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If you ask Jennifer Williams, president of Saint Louis Closet Co., how she got into the custom closet business, she will start by saying, "Well, I've always been a very organized person…"
Williams' unconventional entry into the woodworking business began while she was working toward her master's degree in marketing and public relations. In addition to waitressing at two restaurants, she took on a third job selling closets — and found her calling. Within two months' time, Williams dropped out of grad school, quit her jobs, wrote a business plan and received a loan to start her own custom closet company.
"I think when I got a glimpse of what a great industry and business this was, I was like, 'I can totally do this, and I totally understand it,' " she recalls. "I just felt like this was something I could do, and it just worked. I was 25, I didn't know much better, and I was OK taking the risk. I just started."
Saint Louis Closet Co. opened its doors in December of 1991.
With the help of one employee, Williams spent the first year selling, semi-processing and installing her closets around metro St. Louis, bringing in $247,000 in its first year in business.
Initially, Williams outsourced panel processing: ordering "sticks" from a large panel processor, cutting them to size for shelves and panels, drilling the holes and then personally installing the orders. However, given the level of customization of the products, she quickly realized the need to add manufacturing equipment to her operation and brought production in-house.
"You just have to have the woodworking capabilities and the quality that goes behind it or you can't make it in the custom closet business," Williams says. "There are companies popping up that have their parts made elsewhere, and they can't compete because they're not really custom."
Seventeen years later, SLCC has a staff of 53 employees occupying its newly refurbished 30,000-sq.-ft. facility in Maplewood, Mo.
Eighty percent of SLCC's business is made up of floor-based custom closets. To meet the demands of the luxury closet customer, the company recently added the Siena Collection, a high-end real wood closet line exclusive to the National Closet Group, to its product offerings. To increase sales in other areas, SLCC plans to add a garage line and expand its existing home office, entertainment center and craft room options.
SLCC manufactures all flat front doors and offers three raised panel door profiles that it custom orders from Northern Contours. As for drawer boxes, Blum's METABOX comes standard; however, when necessary, SLCC will manufacture custom drawer boxes out of 3/4-in. laminated board.
While the majority of business comes from in-home consultations, 25 percent is generated from SLCC's showrooms. In addition to its showroom in Maplewood, the company operates two remote showrooms: one in Chesterfield, Mo., the other in O'Fallon, Mo.
"The best way to sell custom closets is to allow people access to these showrooms so they can come in to see the product," Williams says. "A picture doesn't always do what you want it to do."
IT'S NOT A CLOSET; IT'S A LIFESTYLE
Williams has witnessed an evolution in the closet industry — a movement toward order — and has targeted her marketing efforts to address it.
"Now, we're selling a lifestyle," she says. "In the last three years, we've seen this industry quadruple — we all have too many things and nowhere to put them."
With the motto: "A place for everything," SLCC's advertising is focused on real homes and real life situations.
"All of our ads feature images of closets that are actually in people's homes, not just pictures of closets in our showroom," she notes. "We keep the closet as the central focus of the ad, but show it within the context of a real home."
According to Williams, her communications background has worked to her advantage because she has always felt that she was "marketing a lifestyle."
Williams creates and places 100 percent of SLCC's advertisements — and she makes sure she has a generous advertising budget to draw from.
"When I started I was probably one of the only companies that spent 10 percent of its gross sales on advertising — people looked at me like I was nuts," she says. "But now if you look at my industry, more and more companies have moved toward that trend. This has really become a marketing industry, not just a woodworking [industry]."
SLCC promotes its free in-home estimates, and the majority of its sales are done in the client's home. The company employs 13 designers, who also serve as its sales force.
Armed with a portfolio of finished products and sample boards of colors and surfaces, hanging rods and handle choices, designers aim to make customers part of the process.
"We design it with them," Williams explains. "We ask them how they use things, and we design based on how they live their lives and how they use their closet — it's more than just sticking shelves where they fit."
SLCC designers do not use design software.
"My designers are trained to do it by hand — the super high-end cabinet companies still design by hand, as do architects," Williams explains. "This method gives us a lot more credibility. Not only does it show how well trained they are, but it also allows us to produce designs quickly and right there at the client's kitchen table."
This approach also forces her designers to "really be in the game every time," she says.
CUSTOMER SERVICE IS KEY
Williams describes a unique business environment in St. Louis: A tight-knit, old-fashioned city.
"Our customers aren't just customers," Williams says. "They're our neighbors. They know us, and they know me, and they know my employees. They know where we grew up and where we all went to high school. They identify the company with me as the owner because I grew up here. I went to high school here. I went to college here."
And because of these interconnections, people in St. Louis love to buy from St. Louis-owned companies, Williams says.
"We care about supporting each other and keeping business in St. Louis," she says. "In the closet industry, we've seen many franchises come and go because the city doesn't support them. In contrast, in bigger cities, I've found that the franchise thing is the cool thing. Here, [customers] want to do business with a locally owned company."
Customer service is a major part of SLCC culture, and Williams is a very hands-on business owner. In addition to regularly spending time in the shop to ensure quality, once a month she drives to all 12 of the installations scheduled for that day to make sure her installation teams are clean and meeting SLCC standards.
"I oversee projects on all levels — probably too many levels if you ask my employees — but quality is really important to me," Williams explains. "If somebody has a bad experience with Saint Louis Closet Co., they had a bad experience with Jennifer Williams.
"The customer doesn't really care what kind of screws or hinges you use," Williams adds. "They just don't. They care about the service, about the personal attention, about your team cleaning up when they're done and getting in and out of their house in one day."
Williams feels too many companies have forgotten about the customer.
"You need to make every customer happy every time — period," Williams says. "And guess what, you may lose money on certain jobs, and you may have to go above and beyond when you don't want to or you shouldn't have to, but you just have to do it. You know the story: An unhappy customer tells 100 people; a happy customer tells seven… You can't afford to have an unhappy customer. And, yeah, you are going to have customers that are difficult, and you're going to have customers that are just wrong, but you can't tell them that. You just have to make them happy."
Since the custom closet business involves sales, manufacturing and installation, it can present many challenges.
"The custom closet industry looks very glamorous, it looks very fun, but it's really, really hard," Williams says. "We're almost a fully integrated business — and there are not many of those left. There are so many areas that you have to be on top of. Then add to that the fact that you're working in people's bedrooms — a very personal space — so you have to be very careful and treat their homes with care. It's a hard business and if you're not willing to go 100 percent, you shouldn't do it. People think, 'Hey, I know how to install closets — that's easy,' but they don't know how to design or manufacture or work in someone's house without messing it up — and that's why I think a lot of companies in this business don't make it."
NEW FACILITY, NEW MACHINES
After 14 months of renovation, SLCC moved into its new-and-improved Maplewood, Mo., facility this summer.
"I tried to keep the old warehouse feel of the building: high open ceilings, tons of natural light and excellent airflow," Williams, who with her husband also served as general contractor of the project, explains.
"We put in real air returns to constantly bring in new air and added two new Dantherm Filtration CS2 Maxi DISA Dust Collectors, so the shop is virtually dust-free — making it a much cleaner, happier, safer work environment for my employees," she says.
In the new digs, SLCC runs two Holzma HPP 380 panel saws from Stiles Machinery; two Homag edgebanders (KAR 325 and KAL 310) — one running white glue for white materials; the other one running brown glue for all the darker woods and wood grains; six Blum Minidrill and Minipress door and drawer machines; a Stiles Shop Solutions sliding table saw for cutting smaller projects; and two Ritter R-150 double row hole boring machines.
author: Jackie Roembke