Sta-Care Inc. Washington DC

When Steve Aldridge and his wife Carolyn started their business Sta-Care in 1978, they began small, with Steve working full time in the 1,200-sq.-ft. laminate shop and Carolyn keeping an outside job and working at the company when she could. Little did they know the business would grow into what it is today — a company that fabricates and manufactures three distinctive countertop products with over 100,000 sq. ft. of facilities in three towns handling work in six states.

How did Sta-Care get from there to where it is now? There are a variety of factors, among which was inventiveness and building on a model that works.

About five months after the company opened its doors, it was doing enough work to bring Carolyn on full time, and three additional full-time workers were added that year. The company did very well, and in 1983 moved into its present location on Albert Street in Portage, Wis.

The company expanded again in 1988, opening a laminate cutting station in Pana, Ill., which is in the lower half of the state. From its location in Wisconsin it could reach key populations in Minneapolis, Iowa and northern Illinois. With the Pana facility it could extend its influence even further into southern Illinois, St. Louis and the Indianapolis markets.

Initially the company started as a laminate countertop cutting station, buying countertop blanks and customizing them for individual kitchens. The company continued to grow, and by 1990 purchased its first postforming line, becoming a manufacturer of postform tops. A second line followed four years later.

Having mastered the laminate business, in 1996 the company turned its attention to solid surface. But, unlike other solid surface operations, Steve had a different idea — to build from the company's existing laminate model to offer a solid surface product that would fill the gap between laminate and traditional ½-in. solid surface.

Sta-Care built a facility in Pardeeville, Wis., and concentrated for a couple of years on creating a solid surface/laminate hybrid — a sort of solid surface veneer. As the concept started taking shape, the decision was made to formulate its own solid surface material.

The company began batch mixing and pouring solid surface, which it deemed Visioneer. And now, 10 years later, the product is still going strong.

The company now has approximately 130 employees, among which are Steve's son Travis, executive vice president, who heads up solid surface, maintenance, and engineering, and his brother John Aldridge, vice president of sales and marketing, who manages sales. The main plant and corporate offices are in Portage, Wis., and cover 56,000 sq. ft. The plant in Pardeeville, Wis., which handles all of the solid surface manufacturing and fabricating, is about 31,000 sq. ft., and the laminate cutting station in Pana is another 15,000 sq. ft.

Solid Surface Veneer

"Solid surface has always been a very expensive product for kitchens, and on the other side of the coin, you've got laminate tops which are relatively inexpensive," explained Steve. "The distance between the two was significant, so we wanted something that would be somewhere in between, and the best way to do that is to go with a veneer and laminate it to particle board. That's the approach we used."

Although other brands of solid surface veneer have not done well in the past, Travis put his mind to fixing any potential problems that might come up. First, the solid surface they use is a polyester-acrylic blend, which Travis said is much better as a veneer than a pure acrylic, which expands and contracts more with heat. Another thing they do to help "balance the product" is to put a laminate backing sheet on the side that doesn't hold the ¼ in. of solid surface. But above all, they focused on the adhesive used in the lamination process, where problems with other products typically arose.

Once they had the product specifics worked out in a way they were comfortable with, it was full steam ahead.

"With our Visioneer product we never intended to compete with traditional solid surface," said Steve. "We've just introduced to the public a product that is an upgrade to laminate. It is a renewable surface, like traditional solid surface, but with some trade-offs. You're going to have a visible seam in the corner, which is much less visible than in a laminate countertop, but it is there. Also, the backsplash will be set on, so you have a seam there, and you're undermount sink is mechanically undermounted, so you have a visible seam there. But accepting those trade-offs, you have a product that retails for about half the cost of traditional solid surface."

Originally, the company used the same equipment and processes it used with its laminate to create its solid surface veneer product, but eventually they came up with new processes and modified equipment to become more efficient.

