Ever wonder who makes the salad bars, booths, hostess stands and other fixtures at your favorite restaurant?
Anaheim-based Pacific Westline Inc. generates about $13 million in yearly sales making furniture and wood, metal, glass and stone fixtures for Disneyland, Nobu Restaurants, Mimi’s Cafe, Islands, Souplantation, the Cheesecake Factory and others.
Pacific Westline makes products based on designs from restaurant operators.
At the company’s 70,000-square-foot headquarters, some 100 workers make everything from cabinets and wine racks to metal and glass ornaments in Pacific Westline’s millwork and metal, stone and glass fabrication departments.
The finished products are hauled with the company’s six trucks and installed at various restaurants around the country.
Daniel MacLeith started Pacific Westline in 1975 at age 19.
MacLeith always liked to tinker with stuff as a boy. When MacLeith was 15, he realized he had a knack for making wooden things, he said.
A family friend in woodworking gave MacLeith some old equipment when he was renovating his shop.
MacLeith said he fiddled around with the power tools out of the garage in his parents’ house in Huntington Beach.
He started making cabinets, bookshelves, dressers and other wooden furniture. Soon after, friends, family and neighbors starting tapping him for jobs, MacLeith said.
One of his first projects was to build a kitchen for the Huntington Beach Police Department, he said.
Woodwork soon went from being a hobby to a career.
When MacLeith graduated from high school, he wanted to work for a cabinet maker instead of going to college.
Entering the business at a young age was hard, he said.
Craftsmen in the trade had to have “real world” work experience, he said.
MacLeith had worked on a lot of projects. But he never had worked for a company, which made it hard for people to take him seriously, he said.
“The world was a different place back then,” MacLeith said. “We now readily accept youth in the work place because of technology and changing times. But back then you really had to earn your stripes.”
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Pacific Westline salad bar for Sweet Tomatoes, sister company of Souplantation: Disney, Mimi’s, Cheesecake Factory also are customers |
After several months of no job interviews, MacLeith said he became fed up.
“I got to the point where I just said, ‘Fine, I’ll do it myself,”‘ he said.
MacLeith convinced his dad to co-sign a business loan so that he could start his own woodworking business.
Getting the business to where it is now wasn’t easy.
MacLeith, like other entrepreneurs, had to overcome limited money, time and help. He also had to learn how to manage costs, find employees and most important, attract customers.
Pacific Westline focused on housing work in the beginning. A few years later, small restaurants started asking MacLeith to build furniture for them, he said.
Now, nearly all of the company’s customers are restaurants, according to MacLeith.
Pacific Westline has gone through some changes.
Eventually, MacLeith’s customers started asking him to make more products out of metal, stone and glass. Instead of outsourcing the fabrication work to other companies, MacLeith decided to do it himself.
But expanding the business took a lot of money, time and consideration, according to MacLeith. The company had to invest in equipment, space and workers to offer more services, he said.
“It was expensive and time consuming but it turned out to be a healthy investment,” MacLeith said. “We did what we had to do to set us apart from competitors.”
Being able to offer wood, stone, metal and glasswork helped the company go after larger customers, according to MacLeith.
But landing customers such as Walt Disney Co. and Cheesecake Factory Inc. wasn’t easy, MacLeith said.
Pacific Westline competes against a handful of companies across several industries, which makes it hard to win contracts for big projects, MacLeith said.
“We’re bidding against a lot of other businesses, so it comes down to reputation,” he said.
The rising cost of materials, energy, insurance and labor are other challenges for Pacific Westline.
While some manufacturers move out of state to save money, MacLeith said he’d like to keep the business in Orange County.
“It’s expensive out here, but it could be worse,” MacLeith said.
Finding workers is another obstacle.
The woodwork, metal, stone and glass industries are dealing with a shortage of workers as younger generations are opting for more professional and service careers, MacLeith said.
MacLeith said he wants to train more of his employees to take on management duties so that he can have more time to relax.
