Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 28, 1995 TAG: 9511280097
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
After 20 years in the mirror and frame business, The Uttermost Co. of Franklin County still knows how to grab customers' attention - and how to turn that attention into growth and jobs.
Belle Cooper, the company's chief financial officer and head of design, chuckles over the reactions of buyers who visited Uttermost's showroom last month at the International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C.
"We had some who walked in and looked around like-'' Cooper opened her eyes wide and threw up her hands in an exaggerated gesture of astonishment. ``They said, `What have you done?'''
What the family-owned company had done, customers discovered, was to introduce Contemporary Concepts, a line of mirrors and accessories built around shiny finishes and abstract designs. The products themselves aren't new - they had been manufactured for years by a New Jersey company before Uttermost bought the design rights this summer. But they are a switch for the local company, which has built its reputation on producing classic designs for customers that include the Hotel Roanoke.
Beyond the initial shock, however, customer reaction has been positive, Cooper said. The company said it saw record sales at the market and picked up new accounts on the strength of the new line. Also, some established Uttermost customers are buying Concepts products, and new Concepts customers are starting to buy traditional Uttermost products.
"It'll make us a totally full line," said Taz Cooper, Uttermost's vice president and assistant sales manager and the son of Belle and Robert Cooper. "There'll be nothing you can't get from us."
The heart of the Contemporary Concepts collection is a line of intaglios, or mirrors decorated with gold-colored embossed designs. The collection also includes mirrored wall prisms, mirrored pedestals and mirrors with lacquered gold frames.
Robert Cooper, chief executive officer, said Uttermost expects sales of Concepts products to reach $3 million in 1995, of a projected $15 million total sales. Uttermost's wholesale customers include The Bombay Co. and J.C. Penney Co. Uttermost this year expects $1 million in exports to Europe and Asia.
For now, the new products are made alongside their more traditional cousins. But a 43,000-square-foot addition - right now just a set of contractor's plans and a big bare patch of reddish-orange mud - should be finished in February or March.
This expansion - the company's second in nine months - will give Uttermost 125,000 square feet of space. That's a far cry from where they were less than four years ago, when the company occupied just 20,000 square feet and employed only 45. Company president Mac Cooper, Belle and Robert's other son, said plans are to hire almost that many new people in 1996 alone, to supplement the current work force of 105.
There's always a risk when an established company branches out into new territory, Belle Cooper acknowledged.
"We fail big-time sometimes," she said. "It's a hard industry." But the real duds are less frequent than they used to be, years ago, she said.
"We've gotten a lot more sophisticated," she said back in October, when Uttermost was showcasing its wares, old and new, at the High Point market. "We had no marketing plans in the early days. We just put out a product and hoped somebody would sell it."
by CNB