How to Update Your Kitchen Cabinets

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (38.5MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More

Allen Curran  – Curran Cabinetry and Design

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 “Timeless Cabinet Color Choices”
04:00 “Architect Encounter on Flight”
09:45 Soft-Close Drawer and Door Features
12:17 Toolbox Over Kitchen Cabinets
14:46 Friendship, Friction, Sales Strategy
20:07 “Connecting with Amish Artisans”
22:55 “Helpful Advice From Retiree”
25:19 “Shop Machinery and Systems”
29:37 Local, Quality-Focused Service
33:07 “Custom Cabinets, Semi-Custom Pricing”
37:39 Muted Colors for Timeless Kitchens
39:17 Oak’s Decline and Revival
42:38 “Microwave Drawers and Filtration Systems”
46:56 “Counter-Depth vs Full-Size Refrigerators”
49:43 Ethical Start in Remodeling Business
53:30 Modern Trends in Door Desgin
57:20 “Efficient Kitchen Showroom Design”

Podcast Transcription:

Allen Curran [00:00:00]:
White or shades of white are still the most popular. Gray, blue, and green are the other options. And if you look at the blues and the greens, they will tend to have a shade of gray in them. And the reason for that is so much easier to decorate with other colors. If you wanted cobalt blue cabinetry, certainly we can do it. We offer all the Sherwin Williams paint colors as standard, different colors to choose from. But if you want cobalt blue, my biggest concern and first question is going to be how long before you get tired of that color?

James Kademan [00:00:42]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link find@drawincustomers.com we are locally underwritten by the bank of Sun Prairie, and today we’re welcoming, preparing to learn from Alan Curran of Curran Cabinetry and Design. I almost forgot the and design part.

Allen Curran [00:01:06]:
Perfect.

James Kademan [00:01:07]:
So, Alan, how is it going today?

Allen Curran [00:01:09]:
Today’s going well. It’s a beautiful sunny day.

James Kademan [00:01:11]:
Yeah. We’re talking cabinetry here.

Allen Curran [00:01:13]:
We are.

James Kademan [00:01:14]:
So let’s just start with the foundation. How do you get in the cabinetry business?

Allen Curran [00:01:18]:
Well, how I got into the cabinetry business is I applied for a job, having had experience selling to general contractors and found out a little bit later that I was the only one who applied and dressed in a suit. That’s my claim to fame, is I wore a suit the right day.

James Kademan [00:01:37]:
You know, that is. That’s funny. You say that side anecdote here. I’m hiring, I guess you’ve been doing some hiring. And I get people in Zoom meetings. You probably, I imagine, have people in person.

Allen Curran [00:01:48]:
A bit of both.

James Kademan [00:01:49]:
So how are people dressing when they come to apply to your job?

Allen Curran [00:01:53]:
Much more casually than I would like.

James Kademan [00:01:54]:
Yeah.

Allen Curran [00:01:55]:
Or would expect.

James Kademan [00:01:56]:
Almost to the point of jammies.

Allen Curran [00:01:58]:
Tennis shoes, sometimes.

James Kademan [00:02:00]:
Okay.

Allen Curran [00:02:00]:
And it’s like, okay, we’re kind of a big ticket item and we’re selling to typically professionals or, you know, people are. Most of our customers are 55 years of age and older. That’s starting to change a little bit. But I mentioned to one of my employees who wants to dress a little more casual than I would like, and I said, okay. Have you ever gotten a compliment on how you’re dressed? And he says, well, no. And I says, I have.

James Kademan [00:02:31]:
I love that.

Allen Curran [00:02:32]:
It’s not like I’m bragging or anything of that sort. It’s just to me, it’s kind of showing respect.

James Kademan [00:02:38]:
Absolutely.

Allen Curran [00:02:39]:
For the people that you’re talking to. And if you want to come across as professional, I think you need to dress professionally. So that’s kind of where my thought process goes.

James Kademan [00:02:48]:
That is totally true. I was just watching the movie Casino and the thing that stuck out there was Robert De Niro suits. It was almost every scene he’s got a different color and they’re bright and I’m like, what a baller.

Allen Curran [00:03:02]:
Nothing like a sharp dressed man. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:03:05]:
And it’s interesting because I heard a stand up comic talking about the way people dress at the airport where it used to be kind of a.

Allen Curran [00:03:11]:
It was a big deal to go.

James Kademan [00:03:12]:
On a flight and you would dress because it was an event and now they’re just like, roll out of bed and maybe I’ll put my socks on.

Allen Curran [00:03:20]:
We just went to Napa Valley, my wife and I, and you know, early flights and people were in sweats and hoodies and it’s like, well, okay, granted I’m dressed more casual than what I am now because I want to be comfortable. But it’s, it’s different than what it was going to show age here about 30, 40 years ago when you get on a plane. And yeah, it was a high end event to be able to be on a plane. And now it’s just a necessary evil.

James Kademan [00:03:49]:
Yeah. It’s interesting because I always wonder who am I going to be sitting next to? No one’s going to be like, oh, a nice jogging pant.

Allen Curran [00:03:56]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:03:56]:
Or they’re not going to be inclined to chat.

Allen Curran [00:04:00]:
Well, exactly. And for me, I get a lot of. If I’m sitting next to a couple. Not to be sexist about this, but when the husband finds out what I do for a living. Don’t talk to my wife, she’s probably in the kitchen. But interesting. On my trip back from Napa, we flew through Minneapolis and the person I sat next to was an architect.

James Kademan [00:04:24]:
Oh, wow.

Allen Curran [00:04:25]:
I was like, what a great connection that is. Because architects are one of the people that kind of plan out spaces and things of that sort. So we had a lot to talk about and a lot to come. That is cool. Yeah. So he was dressed in a suit, by the way.

James Kademan [00:04:37]:
Oh, nice. So it’s interesting because the suit on a plane, I like the idea of it, but the planes are so tight and I don’t know how you can get off that plane without having your suit just be totally wrinkled.

Allen Curran [00:04:49]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:04:50]:
So there’s the, the movie, you’re in a suit on the airplane and then there’s like, there’s no way.

Allen Curran [00:04:56]:
The reality.

James Kademan [00:04:57]:
Yeah. Because you get off that thing. And it’d just be like a bedsheet that got out of the dryer. What is this?

Allen Curran [00:05:02]:
Yeah. Well, so today’s world.

James Kademan [00:05:05]:
Yeah. Fair, fair. And in the end, I don’t know. I suppose people are more accepting of it to a point.

Allen Curran [00:05:12]:
Covid created a lot of things in our world, and one of them is, hey, I don’t have to get dressed to go to work. So I can kind of wear just about anything I want. If you’re on a zoom call, you have to dress for work from the waist up.

James Kademan [00:05:24]:
Yeah. Don’t even need pants.

Allen Curran [00:05:25]:
Yeah. I don’t want to know about the rest.

James Kademan [00:05:29]:
Keep that camera up here.

Allen Curran [00:05:29]:
So it becomes kind of a different world.

James Kademan [00:05:31]:
Right on. Right on. So you got this job. Was it selling cabinetry or was it selling just 2 of GC? Other stuff.

Allen Curran [00:05:41]:
A little bit of both. It was a larger company here in Madison at the time. We covered pretty much the southern half of the state. We sold to lumber yards. We sold appliances. At the time. We did design work. But now, keep in mind cabinetry.