Using the special grade of contact cement, the solid surface veneer is laminated to a particleboard substrate fitted with a balance sheet on the bottom. The sandwiched sheet then moves onto a company-built core building machine that squares the sheet, applies build-down strips, creates an expansion joint to allow the particleboard and solid surface to move independently from each other, and applies hinge tape for v-grooving.

The slab then moves to the v-grooving machine, which is also company built and has little resemblance to the traditional v-groover. Here the edge undergoes v-grooving, glue-up and clamping as part of the same process.

At this point the Visoneer blanks are ready for fabrication using slightly modified traditional postform laminate techniques. L- and U-shaped tops are mitered in the corners for joining in the field, utilizing mechanical fasteners and joint adhesive. According to Steve, the whole production process from order to the point where the slab is ready for customization takes only six people.

"We used to have six people just building up the slabs and putting the edge on. Now that's all accomplished, including the final sanding, with one person. One person in a 10-hour day can run 50 to 60 slabs by himself. When we were running with six people we never ran 50 to 60 tops in a day. They would probably do half that.

"From there it either goes to another fabricator, and they fabricate it, or it goes into our fabrication operation," explained Steve. "We do all of our cutting with a Multi-Cam CNC, and then we get into the manual side of things, where we do end caps and all the customizing with manual labor. We've managed to cut out a huge chunk of labor.

"With this product we decided that it was important that it be easy to install," he continued. "When you have to get trained and certified solid surface installers, it adds quite a bit of cost. So we designed this whole program to be installed, just like a laminate top, by a carpenter, a countertop installer or do-it-yourselfer."

While Sta-Care doesn't offer a lot of the options available from most solid surface fabrication companies, those options can still be done by other fabricators buying slabs from the company.

"You can take our Visioneer product and you can do hard seams, inlays, integral sinks and coved backsplashes, but then we feel you're adding too much cost and you lose the advantage of the product," said Travis. "But it can physically be done. We have customers who do hard seams and integral undermounted sinks, but we don't offer that with our customized countertops."

And the company doesn't seem to be facing any of the problems other products of this nature have been subject to.

Pouring Your Own Product

While the company started mixing and pouring solid surface in a batch production that included open molds and curing ovens, it has recently re-engineered its production line to operate on more of a continuous process. However, it isn't what you would call typical. Rather than buying equipment for continuous casting, Travis engineered a system that worked on a continuous curing platform.

The company still batch-mixes their solid surface product, but now there is a sophisticated belt-operated system which flattens the product and runs it through a lengthy curing oven until it comes out the opposite side fully cured and ready for fabrication after cooling.

Sta-Care is currently offering 52 solid surface colors and pouring about 3,700 lbs. a day. "With our new process, we can go up to about 9,000 lbs. a day [approximately 72 standard ½-in. sheets]," said Travis. "It depends on if you're talking a lot of one color. With this machine, if we have to run 200 sheets of one color, we can run the machine and keep pouring batches of material into it without ever stopping."

Of course, manufacturing solid surface isn't for everyone. There are some intricacies and disadvantages to making the product in-house. "We were told by some experts that what we were trying to do wasn't possible when we first came up with the idea," said Travis. So we built a ¼-scale prototype and proved that it is indeed possible. It took a lot of time and effort, but that's kind of how the whole thing started."

Developing a suitable manufacturing system took a lot of work and plenty of time in research and development and then there was a lot of detail that had to go into the actual process. "There's a learning curve to pouring sheets," said Travis. "Anyone can set up shop to pour sheets in their garage, but if you really want to focus on producing a high-quality product, it's not that simple. You have a lot of issues to deal with and you have to control your people to make sure they're doing things the exact same way every time. There are a lot of variables that could jump up and bite you if you aren't careful."

He also noted that prices are moving downward for solid surface, so it may not be very profitable if a company isn't pouring a reasonably high volume of product. However, pouring your own product has plenty of upsides to it also.

