Having Fun here. ARTO products are used in the built world, that means life is experienced around it. I hope that means fun.
In the past I railed against aspects of LEED in the shadows. This article frees me to speak about it in the LIGHT (a LED LIGHT). Here is an excerpt.
“Finally, you are fairly critical of LEED, saying there are too many LEED platinum buildings in the middle of nowhere that people then need to drive to – this is the result of “LEED brain,” a myopic focus on prerequisities and credits. How would you like to see LEED, LEED-Neighborhood Development (ND), Sustainable Sites Initiative, and other important rating systems, evolve? Do they need to incorporate population density differently?”
Link to whole article here FROM ASLA DIRT
I am here. Actually per Google Maps I am 7.2 miles away.
Tomorrow I start to squeeze.
Squeeze the juice out of this opportunity. What is the opportunity?
At minimum connectivity of sales team to the back office. At maximum a real time looking glass in to all aspects of the business.
Actually the best scenario would be the ability to market every hair brain scheme I have and execute it.
Peace
Netsuite Logo
Howdy All,
I am traveling to San Mateo Sunday to begin training on NETSUITE essentials. The class is Monday through Friday from 9-5. Look forward to checking out the corporate culture, meeting my account rep and most importantly learning.
Peace
ARTOBRICK, TV, Flat Screen, Thin Brick, ARTO
Yes, if I had the ad money I would do something like this. For your staycation you need to frame your new big screen TV in your new media room with ARTOBRICK.
Peace
Howdy
My father on the path of creating Brick Veneer (thin brick) had a lot of influence from ceramics. The first ARTO products were ceramic, extruded clay tile, very thin and put into commercial kilns. As a kid there seem to be a hundred kilns all lined up. There was probably only 20 or so. My father kept on the path towards concrete and brought with him the aesthetics and art of ceramics.
I do find Ceramics nostalgic. It is among my first memories of my father.
All this to say a good friend of mine is having a show & sale on the 11th. His name is Doug Blechner (dougblechner.com)
Blechner Pot
As seen on TV: Ryan Brown of ‘Flipping Out’ puts down roots
Designer Ryan Brown has a fan and friend of ARTO for many years now. Recently his home was featured in the Los Angeles Times along with the ARTO Roman Pavers in Early Gray that make up his garden path and pool coping.
(Christine Cotter / Los Angeles Times)
Interior designer Ryan Brown, known as the voice of reason on the Bravo reality series “Flipping Out,” has made a living buying ugly duckling properties, turning them into beauties and selling them for profit. But as fans of “Flipping Out” know, Brown and his domestic partner, chef Dale Monchamp, had a daughter through a surrogate and wanted to put down roots. Two years ago they bought a 1942 two-story stucco house in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles
The yard was relandscaped to include a mosaic tile pool, an organic vegetable garden and a lawn with a concrete paver path from Arto Brick in Gardena. With extensive changes inside and out, the tab for renovations came to about $700,000. “I did it as inexpensively as possible to use the materials I wanted,” Brown says, adding that without his industry sources the cost would have run $1 million.
www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-0815-brown-pictures,0,3234541.photogallery
Dole Food Files IPO, Will Be Public Again – WSJ.com.
Kind of a bummer when I found out one of our competitors is “DOLE”. I will still eat those pineapples.
I was Wrong, You are Wrong. I made a mistake, You made a mistake.
Mistake seems a bit more innocent. There is grace extended to someone when you say they made a mistake.
When you release a bad guy from jail is that a mistake or wrong?
LA COUNTY released a bad guy because of a paper work mix up is a mistake.
Releasing a murderer is Wrong
Vegetable Gardens Help Morale Grow – WSJ.com.
Morale needs a good soil amendment of green cash first.
There is also a mountain mixed in but it did not read as well as the current title.
This was the first time that I went to Salt Lake.
It was wonderful weather.
This was the first meeting I had with Contempo Tile
What a boring post. Getting warmed up.
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| From Contempo Utah |
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| From Contempo Utah |
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| From Contempo Utah |
Came across this article in email news blast of Engineering news. I now know why we are behind. Click on the pic to get to the article.
Tequila turned into diamonds
came across this site through the wall street journal
Wall of bottles
www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-mon-minding-optimism-sep15,0,7487591.story
chicagotribune.com
Minding Your Business
Small Manufacturers Find Bright Spots in Tough Economy
Despite economy, small firms staying nimble, responsive to gain customers, expand businesses
By Ann Meyer
Special to the Chicago Tribune
September 15, 2008
Cari Murray and Doug Kremer have heard it time and again: “Manufacturing is dead in this country. Aren’t you freaking out?”
It’s just the opposite. Murray, who owns sheet-metal fabricator Mellish & Murray, and her husband, Kremer, who co-owns components-maker LaVezzi Precision with cousin Albert LaVezzi, are seeing growing demand for their manufacturing services despite the down economy.