Allen Curran [00:06:01]:
This would be back in the 80s. It’s a storage industry at that point. It’s not a design industry. So fashion didn’t come into play. And that’s why you saw so many kitchens. Oak cabinets. Oak cabinets. Oak cabinets.

Allen Curran [00:06:17]:
As readily available as an inexpensive wood relative to other species. Once in a while, it would be an upgrade to cherry, but that was kind of it. And as time progressed, you would find it became more and more of a fashion industry, and I was fortunate enough to grow along with that.

James Kademan [00:06:33]:
Got it. Okay.

Allen Curran [00:06:35]:
And at that point, back in the 80s, most of the design aspect of our industry was taught by cabinet manufacturers simply because there weren’t the interior design programs that featured kitchen and bathroom, which is much different today. Madison College has a program. There’s others. There’s another school up near Stevens Point that actually have courses specializing in kitchen and bath design.

James Kademan [00:07:03]:
You’re talking about for kids going to college. They can specialize that focused.

Allen Curran [00:07:08]:
They can. Wow. So it’s part of the interior design program, but part of the criteria is going to be specifically on kitchen and bathroom.

James Kademan [00:07:17]:
That is so interesting. I guess I knew interior design as a whole was a thing, but it never dawned on me that you’d be focused that specifically on these are the two rooms. But now to think about it, you can interior design a living room as much as a kitchen or bathroom. Like, there’s way more things in a kitchen and bathroom.

Allen Curran [00:07:34]:
Yeah, well, we specialize in cabinetry. All our cabinetry Is made by the amish and made locally within, for the most part, within 60 miles of Madison. So where the cabinet’s located, it’s usually in the kitchen and bath. Now we do. I’ve done bedroom furniture, entertainment centers, wet bars, of course, furniture pieces for bathrooms, dressers. I have now keep in mind I’m tied into cabinetry, But I have three bedroom sets at home that weren’t from a furniture manufacturer. They’re from a kitchen cabinet manufacturer. In many cases, you can modify to get whatever size you want that way, get whatever finish that you’re looking for and have a lot more styles to choose from.

Allen Curran [00:08:21]:
And to be honest, the furniture industry, a lot of materials are hidden. So you don’t really know what the quality of the box of the cabinet, so to speak, or the box of the piece of furniture is. So here we can get the full extension slides, you can get with the soft close. You can get soft close hinges, you can get dovetail, solid wood drawer boxes. All kinds of features that you can’t always get with the furniture pieces.

James Kademan [00:08:48]:
What is a dovetail price tag?

Allen Curran [00:08:50]:
What is a dovetail? Good question. An interlocking dovetail is in a corner where two boards are joined together. They’re actually interlocking, and instead of the fingers just being straight, they actually fan out, which is why the term is dovetail, because that actually expands as you get to the outside of the joint, and then it’s glued. But it is impossible to pull that joint apart Unless the glue completely fails, which is. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it.

James Kademan [00:09:18]:
Okay.

Allen Curran [00:09:18]:
But a dovetail joint is a real strong way of making a drawer box that does get a lot of wear and tear.

James Kademan [00:09:26]:
All right, how do they get them together? Do they slide together fine?

Allen Curran [00:09:30]:
One overlaps the other from the outside. Okay. It’s elfin magic is what I mean.

James Kademan [00:09:40]:
You mentioned the soft close and a few other things. When did those come about?

Allen Curran [00:09:45]:
Forgive me for running through some terms that I’m familiar with. Some of the features that people are looking for in today’s cabinetry is one for the drawers, for example, to slide completely out of the cabinet so you have full access. And in doing so, what they’ve also come up with is a piston type system that when you close it the last. Oh, it’s usually 2 or 3 inches, depending on the manufacturer. It’ll slow down the motion, and so there’s no slamming of a drawer. So if you have teenagers at home, it might come in really handy to be able to slow that down so they don’t have the opportunity to slam things shut. Same holds true with doors. There’s a little mechanism inside the hinge that is a piston that slows the motion down so it’s a soft close.

Allen Curran [00:10:30]:
It’s not a loud bang where wood’s hitting wood.

James Kademan [00:10:33]:
All right. How long have those been around?

Allen Curran [00:10:37]:
Depending on price range, the systems have been around for, I’m going to say, probably 15 years. But now it’s getting down into the more affordable cabinet lines just because it’s more common for people to expect it.

James Kademan [00:10:50]:
You know, it’s so interesting because I remember the first time that I came across, I think, a drawer that shut. And I don’t know if it was at an open house, at a whatever house or something like that. And you’re just. I felt like a monkey that met a computer. Because you’re just like, what is this magic?

Allen Curran [00:11:07]:
Well, and of course, the price tag goes along with it.

James Kademan [00:11:09]:
Sure.

Allen Curran [00:11:10]:
You know, because there’s a lot more parts and pieces and way more involved.

James Kademan [00:11:13]:
Way more.

Allen Curran [00:11:13]:
Yeah. And you’re boring holes into the back of the drawer box for some of the adjustments. Now, other things that coincide with those drawer slides is you can adjust the drawer left and right up and down in the front and tip it forward and backward in the back, all within the adjustments available on the drawer slide.

James Kademan [00:11:35]:
Wow.

Allen Curran [00:11:36]:
The whole idea is that labor costs keep going up and up. So what we’re trying to do is make all those adjustments easier to do to help keep installation being quicker, easier, less costly.

James Kademan [00:11:47]:
All right. This is, I guess, my first dresser I can imagine, was a rectangular cutout and a drawer that went in there. And the drawer slide was just the drawer riding on the piece of wood that was between.

Allen Curran [00:11:58]:
Wood on wood. The problem is, in Wisconsin, we have high humidity in the summertime. Wood on wood. The way to grease the wheels, so to speak, is use paraffin wax so that it slides on the paraffin wax instead of the wood on wood because the wood will swell in higher humidity.

James Kademan [00:12:17]:
All right. So interesting. This is. I don’t know if you know this or not, but it’s interesting to me, regardless of what other people may think. Right. Because I come from mechanic background and the toolboxes in the chest that have roller bearings and all this kind of stuff. When you look at the cheap stuff compared to the fancy stuff, and I see that migrating into kitchens and bathrooms and stuff like that, I care probably more about my toolbox than do about my kitchen cabinets.

Allen Curran [00:12:44]:
So. Sorry.

James Kademan [00:12:45]:
But it’s interesting. So you’re the one yeah, I’m the guy. There’s just more important tools there. I don’t know. I just need a fork in the kitchen. But in the garage, you have a medley.

Allen Curran [00:12:55]:
Well, my wife teases me about the amount of tools that I have and how in how lack of oftenness that they get used.

James Kademan [00:13:04]:
Oh.

Allen Curran [00:13:05]:
Because I need to have them in case I need them, whether it’s for work or at home. But the older I get, the less I do myself.

James Kademan [00:13:12]:
All right, fair. That’s all right.

Allen Curran [00:13:14]:
And so it’s sometimes easier to hire someone to do it because I know they can do it faster. And if they’re good at their trade or their craft, I know they can probably do a better job than I can because I only do it now and then.

James Kademan [00:13:26]:
Yeah, but you have enough experience and you’re intelligent enough to know when they mess up.

