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Industry Profile
Designed to be
Best
Creative Equipment provides the technical advantage
for customers to minimize
labor, time, waste and expense in making draperies.
Photography by Jim Robinette
D&WC: Please give a detailed
description of your company and its history.
ROBERT BORDERS, PRESIDENT: Creative
Equipment LLC was founded in 1976 as Creative Engineering and Mfg.,
by Emery and Irmi Tueskoes. They had owned and operated a workroom
in the United States since the 1960s, and Emery, a graduate engineer,
had developed equipment specifically to assist his wife in the workroom.
Word of mouth spread, and soon they were making equipment for other
workrooms.
They closed their workroom in Buckner, KY, in 1998 to concentrate
on the manufacturing business. I became a partner shortly thereafter,
and bought the company in early 2003. The name was changed, but
the long tradition of service to the workroom and fabric industry
remains. Today we operate out of a 14,400-square-foot plant and
office, with five full-time employees and three part-time employees.
We make everything in-house and have an electrical engineer and
a computer engineer as two of the three part-time employees.
We focus on providing equipment designed to be the best in terms
of features designed to allow the user to save the most time and
money in those processes that create bottlenecks in the modern workroom.
D&WC: What window coverings
products did you handle initially? What products do you handle today?
BORDERS: The first product brought
to market was the Vertical Tabler, designed to streamline the process
of length-sizing draperies accurately and quickly, including marking
the hem and providing an opportunity to see how the draperies look
hanging vertically, just as they will on the customer’s window.
Tabling is fast and easy, and the horizontal table is available
for other work.
Next we developed an inspection and cutting machine, which has evolved
into the JR cutting machine, the most feature-packed and popular
machine on the market today for cutting panels. It is microprocessor-controlled
and allows the user to cut panels in a quarter of the time required
to cut manually on a horizontal table. Other equipment soon followed,
including a slanted tabler for those workrooms that complete the
hem first; the Sewveyor conveyor belt for sergers and blind hemmers
to reduce puckering and help the operator handle the heavy fabrics
being sewn; and many other labor-saving devices.
D&WC: Is your business computerized?
Do you have a company Web site, and if so, how is it used to communicate
with customers?
BORDERS: We are completely computer-networked with two
Web sites, e-mail and a customer database. Our newest Web site,
www.creativeequipment.com, allows visitors to download flyers on
individual pieces of equipment. They can also contact us via e-mail
as well as phone or fax. I would estimate that 50 percent of our
prospective customers contact us via e-mail from a Web search or
a link from another site.
When a prospective customer acknowledges a need or an interest in
a piece of equipment, we want to know immediately, so we can provide
the information required for them to make an informed decision.
We honestly believe that anyone weighing the advantages of our equipment
versus our competitors’ equipment will come to the conclusion
that we offer more value.
D&WC: Who are your customers?
What parts of the country do you serve?
BORDERS: About 70 percent of our business is with drapery
workrooms. The other is split between fabric retailers, fabric wholesalers
and apparel manufacturers. We have installations on every continent
in the world, which speaks well for the equipment.
Obviously, as a small company, we can’t afford to service problems
internationally, so providing equipment that works well the first
time it is installed, and continues to work well, is critical to
our success.
D&WC: How has your segment
of the industry changed since you first began?
BORDERS: The customers are much more sophisticated. Most
are computer-literate and technically proficient, having to deal
with sewing machines and calculating pleat widths and spaces. The
demands of their market have increased as well, with end users demanding
quality and low prices. We offer microprocessor controls, bar-code
printing, fabric mapping, scanning, connection to customer computers
for inventory control and many more electronic features developed
in the last 10 years. Our electronic and computer technology definitely
sets us apart.
We manufacture all the components of our machines so we can ensure
quality and guarantee accuracy. We actually achieve accuracies within
one-half percent. We have to stay on top of technology, which is
driven by our customers’ requirements. This allows us to compete
with larger companies that are not as focused on our market niche
as we are.
D&WC: Where do you see yourself
and your company five years from now? Are there additional areas
within the industry in which you would like to become involved?
BORDERS: I believe we will be the premier provider of
technology that minimizes labor, time, waste and expense in handling
fabric or making draperies. The new generation of machines we are
developing will allow the user to change the calibration of the
measuring equipment to allow for the characteristics of different
fabrics, so accuracy can be assured no matter if you are running
polyester, cotton, silk or Trevira.
We hope to make the equipment faster as well as more accurate, so
we can minimize the cost for our customers, allowing them to be
more competitive in their marketplace, and therefore more profitable.
We can’t make the sewing machines run faster, but we can find
ways to streamline the manual processes and eliminate long, unnecessary
queues.
D&WC: What are some of
the key factors involved in your growth and success?
BORDERS: The primary key to our success is the technical
advantage we give our customers, and the quality of what we build
and sell. The machines go in, and with very little effort work well
for many years. We listen to our customers and build features into
our products that make the equipment safe, easy to use and efficient.
We service what we sell, and because we manufacture everything ourselves,
a customer will never be sent to a third-party vendor who doesn’t
understand the application of the equipment. Customer service is
critical to the success of any company, and we are constantly striving
to ensure good service to all our customers.
D&WC: What are your strengths
in the marketplace?
BORDERS: Our strength is quality
equipment with state-of-the-art features that allows our customers
to outperform their competition.
Customers not only get the best equipment when they buy from us,
they also get our cooperation in helping them to attain the highest
efficiency in their workrooms or fabric businesses. We have engineers
on staff as well as consultants in setting up workrooms. We understand
our customers’ business, and work very hard to enhance their
profitability and reduce their problems in their manufacturing processes.
D&WC: Do you educate your customers?
BORDERS: We believe in educating
our customers. To that end, we provide manuals, training videos,
seminars and, on occasion, consultation. We try to provide value-added
service by helping our customers with workroom layout, ensuring
they have the proper mix of equipment to make draperies in a minimum
amount of time while ensuring the highest quality, and recommendations
on products that we don’t make or sell, but that may be required
to obtain the highest manufacturing efficiencies.
We depend on repeat business, and you don’t get that with inferior
products or poor service. I am sure there are people happy doing
things the old-fashioned way or who deal with our competition, but
I truly believe a well-informed person is more likely to buy from
Creative Equipment, so we try to educate prospective customers before
they buy.
D&WC: Do you work through distributors
or sell direct to the retailer?
BORDERS:We would love to sell through agents or distributors,
but I have struggled with finding the right group to sell our products.
We have distributors in Canada, Mexico and several locations throughout
the United States, but generally, most sales are accomplished by
the in-house staff.
A good distributor for a technical product is a difficult thing
to find, but the value of having someone locally available is worth
the effort in finding them. We are always on the lookout for good
potential distributors.
Creative Equipment Corp.
3510 Mattingly Rd.
Buckner, KY 40014
(502) 225-9200
(800) 626-5388
Fax: (502) 225-0013
www.creativeequipment.com
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