In addition to higher daily capacities, the company has seen a more consistent flatness to its product, meaning less sanding is required, and Travis said there are no surprises in product quality when it is controlled in-house.

We decided to build this equipment to make ¼-in. more efficiently than the open-mold system," said Steve. "However, it became obvious that once we got into this machine and started working on it, that it would not only do ¼-in. very efficiently, but it will also do ½-in., or anything in between also very efficiently."

So, the company started to pour ½-in. sheets to sell to the more traditional fabricator under the brand Vision solid surface. Even though expenses in the United States are higher than those in other countries, the company has been able to stay competitive in this arena through innovation and technology advancements.

"Our ½-in. product is not quite as inexpensive as some of the product being imported from Asia, but we are fairly competitive," said Steve. "Most of that product is in 30-in.-sheets, so if you have to make a kitchen you'll have to buy two sheets and have some left over. If you want a 36-in. or bigger island, you'll have to seam two sheets together, where as with our product, you can buy sheets in exactly the size needed, from 18 to 49 in. wide. The same is true with lengths. The standard length is 12 ft., but we can offer sheets from 6 to 16 ft. long if the fabricator can handle it."

So now an estimated 15 percent of the material being produced is ½-in., which is then sold to the company's growing network of fabricators.

"And the fact that it's produced in America means you don't have to inventory container loads of this material to get a reasonable price," added Steve. "You don't have to rely on huge container shipments coming from Asia getting there on time. You've got a Wisconsin firm that can give you material within two weeks. Plus it puts us in the position to demonstrate that U.S. manufacturing is still alive."

Not Only A Fabricator

With its laminate product, Sta-Care continues to customize about 85 percent of it, selling the rest as blanks to smaller laminate fabricators. And with its solid surface veneer, about 60 percent is customized and 40 percent blanks. However, with its ½-in. solid surface, Sta-Care doesn't do any of the fabricating.

"We have no intention of fabricating [½-in. material] at this point," said Steve. "If you want to fabricate ½-in., you have to install, and we cover too large of a market area to be able to install a product. So, I've made the decision all along, and I keep making it year after year, and that's to stay as a furnish-only company and not get into the installation."

However, they are working to establish a distributor network and drive a lot of growth through providing their ½-in. solid surface to other fabricators, according to John. Additionally they are handling a number of molded products.

"We've gotten into a number of specialty applications," said John. "We're manufacturing quite a bit of material for commercial applications. We're large enough to handle the volume and small enough to want to do it."

These specialty products include a variety of different thicknesses of material, but also 20 matching aggregate sinks as well as 12 solid colors and numerous prefabricated accessories, such as shower pans, wall cladding and shower caddies, all of which can be made to match a particular color of vanity or countertop.

Looking Ahead

While the company continues to produce approximately five miles of laminate tops a week, customizing the majority of them, and customizes most of its solid surface veneer product, it is looking toward a future where more and more material is supplied to outside fabricators.

John said the company is continuing to develop its network of fabricators and that the door is wide open for numerous potentials.

Because the solid surface veneer does not require any expensive or specialized tools, many laminate companies can add it to their lineups easily. Additionally, its price point is attractive in that it will give solid surface fabricators wanting a less expensive alternative an opportunity to provide it without entering the laminate market. Finally, hard surface fabricators wanting to be able to offer a solid surface option can buy into the product with a relatively low investment, all of which spells out growth for the company.

"You could set up a shop to do this very easily," added Steve. "It could be a really easy way for fabricators to enter the solid surface market without the huge expenses."

Whether this happens or not remains to be seen, but there is little doubt that the innovation the company has based its foundation on will continue to drive the business well beyond its current boundaries.

For more information contact Sta-Care Inc. at Box 610, Portage, WI 53901, 800-444-8677, wsales@sta-care.com, www.visioneersolidsurface.com.

Editor Kevin Cole can be reached at editor@surfacefabrication.com.