“I’ve been methodically empowering my staff to be the best and to run things without me when that day comes,” he said.
Retirement has been on MacLeith’s mind lately, he said.
The company has had interest from investors but MacLeith said he’s never seriously thought about selling until recently.
MacLeith is open to a buyout but wants to make sure his workers are taken care of, he said.
Building on Broken Glass
Santa Ana’s Urban Slabs expects to see $15 million in sales next year from recycled glass slabs.
Urban Slabs is among a number of manufacturers to offer eco-friendly products that can be used for homes and commercial construction.
The company makes slabs out of concrete and 60% recycled glass containers that otherwise would be sent to landfills.
Urban Slabs buys used clear, amber and green glass from a trash company in Los Angeles that cleans and processes it according to Urban Slabs’ specifications.
The glass is delivered to the company’s 14,000-square-foot factory, where it’s mixed with cement, treated with colors and poured into large slabs that can be cut into countertops, tiles and panels for a variety of uses such as flooring and furniture.
The lightweight slabs come in different colors and are treated to resist scratches and fading.
Urban Slabs is backed by a group of investors interested in green products, according to Chief Executive John Collins.
The company employs about 10 workers and expects to hire more next year, he said.
Collins co-owned an Aliso Viejo-based concrete company called High Performance, which he later sold to Quikrete Cos. of Atlanta. He later worked as a consultant for a subsidiary of Mexico’s Cemex SA de CV that focused on green technology.
It didn’t take long for the entrepreneur bug to bite Collins again. About three years ago, he said he started thinking about ways to use his experience in the cement business with green technology.
He noticed that there weren’t many industrial products made out of recycled materials and wanted to go after that niche.
Collins said he spent three years researching, testing and developing his product, which was time consuming and expensive.
Luckily, Collins met a group of investors that helped finance the company’s early stages, he said.
Collins owns a majority of the company and said he’s focused on growing the business by selling through a variety of channels.
Urban Slabs currently sells its products through home improvement stores including Signature Design Center in Orange, Kitchen and Bath Solutions in Fountain Valley and Kitchen and Bath Design in Newport Beach.
Urban Slabs is talking with large home improvement retailers, developers and architects, Collins said.
It’s unclear how the company will adapt to slowing homebuilding and commercial construction. Urban Slabs plans to open more plants across the U.S. starting next year, according to Collins.
Baby Business
Messy babies can be good business.
Just ask Johanna Romaniuk, founder of Neat Baby LLC, a Huntington Beach-based company that makes baby bibs and the Wupzey, a lightweight, easy-to-clean food catching net for high chairs.
The company employs five workers and expects to hit $1 million in sales next year.
Neat Baby makes its products at local factories and sells them at more than a dozen retailers in California, Nevada, Texas and Canada, including Newport Kids in Newport Beach and Wea Peats in San Clemente and Mission Viejo. The company also sells its products online.
The company’s Wupzey and bibs are made out of lightweight nylon. They’re lead-free and come in different colors and prints. The Wupzey sells for about $20, while bibs sell for less than $10.
Romaniuk started Neat Baby less than a year ago.
As a mom, Romaniuk knew how hard it was to feed a baby and keep the floor clean.
When she grew tired of picking grapes and pieces of cheese off the floor, Romaniuk said she decided to make a food catching net out of an old nylon jacket.
Eventually friends and family started asking her to make food-catching nets for them.
The light bulb went off. Romaniuk decided to turn her nets into a business.
“I spent a lot of time making a prototype that could fit all highchairs,” Romaniuk said. “It required a lot of research and got pretty expensive. But I think we ended up with a product that actually works.”
After the Wupzey came bibs. Romaniuk said more products should follow.
These days, Romaniuk is dedicating a good chunk of her time going to trade shows and finding stores to sell her products.
She plans to work with a distributor next year so that she can get her products into larger retailers, Romaniuk said.
Neat Baby has had interest from investors and other companies looking to buy the Wupzey product, said Romaniuk, who’s open to a buyout.
