Who: Artifex Finishing
Where: 32 Bates St., Dayton
Employees: 13
Business: Manufacturing services.
Gross Revenue: $1.5 million.
President David G. Couch
Website: http://artifexfinishing.com/
A company near downtown Dayton that specializes in the fine art of surface finishing is quickly growing its sales and payroll.
A few years ago, Artifex Finishing at 32 Bates St. was a small shop of four full-timers with gross revenue of about $500,000. Since it was purchased in 2010 by David Couch, the company has tripled sales, added equipment, and grown the full-time staff to 13, company officials said.
Artifex expects to grow more in April when it adds a third shift to handle an anticipated rush of orders. A venture that Couch first thought of as a retirement gig is today turning into more than he could have hoped for.
Couch, 56, a Vandalia native, has built the small jobs shop, the former Fordyce Custom Finishing, into a manufacturing solutions business that helps architects, designers, manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors solve production problems and get the look they want from cabinets, decorative additions and interior furnishings. Call it process troubleshooting.
Couch offers surface finishing for all types of manufactured wood, metal, plastic and other material surfaces. The bulk is interior mill work. The company motto, “It’s the last thing done, and the first thing you see.”
Says Couch: “We educate customers to fix the mill work process. We beat the competition not because we are the cheapest, but because we are about quality and problem solutions.”
You can see the results at the new Cox Arboretum MetroPark’s 46-foot Tree Tower, refinishing for the University of Dayton’s interior work at the former NCR headquarters, the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Officer’s Club, new casinos in Toledo and Columbus, and in Ralph Lauren retail stores in New Jersey.
Base club manager Vonzella Allen is impressed by the refinishing job on room columns and an entry door for the establishment that dates to 1934. “It was gorgeous when they finished,” she said. “They made it look like new.”
There are the thousands of cabinets, doors, and aluminum windows installed by residential and commercial building contractors. About 60 percent of the work at the 28,000-square-foot shop is for commercial jobs for office buildings and retail outlets, the rest for residential construction. Last week, Artiflex was finishing up a 300-piece door panel project.
Demand has been brisk enough that the company has just about exhausted the local skills pool for experienced trades people. But Couch said he is taking on talented people to train in the application of acrylics, polyurethanes, varnishes and water-based finishes.
Couch and his management team that includes vice president Mark Holdeman, general manager Sean Bowser and Couch’s wife Fawn, the office manager, aim to expand services, especially to customers in bordering states.
They consider themselves the largest independent manufacturing services company of their type outside of the Carolinas, where a large furnishings industry remains despite extensive off-shoring. Couch would like to help push the return of that industry back to the United States and the Midwest.
“This is truly becoming a lost art,” Couch said. “We have lost lots of skilled craftsmanship in the U.S.”
Couch comes to the business after a long career in the logistics industry, including trucking firms, warehousing and an early stint with the Danis Building Corp. His goal is to increase company revenues to between $5 million to $10 million within five years.
“There are thousands of fixture and mill work companies that need our services,” Couch said.
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