Glass Dynamics Looks to Expand -
From the Eden Daily News
By Seth Stratton
Staff Writer
A Stoneville glass company looking to invest nearly $5 million and add 100 jobs over the next five years is hoping the Rockingham County commissioners will approve a package worth more than $113,000 to aid in their expansion.
Glass Dynamics, founded in 1985, began primarily as a supplier of glass tabletops and other glass fixtures for furniture industries in North Carolina and Virginia. When the furniture industry started its downturn in the late 1990s, so did Glass Dynamics.
Vice president Conrad Lankford said the company's annual sales, which once topped more than $20 million, plummeted almost 75 percent to a low of about $4.5 million earlier this decade.
A $100,000 incentives package granted to the company from the county in 2002 helped the company create 77 jobs, said Jamie Rorrer, existing industries coordinator with the Rockingham County Partnership. Lankford said the company used the money to buy a tempering furnace, meant to strengthen the glass and make it safer if it shatters. The glass breaks into small pieces instead of dangerous shards.
"When they came in to give us a hand, you know, we were down to 88 people," Lankford said. "Now we're back up to 160 and by the time we're all done and through (with the expansion), we'll probably be up around 250 people."
Rorrer said the company is a success story and a homegrown business that changed when its market dried up. The company has plans to turn one of its buildings into an all-glass office space visible from the highway.
Lankford said the biggest thing is getting the new machinery and manufacturing areas set up before building the new office and two-floor showroom.
If the county approves the agreement, the company would create 25 jobs each year for the first three years, 15 the fourth year and 10 the fifth year. The county is considering a reimbursement payment plan over five years, starting in 2009.
The jobs would pay $8.50 to $12 an hour.
Glass Dynamics spent two years in a building off N.C. 14 near Eden before moving into its facility off U.S. 220 near N.C. 770 in Stoneville in 1987. For several years, Lankford said, the company made glass for Stoneville Furniture, Thomasville Furniture, Bassett Furniture and Lexington Home Brands, among others. But after a large portion of the furniture industry shifted to Asia, the company had to find a new direction.
Three years ago, Lankford said, 95 percent of Glass Dynamics products were produced for the furniture industry and 5 percent for the architecture and commercial building industry. Now, those numbers are reversed.
The company makes insulated glass, silkscreen glass, tinted glass, laminated glass and several other types with thicknesses up to three-fourths of an inch.
Lankford says the business was doing well into the mid 1990s. The company even opened up a second plant in Orange, Va.
"We did pretty good, but we were feeling a little bit of pressure of competition overseas ? Taiwan and Indonesia," Lankford said.
But when the federal government gave a favorable trade status to China several years ago, it gave special trade benefits to China and impacted two of the area's biggest industries - furniture and textiles ? first, he said.
Starting in 1999, the business began to trail off and by 2002, he said, the effect of the trade agreement "had really set in." In 2003, the company started looking at other markets and other ways to sell glass. It started buying new equipment to make commercial and architectural glass, turning its attention and sales force to those industries.
The company makes glass products for things ranging from a parking deck at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport to fitness center railings to glass for showers and offices. Their products have been used in buildings from Florida to Massachusetts, and the company has a strong presence in the Washington and Baltimore areas, Lankford said.
Customers can see some of the company's work at the new Northern Guilford High School, which is being built this year.
With the expansion Lankford hopes to increase production and sales and tap into new markets. The company couldn't compete with the furniture companies in Asia, but it can compete with people who are doing the same thing as Glass Dynamics, he said.
The company has already bought $700,000 in equipment in the past few weeks to start the expansion. Lankford plans to add another 11,250 square feet onto the building and move the machinery to optimize efficiency.
Lankford said the advantages his company has over the competition is his furniture background and the different shapes his business can make for customers. All of the company's glass is custom-made, and none of it is warehoused. It has a fleet of trucks that deliver the glass to customers all over the eastern United States.
"The county actually came and helped us out," Lankford said. "I mean, when you see your business go down to nothing and you're going into uncharted waters like we were, at least the county stepped forward and gave us some help.
"I mean, you know, for example, we were down to 88 ? people. If we had continued along those lines ? if we had not made the move and stayed in furniture, we would not be in business today."
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