Woodmont Cabinetry Finishing Against Texas Heat
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Hanging line parts of unfinished product loaded to move to stain booths.
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Stain being applied the back of the product.
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Over all view of hanging line for ambient air drying before going in to drying oven.
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Close up view of product after top coat is applied.
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Florence (door style), North Sea (Designer Paint), Floating vanity with furniture drawers
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7752- Florence (door style), Antique with Coffee Glaze, Espresso Island.

Dallas-based Woodmont Cabinetry celebrated its 60th year in business in 2013. A company that has grown with the times, Woodmont has evolved from a regional supplier to become a national supplier of semi-custom cabinetry in new construction and renovation with a reputation for innovation and design.

The privately-held company was established in 1953 as Western Cabinets, which supplied stock cabinetry to the Dallas/Fort Worth homebuilder market. In 1992, Stanley Tidwell, owner of Texas Doors, purchased Western Cabinets, and expanded to serve builders on a national basis.

A rebranding to Woodmont Cabinetry occurred in 2004 when the company began marketing kitchen-at-a-time semi-custom cabinetry in showrooms nationally. New features were added, such as dovetailed drawers, all wood drawer boxes and a variety of drawer slides and soft-close doors. The company has also continued its commitment to the builder market, rebranding those products as Westridge Cabinetry.

Today, the 220-employee company operates a 150,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Dallas, with a 100,000 square foot facility in Cedar Hill, Texas, about 20 miles southwest of Dallas. It prides itself on providing quality, value-added products to its customers and consumers while keeping jobs in America and operates by a company-wide commitment to sustainability.

Adapting for Success

The company, like many others, took a hit during the recession.

“When the economic decline hit in 2008, the coatings supplier we were using decided to cut back on field service and customer support,” said Jaime Tidwell Foster, Woodmont’s Director of Sales & Marketing. “We were on our own. That’s when we decided to look for a new supplier.”

By early 2009, Woodmont selected Sherwin-Williams as its new coatings supplier, and they quickly worked together to match Woodmont’s standard stains and topcoats.

“It’s not that they just have a good product,” Foster said. “They’re continually researching and developing new products.”

Roger Evans, Woodmont’s New Product Development and Quality Control Manager, is impressed with the service and technical expertise provided by Sherwin-Williams.

“We’re in Texas, so we have variations in heat and cold that can cause stains and topcoats to react differently from time to time,” Evans said. “But the Sherwin-Williams team that supports us came in, analyzed the needs and formulated products specific to our process and environmental focus. They’re responsive, which is very important to us.”

Having the finishes available on-time is also important, and Evans cited the fact that Sherwin-Williams Waco, Texas distribution center is just 70 miles away.

“We send them a purchase order today, and it’s here the next day or the following day,” he said.”They understand our paint lines, how and why we do things. They build colors for us, get them dialed in on color to the target, get the approvals and get our operators up to speed. It’s been a great partnership.”

The finish quality and customer satisfaction has improved every year since Woodmont Cabinetry joined forces with Sherwin-Williams, according to Foster. But perhaps the biggest indicator of the success of this partnership comes in the form of fewer remakes due to the finish.

“We don’t have to correct problems that really shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” she said. And we appreciate the personal contact we get receive by working closely with Sherwin-Williams through the entire process – in the GCDC, in the field – they make sure they are a part of what is going on at Woodmont, and are intent on making it work.”

In 2011, Woodmont foresaw a consumer trend that showed a preference to painted cabinets.

“At that point, we only had white and antique, and those colors were growing in demand,” Foster said. “We asked Sherwin-Williams to help us by sharing their color trend forecasts as we launched our Designer Paints line.”

That resulted in a trip to Sherwin-Williams Global Color and Design Center (GCDC) in Greensboro, North Carolina. The 7,000 square foot GCDC is staffed by six color and marketing professionals and features a lighting-controlled showroom filled with product samples, a styling lab, a finish application room and a color design resource room.

Woodmont brought cabinet prototypes and worked with the color experts at the GCDC to determine industry trends. The collaboration brought about the addition of 10 colors for pigmented varnish used for the new cabinetry line. The new palette includes several neutral colors (one of which, Featherstone, is the most popular); Dove Grey; Sage; and a red (Cardinal). Two blacks (Black Fox and Black Onyx) serve primarily as accent colors, used for island applications or separate in-kitchen pieces of furniture.

The program has been so successful for Woodmont that they have made this an annual assessment to ensure that Woodmont remains on track with consumer color trends.

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