“Our business is thriving,” Murray said. “We’re able to make it happen because we’re nimble, conscientious about labor and have invested a tremendous amount in capital equipment.”
The Chicago area generates two-thirds of the state’s $72 billion in manufacturing output and supports nearly 1 million manufacturing jobs, with more on the way, said Pam McDonough, chief executive and president of the Alliance for Illinois Manufacturing.
While a sluggish economy and high energy prices are conspiring to constrain growth in a number of industries, many of Chicago’s small and midsize family-owned manufacturers are in an expansion mode that’s counterintuitive.
“Trends aren’t tracking what presumptions are,” McDonough said.
The combination of a weak U.S. dollar, sinking labor costs and the steep cost of fuel are tilting the equation in favor of local manufacturers. When quality issues about overseas production are factored in, companies like Mellish & Murray and LaVezzi Precision are well-positioned for growth.
Glendale Heights-based LaVezzi Precision, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, for decades produced components for the motion picture industry. When that industry was threatened by the growth of home videos, the company began moving into the medical-parts market, producing bone screws, dental implants and ventricular-assist devices.
It was a smart move. Sales have been climbing for the past five years, to about $12 million annually, up from $5 million in 2002. The company spent $1.9 million on new equipment in the past year and is on track to spend another $1 million in the year ahead, Kremer said.
Investments paying off
Meantime, Chicago-based Mellish & Murray also has invested more than $1 million in new technology and equipment to boost productivity. It brought in a team from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Industrial Assessment Center to look at the plant’s energy usage and make recommendations for increased efficiency. By installing new lighting and locking in a two-year contract for electricity with a new provider, Mellish & Murray cut its electricity costs by about 30 percent.
This summer, LaVezzi spent $60,000 on new lighting and replaced air compressors at a cost of $72,000. The improvements should save $30,000 a year.
“New technology and productivity continue to make big cost reductions,” said Ralph Keller, president of the Alliance for Manufacturing Excellence. “That’s why the small manufacturers are doing well. They’re close to the customer. They’re nimble and flexible, and they can configure things to order for customers, where the manufacturers overseas are not.”
With the growth has come new jobs. Mellish & Murray has increased its head count by 10 percent in the past few years, to about 50, even while adding new equipment that reduces the amount of labor required, Murray said.
The company’s growth stems from diversification into new, value-added products and services. The 114-year-old sheet-metal fabricator offers full-product manufacturing of metal cabinetry for schools, hospitals and other institutions, from fabrication to painting, assembly and drop-shipping, Murray said.
“We’re a one-stop shop,” she said.
The company is competing head-on with contract manufacturers in China. But without long-distance shipping, Mellish & Murray can offer a shorter cycle time, and customers can carry less inventory.
“We’ve had a tremendous amount of bidding activity for people who might have gone overseas and are re-evaluating that,” Murray said.
The company began diversifying in 1985, when W.W. Grainger decided to manufacture its own products, pulling its account from Mellish & Murray. Besides scouting for new metal-fabrication customers, Mellish & Murray purchased a manufacturer of strobe lights and launched a new division, Aeroflash Signal. It makes the lighting for general aviation aircraft and school buses.
Diversifying business
About the same time, Murray’s husband was diversifying his family-owned business. Recognizing that the motion picture industry was going through major changes, LaVezzi Precision began targeting medical-equipment customers looking for quality components close to home. After a few lean years, sales picked up, generated by repeat business as well as increased marketing and word of mouth.
LaVezzi’s workforce totals 75, up from 50 five years ago, and it is recruiting for five machinists, Kremer said.
Ideally, the company looks for workers with a minimum of five years experience, but increasingly it has been supplementing less experience with training, Kremer said. It also has an employee-referral program, offering workers $1,000 if they bring in a qualified employee for a highly skilled job.
Wages are competitive, with machinists’ jobs typically paying $70,000 to $100,000, Kremer said. Yet the candidate pool is slim because of a misperception that manufacturing is dead.
“We want to expand our customer base but we are pretty much at maximum capacity,” he said. “We can’t grow without good help.”
Copyright 2008, Chicago Tribune
Made (again) in America
The rising cost of labor and shipping abroad are driving manufacturing back to the U.S. So are the logistics of dealing with far-flung suppliers.
By Stephanie N. Mehta, global editor
September 11, 2008: 12:34 PM EDT
NEW YORK (Fortune) — Talk of a reverse migration of manufacturing from China to the U.S. has been buzzing across union halls and factory floors, corporate boardrooms and Wall Street.
The cost of shipping outsourced goods from China to U.S. customers has doubled in just two years thanks to high oil prices, and labor costs in China are rising sharply.