Allen Curran [00:13:30]:
Talk about dangerous knowledge. So I can see from a distance if something’s not right. That doesn’t mean that I can do it, but I know that it’s not done correctly.

James Kademan [00:13:38]:
Fair. Fair. Yeah. It’s just like watching a plane crash. Right. Well, that’s not the right way. But I don’t know how to do it correctly.

Allen Curran [00:13:46]:
I can’t be the pilot. I just know that landing on the water was not the original. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:13:49]:
Something ain’t right here. So let’s go back. You are selling for somebody else. When was that switch where you’re like, I need to start my own gig.

Allen Curran [00:13:59]:
The actual change took place one month shy of 30 years. I worked for the same company for one month shy of 30 years.

James Kademan [00:14:08]:
Wow.

Allen Curran [00:14:10]:
I had a lot of freedom. I had a lot of working on my own. So it didn’t really always feel like I was working for a company, but the owner had started, had joined some business networking groups of other kitchen and bath dealers throughout the country. And it seemed like every time he came back for the last five years, my pay was being rearranged.

James Kademan [00:14:39]:
Oh.

Allen Curran [00:14:40]:
And in particular, the last three years was not to my favor.

James Kademan [00:14:44]:
I was just going to ask, did it keep going up? Right.

Allen Curran [00:14:46]:
No. And then we were good friends for a long time, but there got to be a little more friction because then he would get upset because he was changing the structure for the benefit of the company. And I would, in turn use the system that he created to benefit me and how I get paid. So there’s no sense for me to sell product or push. Push as a sales term, which isn’t really applicable, but try and promote products that I get paid less on. And so we Were paid on a sliding scale. And it, as an intelligent, I feel, individual, I mean, go for what’s going to make you more money, as long as it’s within the parameters of solving the issues or the problems for the homeowner themselves.

James Kademan [00:15:43]:
Right, right. They were tweaking the system. You were smart enough to game the system, which is just how it goes. Right. Work the system like they give you the rules of the game.

Allen Curran [00:15:52]:
I follow the rules.

James Kademan [00:15:53]:
This is Monopoly.

Allen Curran [00:15:54]:
Yep.

James Kademan [00:15:54]:
Build your houses, build your hotels, and then don’t get angry when I build houses and hotels.

Allen Curran [00:15:58]:
Right, right.

James Kademan [00:15:59]:
So I get that. So then did it come to a point where they said, see you later? Or it came to the point where they said, hey, you’re going to make 2 cents instead of 2000.

Allen Curran [00:16:12]:
There is one project in particular. It was new construction. It had a kitchen. It had built ins in the dining room, two or three bathrooms. Several trips to the job site, because not only do we field measure, but we also go out and talk with the installers to make sure they understand how things are designed to be put together and such. And my commission on the job was $500. The cost of driving my vehicle and everything. That’s all out of pocket on my end.

James Kademan [00:16:42]:
Oh.

Allen Curran [00:16:42]:
And so I’m thinking, how many of these can I physically sell in a year and make a living? And so that was kind of the light bulb going off and thinking. And, you know, it’s. My wife was seeing more and more frustration with how things kept getting rearranged. And she says, well, why don’t you just go out on your own? I says, well, easier said than done. At the time, Madison. And it still might be true, but at the time, Madison had more kitchen and bath dealers than Milwaukee does. So it’s like, well, I think there’s plenty of competition out there. So now it’s just a question of do I want to stay in the same industry, Et cetera, et cetera.

Allen Curran [00:17:22]:
And then I’m a member of the National Kitchen and Bath Association. Our chapter covers the entire state of Wisconsin. I went to three chapter meetings in a row where I was listening to other kitchen and bath dealers complain about how hard it is to compete against the Amish cabinet shops. And I says, I get it. At the time, I had 11 bullet points of why a homeowner and or a general contractor would not want to work with the Amish.

James Kademan [00:17:45]:
Oh, really?

Allen Curran [00:17:46]:
Well, because I was on that side of it.

James Kademan [00:17:48]:
Yeah.

Allen Curran [00:17:48]:
And it was. You never knew when you’re going to get the cabinetry. There’s no showroom. You kind of have to take the word of them how well it’s going to be put together. You don’t really have any displays to see stain samples usually, but not always. So it would be difficult making those decisions. And you’d be talking to an Amish cabinet maker about the cabinetry alone, knowing putting together, then, okay, how do the countertops interact with that? What type of face, hardware, handles, knobs, do you want to put on the hardware? And then, of course, the Amish typically are not going out to the job site to explain to whoever’s in service installing the cabinets any little idiosyncrasies of, okay, you got to put this in first and then this follows, etc. Etc.

Allen Curran [00:18:32]:
So the last of the three meetings was up in the Fox River Valley. So in the two, two and a half hour drive home, it’s like, this might be the opportunity, if I can find an Amish cabinet maker that can give me consistent lead times, whatever that lead time is. As long as I know that I can tell the homeowner at the time they purchase, this is how long it is before you get your cabinets. Because then the general contractor can schedule around that as opposed to, well, we can only go so far, and then we’re going to sit and wait for the cabinets to show up whenever that is.

James Kademan [00:19:01]:
And someone’s kitchen is apart at that.

Allen Curran [00:19:03]:
Time, and they do not have a functioning kitchen at that point. So the thought was, if I can solve. That was the major issue. Create a small showroom. At first, I didn’t really work. I brought in a lot of samples and then had some cabinetry to look at. Not a lot. And then as things grew, so did the amount that we show in the showroom as well.

James Kademan [00:19:24]:
All right, you touched on a lot of things there.

Allen Curran [00:19:26]:
Sorry.

James Kademan [00:19:26]:
No, no. Which is great. Which is great. So I love that it was just a ride home where you’re like, oh, here’s a problem. Let’s go solve it. First one, how do you find an.

Allen Curran [00:19:35]:
Amish as a designer? You’re a problem solver.

James Kademan [00:19:38]:
Yeah.

Allen Curran [00:19:38]:
Because usually the homeowner’s gonna come and say, this is what I don’t like about my kitchen, or this is what I feel my kitchen doesn’t function well doing. And so those are the issues that you want to delve into and figure out how you can solve those issues for the benefit of the homeowner.

James Kademan [00:19:54]:
All right, so how do you find. Or let me back up a step.

Allen Curran [00:19:58]:
I’m following your question as far as, you know, how do you find an Amish cabinet maker? Yeah.

James Kademan [00:20:02]:
These are the problems that you listed. Like, hey, I got to find somebody that doesn’t fall under this.

Allen Curran [00:20:07]:
So the trick really was, well, back then, well, 11 years ago, it wasn’t so bad as it was 40 years ago. But they’re not in the Internet because they’re not part of anything electric, which also means they don’t have separate phones. Typically, some of that’s changing now, but since they don’t have phones, Yellow Pages don’t exist for them. So literally, it was going to different communities that you knew they were Amish, and then asking some of the local storekeepers, do you know of Amish in your community? Do you know any of them that build cabinets? And then it would be okay. Whatever contact information I could get. Calling them wasn’t really the best approach, because if they don’t have that phone for just them, they won’t know to call you back if they’re not there to answer it. So you would literally go to their shop, have a discussion if they would be willing to talk to you, and then explain what I have in mind and how this could work for them, how it could work for us, how it could work well for the homeowner, and see if it’s something they’re interested in. And then I can have a discussion on what methods they use for building the cabinets.

