Outside the state, Fetzer’s work is visible at
Levi’s Stadium– the newhome of theNFL’s
San Francisco 49ers – and on a tower at the
Fordham University law school in New
YorkCity.
Meanwhile, Fetzer’s highest-end retail
c l i ents request products that can
subsequently be found in those clients’
stores throughout the world, but the
majority of its overall business comes from
U.S.-based interests.
About 60 percent of the work is for general
contractors on architectural projects, while
the remaining 40 percent is the direct-to-
end-user retail work. It’s a fairly steady ratio,
Wixom said, but some extreme years have
seen the architectural projects side
handling nearly 100 percent of the load –
and that side’s percentage has rarely
droppedbelow50percent of total revenue.
“The retail side is where we can experience
rapid growth and occasional shrinkage,” he
said.
In terms of its competition in those spaces,
Wixom boils Fetzer’s edge down to a single
word:
The company embraced lean manufactur-
ing principles when itmoved into its newest
building in 2005, he said, and the
dedication to a concept that considers
expenditure of resources for anything other
than the creation of customer value as waste
is what’s fueled the progress of subsequent
years.
“Our lean processes inmanufacturing allow
us to our footprint effectively with a crewof
55 guys, as much as can use it with a crew of
125 guys on the shop floor,” Wixom said.
“It’s our ability to ramp up or ramp down –
depending on the customer’s needs and the
type of machinery required to process the
product that they require – and then our
organization inour up-front process.
“Our shop drawings, we believe, reflect as
much if not more detail than anyone else in
our competitive industry. Though we
strongly feel we have the best carpenters in
the world on our shop floor, we still like to
give them what we affectionately refer to as
Lego drawings. We take the guesswork out
of those drawings so that their crafts-
Process.
FetzerWoodworks
| BusinessWorld-
Magazine
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