DAYTON — Five years ago, Gerstner & Sons Inc. was taking a double hit from the economic downturn and from cheap overseas knockoffs of the company's handcrafted wooden chests and cases — products made proudly in Dayton and sold the world over since 1906.

For the family-owned enterprise, scrapping its Dayton plant and manufacturing overseas was not the answer. Instead, Gerstner vice president Kim Campbell Armstrong said, the family launched a separate division in China, Gerstner International, that manufactures a lower-priced but quality line of products.

People who liked the Gerstner International brand began to take a look at its higher-quality, higher-priced Dayton products, Armstrong said, and for the first time in more than a decade, sales here began to climb. Rather than laying off workers, Gerstner has been adding to its staff of 20 in recent years.

"We still make a Rolls-Royce. The only difference now is that we also make a Chevrolet," Armstrong said.

The company's international products use less expensive cuts of hard wood and rely on more machining. But the biggest difference is in the "fit and finish," she said.

Gerstner USA products, collected by celebrities like Tom Selleck and owned by several U.S. presidents, meet tolerances so stringent that lids appear almost seamless. Each drawer is hand-fitted to slide in and out effortlessly with little or no "play."

While the Dayton plant inspects every Chinese product for quality, the tolerances are more relaxed, Armstrong said. They cost about a third of the USA product.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2437 or

jdebrosse@DaytonDailyNews.com.