Allen Curran [00:21:21]:
At that point, having been around cabinets for 30 years, had a pretty good understanding of what’s good, what’s bad, what do you use, what’s not so great to use? And then it’s a question of, well, how do you know what their quality of workmanship is? Because they’ll show you in some things that they’ve already built. So what I did is I asked for their delivery person’s contact information, which is an Amish. Usually it’s someone who has a vehicle, a trailer, a truck, or some form of being able to transport the cabinets from the shop to the job site. And I would ask them of the cabinets that you deliver. How often do you have to send cabinets back to the shop to get remedied, repaired, built correctly? That wasn’t the first time. And use that as my gauge of quality level.

James Kademan [00:22:06]:
That’s a smart move.

Allen Curran [00:22:08]:
Well, when you think about things. Right. Yeah. Delve into, okay, well, who’s going to have the knowledge? And then seek out that person to see what information you can get from it.

James Kademan [00:22:18]:
That is so interesting. Delivery driver. Most people probably just scan right over, ignore, whatever. Well, but they have all the information.

Allen Curran [00:22:25]:
Keep in mind, what I’m doing is I’m replacing the interaction with the cabinet shop themselves. So if something goes wrong, they don’t have the cabinet shop to blame. They’ll be blaming me. So it’s my reputation, totally. So it’s, you know, protection of your reputation and, you know, starting off in a business, that’s what you want to keep intact and that’s going to help you grow quickest. Is having a good reputation fair?

James Kademan [00:22:50]:
Tell me, you mentioned that if they’re willing to talk to you, did you get some people that were not interested in talking to you?

Allen Curran [00:22:55]:
Didn’t have time at the moment, weren’t there at the shop when I showed up. And it’s interesting, an older gentleman and he gave me, we talked for 45 minutes to an hour just when I showed up, which amazed me that they had that much time. And toward the end of the conversation, he says, well, I really like what you have in the works, what you’re planning to do. I’d love to be a part of it, but I’m looking to retire in six months. Glad you told me today, as opposed to three months from now. And so then he turned to me and he says, well, before you leave, there’s seven shops in our community that used to work for me. So they build cabinets the way I do. And these are people that, you know, I would recommend that you go talk to.

Allen Curran [00:23:50]:
I says, great. But of the seven, what three would you recommend the highest? Those are the three that I sought out and two of them I started working with almost right away.

James Kademan [00:23:58]:
Oh, nice. All right. So when they’re. I don’t know if this is a stupid question or not, so I apologize if it is.

Allen Curran [00:24:04]:
Probably not.

James Kademan [00:24:04]:
So when they’re building cabinets, I’m picturing, is an electricity a thing or do they have a bicycle with a big blade or like, what are they cutting?

Allen Curran [00:24:13]:
Well, kind of a mix. Electricity is not to be in the shop at all.

James Kademan [00:24:17]:
Okay.

Allen Curran [00:24:18]:
Okay.

James Kademan [00:24:18]:
So there’s no circular saws, no bandsaw?

Allen Curran [00:24:20]:
No, on the contrary, there is either a gas or diesel engine at the end of the shop.

James Kademan [00:24:26]:
Okay.

Allen Curran [00:24:27]:
That runs a drive shaft that goes through the concrete floor all the way through the shop. It’s covered up with sheets of three quarter inch plywood, so they have access to it. And then everything is band driven, you know, like, not rubber bands, of course, but sure.

James Kademan [00:24:44]:
Big belts.

Allen Curran [00:24:44]:
Big belts. And so everything is belt driven off that drive shaft. And I am thoroughly amazed at how they’re able to get drum sanders, screw guns. Keep in mind it can only go in one direction. So if they’re screwing something in and have to take that screw back out, that comes back out by hand. Remember those old hand crank? Yeah. I’ve seen them use it. And then even the air compressors are run by belt driven for the compressor.

Allen Curran [00:25:19]:
And there it’s large enough so that it’s consistent in pressure, so that when they’re spraying finish, you get a nice smooth, even coat. So there’s a lot of thought that goes into how they manipulate, how they modify to bypass to make it work for them. But you’ll go into a shop and you’ll start to see these almost looks like a pulley system, but these different bands that go like up and over a door. Well, of course they can’t go through the door because then you’d have to shut everything down to be able to go through. And keep in mind, the engine runs all day long. So all these belts are moving all the time. And then you have a clutch, just like for a manual transmission on a car, whether it’s in gear or engaged or disengaged.

James Kademan [00:26:04]:
Wow.

Allen Curran [00:26:05]:
So it’s pretty clever.

James Kademan [00:26:07]:
So a machine is spinning the blade. It’s just not necessarily run by electricity.

Allen Curran [00:26:11]:
Correct.

James Kademan [00:26:12]:
Interesting.

Allen Curran [00:26:13]:
All right, now they will have, in the ceiling of the shop, they’ll have fiberglass panels so that they get more light because there’s no, there’s no lighting in there. They will, especially in the wintertime, they will run a generator off the belt driven generator to charge batteries. And this is where it gets to be a little bit of a gray area for them to charge the batteries to put into lamps and lanterns that they can work a little bit later into the late afternoon and such.

James Kademan [00:26:49]:
Interesting.

Allen Curran [00:26:51]:
And I’ve also found that each community. So not all Amish cabinetry is made the same. Sure, there’s different quality levels and different ability levels and different joinery that’s used from one area to the next. But I do find that most communities which say a community is going to be, think of it as a church group and they will have one leader. And that leader gets to determine what rules can change and what rules can’t. So you’ll find that this community can do this. This community, they have not been allowed to do certain things. And it’s all based on that one leader for each community, which is different amongst communities.

Allen Curran [00:27:36]:
So it was some getting used to. Some of the hurdles to overcome was communication.

James Kademan [00:27:43]:
Huge.

Allen Curran [00:27:45]:
So they don’t have email. That’s starting to come around. Some of them now have cell Phones.

James Kademan [00:27:53]:
Oh.

Allen Curran [00:27:53]:
Really can’t figure out quite how that’s working.

James Kademan [00:27:55]:
All right.

Allen Curran [00:27:56]:
Because I’m not sure how they’re recharging the batteries on the cell phones, but because it used to be that there was no answering machine, because they don’t believe in the recorded voice, they don’t want their picture taken.

James Kademan [00:28:08]:
Okay.

Allen Curran [00:28:10]:
They. What are some other quirky things? Their weddings are typically on Thursdays.

James Kademan [00:28:17]:
Oh.

Allen Curran [00:28:18]:
Which because they have a four day party.

James Kademan [00:28:21]:
No, no.

Allen Curran [00:28:23]:
I don’t know why it ends up on Thursday. But most of the weddings end up on Thursday. So that’s an interruption in the work week. So. And sometimes the shop, the entire shop shuts down because they all know the person getting married.

James Kademan [00:28:35]:
I imagine they’re close knit.

Allen Curran [00:28:36]:
Oh, very much so, yeah.

James Kademan [00:28:38]:
Okay.

Allen Curran [00:28:39]:
And then a lot of the communities don’t have a church building, which is what most of us think of. They’ll take one of the businesses and have them clear out the shop. So all the machinery essentially gets moved to a side. Some communities will have pews that go from business to business, depending on we weekend to weekend. So it’s kind of clever. But your church service could be in a cabinet shop.

