Opening a new door for the cabinetry industry

Rachel Sankey

Past Staff

July 1, 2024

DE PERE – Valley Cabinet got its start nearly 65 years ago in the garage of James and Mary Jane Stroll’s De Pere home.

“They started (in 1960)… down the road (from our current office), just a small shop,” Steve Mashl, vice president and director of operations, said. “Then they moved to this location. They were the first company in the industrial park in east De Pere.”

Mashl said the custom cabinetry manufacturer continued to grow, and in 1986, opened Valley Custom Door – a division of the company supplying custom cabinet doors and wood components to other businesses. 

Soon after, in 1994, Mashl said Seville Cabinetry became the company’s third division, which focuses on custom cabinetry.

The growth, he said, didn’t stop there. 

In 2001, Counter-Form LLC in Marshfield – a post-form countertop manufacturer – was added to the roster.

“We cover… mostly the residential market,” Mashl said. 

Today, Valley Cabinet is a third-generation family-owned company with four divisions under its umbrella.

Mashl said it wasn’t a surprise when five years ago, “we ran out of room.”

“We knew we needed to upgrade to expand,” he said. “We didn’t know how big or how much it was going to be.”

With the help of SCHULER, a German consulting firm, Mashl said the company went through the entire process of laying out the factory and the best layout for the products and machinery.

The entire process, he said, took about four months to complete.

“We looked at different options – adding onto this facility or building a new facility,” he said. “Building a new facility ended up being the most effective way to do it.”

With a plan in place, Mashl said the team at Valley Cabinet broke ground at its new location at 845 Prosper St. in June – 60 feet away from its current space. 

McMahon is the architect for the project, while Bayland Buildings is the constructor for the 87,000-square-foot plant. 

A peek at what’s to come

Mashl said Valley Cabinet will add some new machinery with the expansion, but the main focus of the project is moving Valley Custom Door into the new plant.

“Valley Custom Door produces all the solid wood parts – it produces all the cabinet doors, the drawer boxes, the moldings and the face frame parts the company uses in the cabinet assembly,” he said. 

The cabinet assembly lines, Mashl said, will remain at the current location. 

“(The company is) going to have one plant where all it does is assemble the cabinets and finish them,” he said. “And then we’re going to provide all the wood products they need for their cabinets at (the other plant). We’re going to call it the solid wood area, where we produce all the solid wood parts.”

Valley Custom Door’s transition into the new space will also involve moving about 60,000 square feet of equipment – such as machines and benches. 

“Everything we have in this area – all that has to be moved into the new plant,” he said. “We’re also going to bring in a few new machines for more production and capacity reasons.”

Continued growth

As mentioned, Mashl said the creation of divisions at Valley Cabinet is what led to much of the company’s growth – especially because it broadened the business’s reach.

“Valley Cabinet does custom cabinets, and it has about a 100-mile range it covers,” he said. “It’s a full-service cabinet shop – (we) have homeowners who come into the office and… design their kitchens and pick out colors and countertops – they do the full-blown design process.”

Mashl said project managers also go in the field to measure job sites, work with the builders and construction teams to make sure everything is located correctly and dimensions are correct.

“Then they’ll bring those dimensions back to the plant, design and engineer it and then it goes out for manufacturing,” he said. “Once it’s manufactured, we install the cabinets –  it’s a start-to-finish (process) on the Valley Cabinet side.”

Since the company is full service, Mashl said “it’s hard to do (work) outside of the 100-mile radius” – which does naturally limit Valley Cabinet’s opportunity for growth.

However, since Valley Custom Door and Seville Cabinetry products can be shipped to different locations throughout the country, the company is able to service a wider range of customers.

“For Seville, they have dealers that sell (the products) and install them,” he said. “At Valley Custom Door, we sell the products to cabinet shops and they physically build the cabinets. They don’t have the equipment to build the doors we build… Most of the machinery is from half a million to a million dollars, and all these small cabinet shops can’t afford to purchase machines like that.”

With the new addition at Valley Cabinet expected to be completed by next spring, Mashl said he expects there will be a need for additional staff down the road.

“We’ve been at capacity for three years,” he said. “We could not produce anymore. We probably could have produced 20% more than we did – we did not have the facility to produce it. We’ve got some new finish equipment and sanding equipment coming in – a lot of things that will allow us to produce more product, which will take some people to do it.” 

On automation

Some of the machines that will be brought into the new facility are automated, which Mashl said is “going to be the key.”

“The skilled labor we need to build our products – it’s a lot harder today than it has been in the past to locate people (who can do it),” he said. “We need (automation) to move forward to keep our labor costs down and produce product more efficiently… I can see us in years down the road, and we’re going to have robots at the end of some of our machines… helping manage the flow of our product.”

Jodi Delahaut, marketing director for Valley Cabinet, said the company, in a way, is waiting for automation to better reach its industry.

“We’re customized – every door and cabinet that comes out is special and unique,” she said. “We have to wait for automation to catch up to allow us to do that.”

Even as automation continues to become more prevalent, Mashl said it is important to remember “it is the craftsmen who manufacture our products.”

“Machines enhance our capabilities, but they can’t replace the knowledge and experience that comes from being a trained expert,” he said. “Our team of designers, craftsmen and installation specialists are the strength of our company.”

To learn more about Valley Cabinet, visit valleycabinetinc.com.