Focus on local business Butler County
By Eric Schwartzberg
Staff Writer
HAMILTON — A Butler County-based woodworking company continues to create items that musicians worldwide have used for nearly a century.
GRK Manufacturing is the oldest piano bench manufacturer in the United States and probably the world, according to Eric Roeseler, the company’s general manager.
Located at 1200 Dayton St., the business constructs piano benches, music stands, music cabinets, piano bench cushions and piano covers. It also distributes lamps and other music accessories to piano store customers nationwide.
That constitutes about half of the company’s business. The other half stems from its production of store fixtures for grocery and retail stores, using hardwoods like oak, poplar and maple to create items such as donut holders, banana holders or risers in deli cases for grocers like Kroger and Remke bigg’s.
In addition, GRK manufactures casket handles for cremation caskets.
From start to finish, most items make it out the door in two weeks, Roeseler said.
“Some items we’ll get out ahead of time, some of them we’ll make to order,” he said. “If they’re larger items for grocery stores or very expensive, we’ll make them per order.”
The company got its start in 1915 when two manual art teachers in Cincinnati began making piano benches and stools for Baldwin, a local piano manufacturer. In 1917, the two men formed the Manual Arts Furniture Company, or MAFOC, which laid claim to being the initial designers of knock-down benches and shipped the legs in the bench compartment, Roeseler said. That design was the first of what is known today as knock-down furniture, he said.
The company’s facility has moved six times, including its most recent move in 1992 to its 90,000-square-foot facility in Hamilton to utilize a newer, larger building and a better pool of skilled woodworkers, Roeseler said.
That move came four years after former Procter & Gamble executive Gary Kilday purchased the business and renamed it GRK Manufacturing.
GRK’s fine finishing ability is what sets the company apart from others of its ilk, Roeseler said.
“If a piano bench has to sit next to a $60,000 piano, it has got to look good,” he said. “We have that ability to do that.”
The company also imports piano benches and store fixtures, both of which can be fixed in-house because of its manufacturing ability.
In January, GRK purchased the assets of Deer Park-based architectural millwork firm Heritage Raised Panel, moving several pieces of equipment and four employees to Hamilton, Roeseler said. That brings the company’s workforce total to 17 hourly, full-time employees, he said.
As a result of the purchase, GRK also makes raised panels and wainscoting that goes around dining rooms and kitchens in new home construction, plus fireplace mantels and columns.
View GRK Manufacturing’s piano-related products on the web at www.grkmfg.com.
Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4541 or eschwartzberg@coxohio.com.