the United States.

Smith and Kemp note that while China's ability to produce goods improved over time, there were some issues with mold and wood splitting, since the Chinese dry wood in the sun rather than in a kiln. And while the product quality at times equaled or exceeded some U.S.-made parts, prices in China have increased in recent years due to labor shortages and higher materials and shipping costs, opening the window for distributors to return to U.S. suppliers, Smith says.

"Doug can now make an item for 95 cents, almost the same as the Chinese. His quality and ability to beat China make him very much in demand," he says.

Smith at one time bought 50% of his goods by volume from China, and that's now closer to 20%, mostly small-diameter turnings. Some 20% of Smith's catalog of parts now comes from Maine Wood, which translates into $300,000 in purchases and millions of parts, including toy wheels, the staple of the wood-turning business. More information about the program is available on the web site at www.careel-tech.com.