James Kademan [00:29:03]:
Oh.

Allen Curran [00:29:03]:
Which is kind of a different way of approaching things.

James Kademan [00:29:07]:
So you’re talking taking down all the belts and all that stuff and cleaning.

Allen Curran [00:29:10]:
Up the wood dust and all that to some extent. Not the entire shop is torn down to nothing. But it’s to create one large area, large enough to seat, however, happen to be in their congregation. All right. Wow. So you learn a lot working with these people. But I find them to be very honest, very genuine, mostly trusting. But you do have to earn their trust.

James Kademan [00:29:34]:
Sure.

Allen Curran [00:29:37]:
Very accommodating. They take a lot of pride in their work. So that’s why, you know, you tend to find pretty high quality. If there is an issue they’re more than willing to remedy, whatever the problem might be, whether it’s people that installed it. The electrician drilled a hole in the wrong spot. So since it’s done locally, it can be a pretty quick turnaround. You’re not waiting three or four weeks for something to come from a factory. So the whole concept that we use is that what is it going to take to keep the job moving? Doors and drawer fronts.

Allen Curran [00:30:07]:
That’s not going to slow down getting the cabinets installed where countertops can be measured. So it’s a little of pick your poison, so to speak, or what can be done. But I’ve had instances where something was built 24 inches deep, but it was intended to be only 18 inches deep. So I picked up the two cabinets, took them back to the cabinet shop. They held people back to cut down the cabinets, reassemble, and then I put them back in my vehicle and was able to deliver them to the job site at 8 o’ clock the next morning.

James Kademan [00:30:39]:
Oh, wow.

Allen Curran [00:30:39]:
I can’t promise that can happen every time. It all depends on what needs to be modified. I had another instance. Sometimes if the mechanics of something isn’t working properly, like on pocket doors or something of that sort, or hidden doors, I’ll have someone from the cabinet shop come down and take a look at it. Because that’s usually where the general contractor or the carpenters on site don’t want to really start messing with stuff if they’re not familiar with how the mechanics of the particular feature works.

James Kademan [00:31:10]:
Gotcha. And is that to the point where you have to give them a ride?

Allen Curran [00:31:14]:
They will. It’s more efficient. They’ll hire a driver and the driver will typically have a van or something of that sort. And the van drivers charge a lower rate than the delivery people because they don’t have to pull the trailer carrying cabinets. So we have an Excel spreadsheet and our CRM program for scheduling deliveries and some of those repairs and things of that sort so we can forecast out ahead. So it’s. We use technology on our end to cover up or help conceal the lack of technology on their end.

James Kademan [00:31:56]:
Fair? Fair. And how long has your business been going?

Allen Curran [00:32:01]:
We’re just beyond 11 and a half years.

James Kademan [00:32:04]:
Okay. All right. So you’ve seen some stuff, made it through Covid.

Allen Curran [00:32:08]:
Yeah, Covid was a growth period for us. As I mentioned earlier, people were stuck at home and decided to let’s spend the money on the kitchen or the bath or whatever instead of buying a new car, going on vacation, that type of thing. So that was a growth area for us. It’s, you know, we get a lot of referrals from general contractors, interior designers, past clients. So the more past clients we have, the more referrals we’re getting from that end as well. And, you know, some are repeat customers. They remodel a bathroom this year, and then so many years down the road, they remodel the kitchen or entertainment center or once they’ve experienced, and if that experience is positive, then they’re typically very willing to do it again.

James Kademan [00:32:56]:
Nice. Would you say most of your work comes from general contractors just bringing you on, or is it more you individually selling the homeowner?

Allen Curran [00:33:07]:
Right now? It’s more us selling the homeowner. We have an average five star Google review and also through Houzz’s five stars. So when people visit those sites or look up us on the Internet, sometimes they’re using that as their judge at least to give us a call and talk to us. Are we a perfect fit for everybody? No. The best way I can describe it is we’re selling full custom cabinetry at semi custom cabinet pricing. We don’t get down to the stock grade or the starter home grade of cabinet cabinetry. So in remodeling, we’re replacing that starter home cabinetry with something a little bit better. In new home construction, we tend to be in homes starting at maybe 3,000 square feet and above, because then it’s the homeowner usually wanting what they want and have a little bit larger pocketbook than trying to compete with.

Allen Curran [00:34:14]:
Are we going to have a blacktop driveway or a concrete driveway? Are we gonna plant seed for the lawn or is it gonna be sodded? Because in the starter homes, that all comes into play. There’s a budget, and they have to figure out where they’re gonna prioritize to fit within that budget. And pricing on cabinetry. Every cabinet manufacturer wants their cabinets to look good, and they do. The issue starts to become with what materials are they using, how long is it going to last, and how well is it going to function as years go by?

James Kademan [00:34:45]:
Got it. Tell me a story about wood. You got cabinetry made of wood?

Allen Curran [00:34:49]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:34:50]:
There’s 50 million different species of wood.

Allen Curran [00:34:52]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:34:52]:
Oak you mentioned was that was the thing in the 80s and 90s.

Allen Curran [00:34:56]:
Occasionally we do sell red oak yet, maybe once or twice a year.

James Kademan [00:34:59]:
Okay, okay. So what is the. What has been popular? What is popular now?

Allen Curran [00:35:07]:
We, as standard, will carry seven different wood species. So it’s red oak, least expensive to most expensive. So red oak, red alder, hickory, maple, and cherry are the same price right now. And then white oak and walnut. All right, walnut didn’t sell any of it until I put it on display. And it’s been a real popular wood. Not high percentages, but fairly popular. White oak gets asked for a lot, but trees don’t grow that fast.

Allen Curran [00:35:42]:
So again, keep in mind, pricing is based on supply and demand. Pricing on red oak is low because the demand isn’t that high. Pricing on white oak, the demand is very high. So the price has gone up because you can’t grow trees fast enough to meet the demand. So what they do is they raise the price to kind of quell some of that demand.

James Kademan [00:36:01]:
Gotcha. And the majority of what you do is stained, not painted.

Allen Curran [00:36:08]:
Four or five years ago. I’d say that’s true. Right now, we’re probably doing 60 to 70% painted cabinetry.

James Kademan [00:36:14]:
Oh, wow. Okay.

Allen Curran [00:36:15]:
It’s gotten that high.

James Kademan [00:36:16]:
And is it just white cabinets, or is it somebody’s painting them pink, or are they going crazy?

Allen Curran [00:36:21]:
Pink has been done not by us, but I have seen displays done in painted pink. It’s kind of a dusty rose color for the pink. But the popular colors, white or shades of white, are still the most popular. Gray, blue, and green are the other options. And interestingly enough, if you look at the blues and the greens, they will tend to have a shade of gray in them. And the reason for that is it’s so much easier to decorate with other colors because you’re muting that. In other words, if you wanted cobalt blue cabinetry, certainly we can do it. We offer all the Sherwin Williams paint colors as standard, which, I don’t know, 7,000 different colors to choose from.

Allen Curran [00:37:11]:
It’s a lot. But if you want cobalt blue, my biggest concern and first question is going to be how long before you get tired of that color?

James Kademan [00:37:19]:
Oh, okay.