“There’s a shortage of technical and managerial talent,” reports Anand Sharma, CEO of TBM Consulting Group. “To attract managers Chinese companies are talking about salary increases of 15% to 30% year-over-year.”
Thomasville Furniture and Exxel Outdoors, a maker of camping gear, have both said they now are making products in the U.S. that they once outsourced to China; both have attributed the move to the soaring cost of transporting goods.
But other longtime outsourcers, such as Regal Ware Inc., a 500-employee maker of high-end cookware (sets go for as much as $4,000), have discovered that manufacturing abroad has another drawback: it isn’t nearly as efficient as they had hoped.
“We either had too much inventory, or not enough” of the products Regal Ware outsourced to China, says Jeffrey Reigle, CEO of the Kewaskum, Wisc.-based company. “We figured there had to be a better way.”
The better way, it turns out, proved to be right under his nose, at two Wisconsin plants where Regal Ware has produced stainless steel pots and pans for more than 50 years.
Cheap isn’t everything
As part of a review of its manufacturing processes, Regal Ware managers decided they could solve inventory woes and serve customers better by largely abandoning their 10-year effort in China. (The company will continue to go offshore for kitchen items that its U.S. plants don’t already have the machinery to make, such as pasta strainers.)
Cheap isn’t everything. To be sure, Chinese suppliers don’t have to worry about a wholesale exodus of customers. China’s trade surplus in July, for example, grew 4%, and export growth climbed almost 27%.
And plenty of manufacturers will continue looking for ever cheaper places to produce. In fact, as the cost of doing business in China rises, many companies – including Chinese firms – are shifting their production to less expensive markets, such as Vietnam.
But Regal Ware’s experience suggests that companies need to think beyond simply chasing the lowest cost supplier. CEO Jeffrey Reigle says the main reason for bringing production home was getting better control of the supply chain.
The Lunar New Year holiday, for example, posed an annual challenge: Factories in China typically shut down for several days around the holiday and workers stream to their home provinces. Inevitably, some workers opt to stay home, forcing factories to spend valuable time restaffing.
“It was always a bit of a nightmare trying to juggle around the holiday,” Reigle recalls.
About three years ago, the company, with the guidance of consultants TBM, started evaluating its operations to become more efficient. A particular concern was how long it was taking to deliver cookware to customers. The overseas manufacturers emerged as a key bottleneck.
Since the company brought production home earlier this year, delivery times to one major customer, Reigle says, have gone from 30 to 60 days to as little as 24 to 48 hours. “We can be much more flexible when we have a supply chain we control,” he says. Because of other strides in efficiency it’s made, Regal Ware hasn’t had to ramp up staffing yet.
Reigle declined to discuss how the shift in manufacturing has affected profits. But he cited the example of one customer that orders stock from Regal Ware but also buys directly from Chinese-based manufacturers. The customer says Regal Ware’s prices are 8% to 10% higher than buying direct from China, but that its cash flow from Regal Ware products has increased 10% partly because the seller can turn over inventory more quickly.
Regal Ware’s heightened efficiency has freed management to seek new sales opportunities. Reigle just returned from a trip to China, of all places, where he says he secured an order with a Chinese direct marketing company.
“We will be shipping American-made cookware to China by the end of September.” he says. He adds with a laugh: “Talk about man bites dog.”
This past week Arto was at PCBC held at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. A first for this generation: a trade show so far from home base. I think Arto himself did a trade show in Vegas, once.
This first pic was taken on the roof of Moscone. The convention hall is subterranean, very cool.
These pics are of our booth and crew. The crew all did an awesome job. Left to right; Stephanie, Sarah, Will & Sam (I am in the third one down, far right). These pics were taken at 2:59 PM on Friday, the show ended at 3PM. The booth was well used, but everything still looks great doesn’t it?
These are pics of our (convention hall) neighbors. The last ones are a series & one of them was having fun.
Sarah & I hung out Friday with the crew of Buena Tile, exhibiting at the Dwell show in Los Angeles. It was a good bonding event for the two companies. I put it on par with a 12 hour road trip to Albuquerque New Mexico.
Arto has created a new product, Rosarita, for use as a wall veneer. Here you see Arto & Vod discussing the layout. It is not officially out yet but call or email if you want to find out more.
If this product interests you email me @ armen@artobrick.com
Good looking install
I heard about this install and only had my cell phone camera with me. It’s in a Catholic church on the coast in Orange County, CA. I forget now where it is (and what it’s called). I need to find it again.
Howdy All, this is a project in Santa Monica, California. It’s a creative use of one of our existing products.
Arto is launching a multimedia POS (Point of Sale). Currently installed at Bourget Flagstone & Modern Builders Supply
Please stop by and then drop me a line to let me know what you think.
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| From Arto |
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| From Arto |
You usually see government officials at car plants or farms, in mainstream businesses. It is weird to see them in one’s own industry. More here.
