product weren’t necessarily the people who
stopped spending money,” Wixom said.
“There’s still plenty enough demand that
we’ve been able to maintain a steady
growth. And that growth is simply because
themarkets have grown.”
In-state architectural projects on which the
company’s work is prominently featured
include both a new federal courthouse and a
new six-story building that houses the
Kirton McConkie law firm in Salt Lake
City, as well as the remodeling of the
Brigham Young University law school in
Provo.
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 dropped below
50percent 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 crew of
Process.
July-August 2014
| BusinessWorld | 155