Allen Curran [00:37:20]:
Because every time you go for a cup of coffee, you’re looking at those cobalt blue cabinets. I love cobalt blue, but I’m afraid I would get tired of it. And so if you take that blue and mute it down with some gray, then that tends to help the eye survive the trip to the kitchen.

James Kademan [00:37:37]:
It’ll last longer in your head kind of thing.

Allen Curran [00:37:39]:
And we do a lot of mixed a lot of white and blue, white and gray, blue and gray. Green has not taken off for us. It’s a little bit more. The green that we usually are doing is kind of a sage green, a little bit more muted. I’ve seen kitchens done in hunter green. We’ve done one or two that have gotten close to a hunter green. But again, that’s kind of on that cobalt blue scale of are you going to get tired of it? Because, again, you know, we’re selling a quality that 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the road should still be in good shape, functioning well. So the question is, if you have to replace or refinish something because of color, are you really wanting to do that because it’s not inexpensive to get that accomplished.

James Kademan [00:38:28]:
All right, so when you mentioned two colors, white and blue or whatever, are they pinstripes or what are they doing?

Allen Curran [00:38:34]:
Good question. I should clarify. If there’s an island, usually the island is the focal point, and that would be probably the boulder color. Or if we’re doing base cabinets versus the upper cabinets. Usually the upper cabinets being the lighter color, the lower color being the darker, deeper color because it looks heavier. So it’s a little easier on the eye to make that transition that way.

James Kademan [00:38:57]:
I had no idea. It’s so interesting. Like, I see my house, buddy’s houses, end of the number of houses.

Allen Curran [00:39:03]:
Help me come by and talk to.

James Kademan [00:39:04]:
Whoever else is in the house. It’s just what I need.

Allen Curran [00:39:09]:
And we’re not even on an airplane.

James Kademan [00:39:11]:
Don’t talk to my wife. Yeah, we. I don’t even know what we have. Oak. I don’t know. Some kind of wood.

Allen Curran [00:39:17]:
Well, and the reason that oak hat is diminished is not that it’s inferior wood or anything of that sort. It’s just that so many of us grew up in a home that had oak cabinetry. And it’s like, well, I want something a little different, better, whatever the case may be. So that’s why oak has really kind of faltered in popularity. Granted, sooner or later, because everything goes in cycles, it’ll come back. And trust me, they’re starting to show it in magazines, which is kind of the front runner for seeing it cycle back.

James Kademan [00:39:50]:
So wait a couple years, then sell your house with the oak in it. And people are like, oh, did you just get these done?

Allen Curran [00:39:54]:
Brand new, right?

James Kademan [00:39:55]:
Totally did. Interesting. We have. Our house is old enough that we have a. I don’t know if I’d call it stained glass.

Allen Curran [00:40:04]:
Oh, sure.

James Kademan [00:40:05]:
But we have one of the. A window cabinet thing.

Allen Curran [00:40:07]:
Stained glass. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:40:08]:
And I don’t know what the goal of that was, but do you still see that?

Allen Curran [00:40:13]:
We do. Heavy sigh. Right. We do a lot of clear glass, some opaque glass. The stained glass has really diminished in popularity. And I think it’s because the thought.

James Kademan [00:40:28]:
Of.

Allen Curran [00:40:31]:
Soft contemporary, transitional farmhouse contemporary, or kind of that industrial age, slightly looking. None of that blends well with the leaded glass or the stained glass, but the clear glass certainly can. We can do things like the interior of a cabinet is a different color than the exterior. Put a clear glass panel on it, so you highlight that. Put lights inside the cabinet so that you can turn on. So everybody walking into that kitchen is well aware that you did something different.

James Kademan [00:41:05]:
On the inside of the cabinet.

Allen Curran [00:41:07]:
Just keep in mind, as soon as you put lights in a cabinet, glass panels in the door. Now everything in that cabinet’s on display. So your badger plastic cup collection probably isn’t going to be stored there.

James Kademan [00:41:19]:
Oh, my gosh.

Allen Curran [00:41:20]:
And what you store there isn’t going to be cluttered in that space, it’s more to highlight or accentuate that particular piece.

James Kademan [00:41:28]:
You know, as I’m listening to you, I’m like, maybe I need that just so that my wife and kids stop coming home with these mugs from whatever sportsy thing they went to. We don’t need to save all these.

Allen Curran [00:41:37]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:41:38]:
And then, like, look, we’re highlighting our garbage here. Just.

Allen Curran [00:41:41]:
I’m doing a project now where we’re not remodeling the entire kitchen. It’s just the island. And the request is for they have all these thermal mugs.

James Kademan [00:41:53]:
Okay.

Allen Curran [00:41:54]:
And they wanted a specific wide drawer deep for all these mugs to be stored in. And it’s like, how many of these do you. They have?

James Kademan [00:42:02]:
You’re talking about the big dumb cup. Yeah. Stanley cup or whatever.

Allen Curran [00:42:05]:
Okay. Wow. It’s interesting.

James Kademan [00:42:09]:
Everybody’s got their thing.

Allen Curran [00:42:10]:
Oh, sure, sure.

James Kademan [00:42:12]:
Tell me a story. I just saw somebody had a dishwasher that was drawers instead of just a flip down with the wire basket and stuff like that.

Allen Curran [00:42:21]:
Fisher Paykel is the main manufacturer that’s doing that.

James Kademan [00:42:24]:
Okay.

Allen Curran [00:42:26]:
And the purpose of it is, instead of waiting for the entire dishwasher to be filled up, you can do half a load, so to speak. And it’s more energy efficient that way.

James Kademan [00:42:36]:
All right.

Allen Curran [00:42:38]:
Other things that are fairly new when it comes to appliances is. Is filtration systems, microwave drawers. So instead of having the microwave above the range, which usually has a very inefficient ventilation system to it, we’re putting it underneath the counter. So it’s not sitting on the counter but to. I’m six feet tall. So for me to bend down underneath the counter to be able to program a regular computer or a microwave on a shelf, it’s awkward. So now what they’ve done is they’ve created a drawer that opens, and then the control panel’s at the top of the face of that drawer front, and then that’s where your controls are. But you can see it from maybe not purely standing up, but being more erect.

James Kademan [00:43:22]:
Interesting.

Allen Curran [00:43:24]:
A drawer.

James Kademan [00:43:24]:
Microwave. All right.

Allen Curran [00:43:25]:
Oh, and drawers and refrigeration. Whether it’s freezer, refrigerator. Refrigerators have gone hog wild in different shapes, sizes, different types, and even drawers that can go back and forth from being a refrigeration area to a freezer area.

James Kademan [00:43:43]:
Oh, really?

Allen Curran [00:43:45]:
All right.

James Kademan [00:43:46]:
And so that comes into play with the cabinets, I imagine, a little bit.

Allen Curran [00:43:50]:
Depending on what the finish on the appliances are, if they want cabinet fronts for them or not. Again, stainless steel appliances are by far the most popular appliance Manufacturers have truly been trying to get the consumer away from stainless steel. Well, here’s how they’ve tried to accommodate their mission, and that is if you replace, say you have all white appliances, the dishwasher needs to be replaced. You say, well, I don’t want white. I’m going to go to stainless steel. I want a stainless steel dishwasher. That’s great. As soon as that stainless steel dishwasher is installed, you look at the kitchen, it’s like, well, now everything else looks dated.

