Cabinotch Innovative Solutions was established not just to be successful, but also to make life easier for the custom cabinet maker, said Phillip Crabtree II, owner and founder of Cabinotch. In fact, the first such customer was Crabtree himself, who was the owner of Phill’s Custom Cabinets and later founder of Cabinotch, Owensboro, Kentucky.

More recently, Crabtree made several investments to make production easier for both his company and his customers. This includes a new 77,000-square-foot factory and some strategic acquisitions.

Cabinotch manufactures and sells custom-sized, ready-to-assemble (RTA) cabinet boxes and components to custom cabinet makers. It uses a patented joinery system and CNC machinery to produce precision-cut parts, including face frame and frameless cabinet components and dovetail drawer boxes, from American-made, formaldehyde-free plywood. Orders are placed through Cabinotch’s website or design software, allowing customers to focus on designing and selling rather than cutting parts.

Assembly is made easier by the Cabinotch joinery system, which won a Challengers award in 2010. The system uses patented interlocking, sliding wood-to-wood connections for face-frame cabinets and Lamello P-14 clips for frameless cabinets, allowing for precision-cut, flat-packed components that snap together quickly.

The idea is that shops can order the Cabinotch boxes, using them as a core for a cabinet project, and then add their own customized touches. 

“You don’t have to build every part of the cabinet to make it yours,” Crabtree said. “Our customers can custom design what they need, and we cut it here in Owensboro using our CNC routers. We cut the parts specifically for their design and ship them across the country in 5 to 7 business days.”

Increasing capacity
Crabtree invented the joinery system in 2004 to help build cabinets faster and easier. Today, his company puts out about 550 cabinets a day for about 2,000 customers nationwide. And, Crabtree has set impressive goals for the future. 

“Our goal, and the reason we built the building and brought in this new equipment, is to grow to about 1,100 to 1,200 cabinets a day, which is the capacity for the new plant,” Crabtree said in an interview with the Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corp. 

The new building, constructed in October 2024, houses rows of CNC router technology and sophisticated, robotic panel lifts and retrieval systems to efficiently make the parts and ensure the parts are shipped to the customer. “When you order from us, you get all of the parts and pieces in the box,” he said. “You are not going to be missing a left panel or have to go reproduce something. They’re all going to be there.” 

When stacks of panels are delivered to Cabinotch, they start in two Homag IntelliStore units. The automated, intelligent storage and retrieval systems sort and store the panels. This completely automated system optimizes material flow for efficient use of all materials and space.

“The panel mover system grabs the panels and transfers them inside a fenced-in storage area,” said Crabtree. “And then, when the customer places an order, the machine goes in and pulls every sheet that is needed for the order, takes them to a label table where an RFID label is applied before parts are cut, then those sheets are stacked and make their way to our robotic CNC machines.” 

Nested Homag Centateq N-300 CNC routers are arranged at angles from each other in a through-feed operation. Panels are loaded from the machine’s side, parts are cut per instructions on the RFID label, and the components are offloaded on the other end. The company has 13 Homag CNC routers that Crabtree says run about 15 hours a day. The robust, nested-based CNC routers are designed for high-volume production and use powerful spindles, automatic tool changers, and integrated drilling blocks for versatile operations like sizing, routing, grooving, and engraving.

Having multiple routing stations not only increases production capacity, but it also provides redundancy when machines undergo scheduled maintenance.  Crabtree said that he chose the Homag equipment because while the machines are designed in Germany, they’re made in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and parts are readily available.

He mentions this because it is how he says he likes to run his own business, especially at a time of tariffs and critical labor shortages. 

“I want to make sure that the cabinetmakers know they don’t have to do this alone,” he said. “Cabinotch is there for them, to make sure that they have a partner that they can depend on. When they get busy, and when they can’t find labor, they can lean on us to produce their custom parts and ship them promptly and not have to pass on jobs when they’re too busy.”

Most importantly, he wants his customers to “have life outside of a cabinet shop. That’s kind of my mantra. We want to be a partner with you in your cabinet business to bring solutions that are innovative, that are forward-thinking. To help them enjoy the process of cabinet building again, and to be a craftsman, and also to be a business person.” ✚

SIDEBAR: Growth through acquisition
The new 77,000-square-foot factory expansion was not the only area of growth for Cabinotch Innovative Solutions. Within the last year, the Owensboro, Kentucky, company has made two acquisitions. 

President and CEO Phillip Crabtree II pointed to the acquisition of the KCD Software company. KCD is an award-winning custom design-to-CNC manufacturing software. Cabinotch said that the strategic move marks a “significant step forward for Cabinotch Innovative Solutions’ commitment to better serving the needs of woodworkers and cabinetmakers worldwide.”

Crabtree said they recently launched Version 25 with KCD. “It’s all fresh, new, and clean, has some new features on it, a lot of things there that are additions to what the KCD has had in the past. It’s been a great thing for us. But again, we didn’t buy KCD just to buy a software company. We bought it to have a better solution to order and process a job. To get your products in and out of your shop fast.” 

In addition, in March 2025, KCD Software, now a division of Cabinotch, acquired CADCode Systems, an advanced CNC machining software developed by cabinetmaker and industry pioneer Ned Brown. CADCode Systems will enhance KCD Software’s portfolio and “solidifies its commitment” to delivering cutting-edge tool options for the woodworking and manufacturing industries.

“We were able to partner with Ned and put CADCode software inside of the KCD software,” Crabtree said, “which makes it super powerful. The tech stack that we have now at Cabinotch is incredible. The powerhouse that we have with our software, with the Cabinotch solution, being able to get your parts cut and delivered to you from exactly your design is a big thing.”
Crabtree said that more innovations is coming down the pipeline. “Going forward, Cabinotch is rolling out some e -commerce solutions that are going to be incredible ... it’s going to streamline things for us like we’ve never seen before.”