Use the alloy to manufacture restaurant products

Tag : Metal Cast
Wrightsville once made everything from wagon wheels to brasstrinkets to wall ornaments, and in the 1950s was the country'slargest manufacturer of barbells, Lefever said.

The Armetale formula that Bud Wilton developed in the early 1960sis a thermal alloy that both holds heat and stays cold longer thanother metals.

The name, Lefever said, is a combination of the words art and metalput together with a little French flair.

At first, the company used the alloy to manufacture products forthe restaurant industry.

"It wasn't until the early to mid-'70s that we started sellingit at the retail level," Lefever said.

Wilton Armetale now makes about 700 different cookware andserveware products, Lefever said, turning out about 700,000 items ayear with a work force of 80 to 85 employees and sales runningbetween $15 million and $20 million.

"We are the largest manufacturer and supplier of alternative metal in the country," Lefever said. "We call ourselves'the last man standing' ... in an industry where made in the USAstill means something."

But to grow, he said, the company had to break with that tradition,a decision that Lefever said has not always set well with all itscustomers.

Outsourcing
The new lines of glassware and ceramics are not Wilton Armetale'sfirst forays into outsourcing. They're part of a process ofmodernization that began several years ago.

One of the first steps the company took to ensure its future was toinvest about $4 million in new equipment in 1999 and 2000 to makeits Mount Joy foundry operations more efficient and environmentallyfriendly.

Expanding its brand beyond metal was another step in the process.

"For us to continue to grow our business, we realized we hadto branch off into other media," Lefever said. "Thereason we import the glassware and ceramics is we don't have theexpertise to do that ourselves."

Importing is also a step that most of Wilton Armetale's competitors— Arthur Court, Mariposa, Nambé and Lenox — tooksome time ago.

"We have to constantly reinvent ourselves when we're in anindustry as competitive as this," Lefever said.

The company began exploring the idea of outsourcing around 2005,Lefever said, approaching several of its major customers, such asMacy's, to see if there would be a market for cheaper,mass-produced versions of some of the company's original metalbread trays.

Finding the right supplier in China took about 18 months.

The challenge, Lefever said, was to find an environmentallyfriendly manufacturer that treated its workers right. And it alsohad to be someone who could be entrusted with the formula for theArmetale alloy.

He credits Ivan Jeffery, president of Crescent Brass in Reading anda longtime friend of Fred Wilton, with helping the company find theright supplier.

"It's not that difficult to do business in China,"Jeffery said, although the idea "scares people at first."

Crescent is similar to Wilton Armetale in being a century-oldfoundry that still pours its own metal castings, Jeffery said.

But unlike Wilton, Crescent Brass has been outsourcing some of itsproducts for a long time.

"We started in Taiwan and Italy 25 years ago," Jefferysaid. "We've been in China about 10 years and have developedrelationships just like you would doing business in thiscountry."

Lefever said he and Fred Wilton flew to China and spent more than aweek there visiting with the company's owner.

"It's been a very good relationship," Lefever said."He's an honest businessman who has never breached the issueof confidentiality. We've never seen any of our products show upanywhere else."

It also turned out to be a profitable relationship.

"That first year, we sold 250,000 units," Lefever said.

But the outsourcing "was a big change for our customers,"Lefever said.

The company wholesales its products to nearly every departmentstore in the country, along with about 1,800 independent andspecialty shops across the U.S. and Canada.

Some of them were upset, Lefever explained, and were saying"Wilton is selling out" by importing some of its productsfrom China.

That has begun to change, he said, as they've recognized that thequality is not any different from the products made here. And thathas helped pave the way for the company to leverage its well-knownbrand with imported glassware and ceramics.

Jeffery also helped Wilton Armetale find its ceramics supplier. Inaddition to Crescent Brass, he runs a company with a partner inmainland China — Total Source Trading — that imports avariety of finished products and has contacts with a broad range ofindustries.

The ceramics supplier, like the metal supplier, is in GuangdongProvince, in southern China.

Wilton Armetale's connection with its glassware supplier in Mexicois a different story.

Lefever said that relationship grew out of a tour of factories heand Fred Wilton made independent of Jeffery.

During their travels, one of the metal suppliers they were visitingin Guadalajara happened to mention that he also had a factory thatmakes hand-blown glass, Lefever said.

That company, Hacienda Real, is now producing Wilton Armetale's newline of Bello Vaso glassware.

Wilton already has a stock of the glassware at its80,000-square-foot distribution warehouse on Stony Battery Road,and it hopes to start shipping its new line of ceramics around Oct.1, at the beginning of the busy holiday gift season.

"Our goal, over the next three years, is to try to do $1million in each product line," Lefever said.

The company had the same goal when it came out with its locallymade Gourmet Grillware a couple of years ago, a line sold throughsuch outlets as Home Depot that is now bringing in $600,000 to$700,000 a year.

"That will always be made here," Lefever said. "Webelieve there's always going to be an advantage to make some of ourproducts domestically."


Dennis Larison is editor of the business section and can be reachedby telephone at 291-8753 or by e-mail at dlarison@lnpnews.com .