James Kademan [00:44:32]:
Refrigerator, oven, microwave.

Allen Curran [00:44:35]:
So instead of doing them one at a time, they’re trying to get you to do a suite of appliances. And that also bodes true because the duration of an appliances life, most typical appliances, we’re getting between eight and 12 years out of them. What?

James Kademan [00:44:50]:
Yeah, well, that’s nothing.

Allen Curran [00:44:52]:
Remember when we used to have appliances that would be 20, 30 years old?

James Kademan [00:44:55]:
I bet the refrigerator that I own when I was a kid, that’s probably still in someone’s garage going, I remember it said Frigidaire by General Motors. It was avocado green. And yeah, that was my entire, I don’t know, growing up. Right. 18 years, made a few moves. Right. The thing was tough as nails.

Allen Curran [00:45:14]:
So kind of on the concept of trying to replace stainless steel. So what the appliance manufacturers have done is they will do things like handle styles.

James Kademan [00:45:24]:
Okay.

Allen Curran [00:45:25]:
So it’s kind of taking it to the next level. But say you have a GE grouping of appliances. GE has, I believe it’s four different levels. Everything from monogram down to just plain ge. Well, the handle style on all the appliances in the GE level or the GE Cafe level or the GE monogram level will all be a suite of appliances where the handles match.

James Kademan [00:45:47]:
All right.

Allen Curran [00:45:48]:
If you start intermixing the different lines to get the features you want and not pay more than you want to. On appliances where you don’t feel you need those features, that’s how they’re getting you, is by changing the style of the handles that also tries to keep them, the homeowner, loyal to that brand. So if you have to replace one appliance, it’s with that same level so that the handles match throughout the kitchen.

James Kademan [00:46:14]:
So the moral of the story is just keep that avocado green appliance.

Allen Curran [00:46:18]:
It’ll come with that thing. So sooner or later.

James Kademan [00:46:21]:
Interesting.

Allen Curran [00:46:22]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:46:22]:
That is shady.

Allen Curran [00:46:26]:
I don’t know if I want to call it shady. It was clever, I suppose, necessarily to the consumer’s benefit, right?

James Kademan [00:46:33]:
Yeah, it just seems, I guess, wasteful. And I don’t know, I just feel like when I’m looking at my appliances, if I want to buy a new appliance, the handle design is not going to be my first priority.

Allen Curran [00:46:46]:
Sure.

James Kademan [00:46:46]:
It’s gonna be, I don’t know, whatever.

Allen Curran [00:46:48]:
Options.

James Kademan [00:46:49]:
Yeah, whatever. Does this dishwasher clean or is it quiet or whatever? Yeah, like, oh, this handle doesn’t match. Oh, my God.

Allen Curran [00:46:56]:
Well, and depths of refrigerators. Now, you know, your sub zeros and Thermador and things of that sort. Those are built in refrigerators. Typically, if you go into an appliance store, you really have to be careful because there will be what they refer to as counter depth or cabinet depth and then full size. Oddly enough, typically the counter depth or the cabinet depth, which are 24 or 25 inches deep for the box of the refrigerator, is so that it doesn’t stick out from the cabinetry as much, but they charge more for the shallower depth appliances than they do the full size.

James Kademan [00:47:35]:
Oh, really?

Allen Curran [00:47:36]:
So you’re paying more to get less cubic footage of storage, but the demand is there.

James Kademan [00:47:41]:
Sure.

Allen Curran [00:47:43]:
And the best. The only response I get from whether it’s appliance salespeople or I get to talk to manufacturers as well, and it’s, well, we have to retool the line to get to the shallower depth. I says, yes, but then you have to retool the line again to get to the deeper depth.

James Kademan [00:48:00]:
We’re retooling to make these 50,000 refrigerators, not asking for one. We’re stamping them out. Oh, that’s funny. I think of it on the flip side, though, how much food are you saving? Because you got that leftover that you didn’t forget about because it’s not seven feet behind, which is why we do.

Allen Curran [00:48:19]:
A lot of pullouts and things of that sort in our cabinetry is so things don’t get lost in the back of the cabinet.

James Kademan [00:48:25]:
That is smart.

Allen Curran [00:48:26]:
I’m looking at a kitchen remodel northwest of Middleton. It’d be a Middleton address, but, you know, they had a pantry closet. They had six deep cans of green beans or something of that sort. And it’s like your grocery shopping can be more efficient if it’s not that deep. So, you know, if you’re missing the first one or two cans, you don’t buy more to fill up that space.

James Kademan [00:48:51]:
Right.

Allen Curran [00:48:52]:
So this way, if you have something that, you know, a 9 inch cabinet can probably handle three soup cans deep or green beans or whatever.

James Kademan [00:49:01]:
Sure, whatever. Yeah.

Allen Curran [00:49:03]:
So but then you’re not wasting that foot or in the see, a Closet typically is 24 inches on the inside, which makes it 28 and a half inches drywall face to drywall face on the outside. And so you’re giving up the 4 1/2 inch thickness of the framed 2 by 4 wall and drywall. Whereas cabinetry, you’re just going to have the thickness of the door and the back panel. So it can be more space efficient. I’m not saying more cost effective, but it will be more space efficient because.

James Kademan [00:49:29]:
Wood is more expensive than drywall. So fair. All right, interesting. So you start your own business.

Allen Curran [00:49:35]:
I did.

James Kademan [00:49:36]:
And you got your Amish manufacturer, and then how did you make your first sale?

Allen Curran [00:49:43]:
First sale was actually a referral from a general contractor. Now, I’m big on ethics, and that is that I did not let any of the contractors that I worked with know that I was going out on my own until after I was actually gone, because I didn’t think that was fair to the company that I worked for. And I want to be able to sleep at night. So I waited. And then at the time, I was working with, and I was initially focusing on remodeling, and just with new construction, it takes longer to get paid because of title companies and things of that sort. And a lot of times, cabinetry falls into the last draw, which means almost everything has to be done before you get paid. In remodeling, you have a schedule, and it’s progressive. As things get done, you get to collect your payments.

James Kademan [00:50:39]:
There’s draws or something like that.

Allen Curran [00:50:40]:
Right. Okay. And so the situation being is I regularly worked with 16 different remodeling contractors. I went to each of them individually, met with them, told them, explained what I was going to do. Fourteen of them followed me, which I thought was great. The other two were planning on retiring within a year or two. They just didn’t want to rock the boat. Totally get it.

Allen Curran [00:51:06]:
So evidently, I had made a positive enough impression on them that they thought it was more important to follow me than to stay with the person that I worked for.

James Kademan [00:51:16]:
Nice. That’s awesome.

Allen Curran [00:51:18]:
And then a couple years down the road, I was working with a remodeling contractor that also did new home construction. In fact, most years, he probably does more new home construction. And he said, are you willing to do new construction? And I said, for him, I was willing. And then I gave in to some of the others that approached me as well.

James Kademan [00:51:43]:
All right.

Allen Curran [00:51:44]:
But it’s interesting. Being in new construction, we get into, you know, wainscope paneling, we get into false beams in the ceiling and things of that sort. Because we can do them with some joinery that carpenters on site just don’t have the tools to do.

James Kademan [00:51:59]:
Gotcha.

Allen Curran [00:52:01]:
And it’s kind of fun for us because we’re doing things other than just building boxes with doors and drawers on them.

James Kademan [00:52:06]:
Fair, Fair.

Allen Curran [00:52:08]:
So I mean, we’ve done hidden doors for access into hidden storage rooms and things of that sort.

James Kademan [00:52:16]:
So it’s all right.

Allen Curran [00:52:17]:
It can be kind of fun.

James Kademan [00:52:18]:
Oh, that’s clever. I like it. Tell me you’ve seen a lot of stuff. We’re talking 40 plus years in the cabinet business.

Allen Curran [00:52:26]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:52:26]:
What has changed besides just materials and wood and finish?

Allen Curran [00:52:31]:
Durability of finish. Instead of going and having three choices of stain colors to choose from, right now we’re offering 66 different stain colors on each wood specie as standard.

James Kademan [00:52:43]:
On each wood specie?

Allen Curran [00:52:44]:
On each wood specie.

James Kademan [00:52:45]:
Oh my gosh.

Allen Curran [00:52:47]:
That’s probably rare. I’m guessing most factory built cabinets have 1215 stain colors, but much more than the three that were common.

James Kademan [00:52:56]:
You know, light, darker, medium.

Allen Curran [00:52:57]:
Exactly. And painted finishes obviously is something that’s really come about. Some of the tooling that’s able to do some of the joinery in cabinetry we do on our finished ends. On our framed cabinets. It’s called a lock miter system where it’s a double tongue and groove and it has a much better appearance look to it. Again, more furniture look than what most kitchen cabinets for. The side panel just butts into the back of the face frame. Let’s see what else.

Allen Curran [00:53:30]:
Door styles. The joinery and door styles is much better than what it was in the past. Big trend lately is the skinny door frame, which is a little misleading because if you look at the back of the door, it’s not nearly that skinny. But a lot of people think of the Amish is not very trendy. Well, we’re the ones who kind of pull them in that trend. I go to national shows, see what the trends are and then bring it back and say to the Amish, how can we get this accomplished? We will do. Revachelf is a manufacturer of just interior features and they sell to a lot of factory built cabinets and such. And they started coming out with instead of maple interior features that pulled out of the cabinetry, walnut features.

Allen Curran [00:54:14]:
And it’s like, well, there’s no reason we can’t do that. It’s the same machinery. It’s just starting with a different wood specie. So we can do walnut drawer boxes if you decide to. They are more Expensive, but your neighbor won’t have them. So it’s just kind of interesting. We do a lot of custom wood tops, whether it’s for an island or whatever, only because we can do different wood species. I have a table maker that is Amish that we order in stools and chairs, and then he will build the tables from scratch.

Allen Curran [00:54:55]:
So we can create pretty much any shape to a table, do different pedestals, different leg styles and things of that sort. The big advantage in why I went down this path was I can now get it stained to match whatever your kitchen cabinetry is. Or if we’re doing a hutch in a dining room now, we can have the dining room table and chairs match. So it’s interesting. And then we’ve done some custom tables with metal framing. So I have a fabricator up out of Baraboo that does some metal fabrication for us. On. It’s not often that we get those types of requests, but get into some unique stuff.

James Kademan [00:55:34]:
So it’s custom. It’s fun.

Allen Curran [00:55:36]:
It is.

James Kademan [00:55:36]:
And you’re liking it.

Allen Curran [00:55:37]:
Well, you know, people, even just working for one employee or employer for almost 30 years, how can you do the same thing day after day? And it’s like, I never have two days that are alike. It’s different requests from the clients, different shape to the kitchen. The cabinets are going to be a different price range or built differently. So there’s so many variables today that no two days are alike.

James Kademan [00:56:01]:
Fair? Fair.

Allen Curran [00:56:03]:
Makes for a lot of fun.

James Kademan [00:56:04]:
Yeah. That’s the game of business, right? Every day is a little different.

Allen Curran [00:56:07]:
You bet.

James Kademan [00:56:08]:
Alan, where can people find you?

Allen Curran [00:56:10]:
Well, my cell phone number, they can contact me directly, and that’s 608-575-5552. My direct email address is Allen, which is a L L E N at Curran c u r r a n cabinetry cav I n e t r y desigN-E-S I g n.com we do have a showroom. The showroom is located at 664 North High Point Road in Madison, and it’s just off the beltline at Old Sauk.

James Kademan [00:56:43]:
Oh, right on.

Allen Curran [00:56:45]:
So I do recommend appointments because there are times when everybody’s out at job sites at different stages of the. The progression of construction. So make sure that someone’s there to answer your questions and be able to walk you through the showroom. And let’s see. I think this showroom, we just moved there a little over a year ago. 2400 square feet. Again, you can’t show everything. So what we’ve Done is we take photos of some of the projects that we’ve done so that we have a variety of looks.

Allen Curran [00:57:20]:
And then we have that imprinted on the backside of an acrylic panel and have that mounted on the wall. So Instead of having 15 kitchens on display, we have one kitchen on display and then photos of probably 24 others. So it kind of enlarges the showroom. But I do know that people like to touch and feel the cabinetry, the countertop materials. We have a room, it’s called a selection room, where we keep our countertop samples. Cabinet hardware, things of that sort we actually have just inside our front door. We do both framed and frameless construction on our cabinetry and we have pedestals without any countertop on it. So we can show all the ins and outs on how the cabinetry is built.

Allen Curran [00:58:03]:
And you can see it, it’s not covered up by a countertop where structure is hidden.

James Kademan [00:58:07]:
Ah, nice.

Allen Curran [00:58:08]:
So we’re pretty proud of how our cabinets are built and we like to show it off. That is cool.

James Kademan [00:58:12]:
Yeah, I love it. Well, thanks for being on the show.

Allen Curran [00:58:15]:
Oh, appreciate you having me.

James Kademan [00:58:17]:
This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. What else we got here? We are locally underwritten by the bank of Saint Prairie. If you’re listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, share it with your friends, give it a big old thumbs up, subscribe. And of course, if you know anyone that’s got a kitchen or bathroom that’s updated, Alan here is going to take care of them. Just introduce and let the magic happen.

Allen Curran [00:58:46]:
That’s all it takes.

James Kademan [00:58:47]:
And then I suppose that just snowballs through the whole neighborhood, right?

Allen Curran [00:58:50]:
In fact, I am ordering yard signs now just so we can promote through a neighborhood.

James Kademan [00:58:55]:
You and everybody else, man. Yeah, unfortunately, I mean, that’s the game. Marketing and innovation, right? That’s just the way it goes. We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners as well as our guest, Alan. Alan, can you tell us the website one more time?

Allen Curran [00:59:11]:
Website is https://currencabinetrydesign.com awesome.

James Kademan [00:59:15]:
And then the address, physical address.

Allen Curran [00:59:18]:
664 North High Point Road, Madison, Wisconsin Belt line, Old Sauk exit toward Madison. You’ll pass the showroom on the right side. The very first stoplight is at high points. So easy to find.

James Kademan [00:59:32]:
There you go. Past episodes can be found morning, noon and night at the podcast link found at https://drawincustomers.com. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.
And Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country. On the web at https://callsoncall.com and of course, the Bold Business Book.

James Kademan [00:59:58]:
A book for the entrepreneur and all of us, available wherever fine books are sold.