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Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Raul Gamboa paints doors and frames for kitchens at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood. All of the company's products are manufactured in Colorado.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Trevor Short paints slats for headboards and chests at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Gabriel Frias puts pieces of wood products into an edge bander for finishing the wood with edging, polishing and gluing at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Maura Salazar hand sews drapes for hotels at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Cody Thomas works on sanding a headboard in the hardwood specialty department at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Steven Farkas works on assembling kitchen cabinets at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Blanca Aragon hands sews black out shades for hotels at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Jimmy Syvongsa puts furniture together at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Sheldon Chavarria installs the hardware in hotel bureaus at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood. All of the company's products are manufactured in Colorado.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Terrence McGuire, President of FW Manufacturing, shows how well built the company's furniture is by standing on a small side table at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Marcella Balle hand sews drapes for hotels at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood. All of the company's products are manufactured in Colorado.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Dozens of chests are lined up to be painted while Trevor Short, middle back and Raul Gamboa, right back, paints furniture at FW Manufacturing on Oct. 8, 2018 in Englewood. All of the company's products are manufactured in Colorado.

In FW Manufacturing’s plant on metro Denver’s southern edge, workers assemble cabinet frames by hand, while others add hinges and hardware.

Nearby, painters in three booths hang pieces of wood individually and spray paint them one-by-one, trying to get the coating just right as a powerful ventilation system whisks the fumes away.

On an upper floor, women sit at industrial sewing machines, turning bolts of fabric into drapes that will precisely fit windows in new hotels.

What is unusual is where the plant is located — in the Meridian business park in Lone Tree, near the headquarters of high-profile corporations like Dish Network and CH2M Hill.

Perhaps even more surprising in a state that heavily promotes advanced manufacturing is that a producer of such basic products is not only surviving, but thriving.

“We had to take a lot of thought about how and where we would compete,” said Bruce Davine, CEO of FW Manufacturing. “People increasingly want to buy products made in the U.S.”

Some manufacturers focus on just a few items and produce them en masse. But FW Manufacturing produces a wide range of products, from window coverings to microwave cabinets, in multiple designs, in custom batches. Those items are sold primarily to hotels nationally and apartment buildings locally.

“Seventy percent of what we build has some aspect of customization,” Davine said. “What we are building is highly customized.”

Architects and builders can request fixtures and furniture that fit their design specifications and the available space, rather than having to shoe horn in off-the-shelf products.

“We supply everyone from Motel 6 to the Ritz-Carlton,” said Terry McGuire, president of FW Manufacturing. “But what we do mostly is mid-level.”

That “vertical integration” makes the company a novelty in the manufacturing world, said Tom Bugnitz, CEO of Manufacturer’s Edge, a consulting firm in Denver.

That structure reflects FW Manufacturing’s history and ownership by Valiant, a Denver-based supplier of furniture, fixtures and equipment, as well as design services, to the hospitality industry.

But in the mid-90s, FW Manufacturing, a key supplier for Valiant, had trouble meeting orders, said Davine, who is also CEO of Valiant. To secure its supply chain, Valiant purchased FW and over time added other product lines, based on what customers wanted.

Plain plywood and particle boards sit on the manufacturing floor, as do high-end imported Italian melamine panels that are popular in luxury properties. Instructions from blueprints for an apartment building under construction in Arvada are sent to a machine that precisely cuts boards into pieces for a cabinet.

A banding machine adds laminate to the exposed edges of boards. Dust from those machines is collected and processed, eventually ending up in a sealed dumpster at the rear of the plant. About 40 cubic yards a week of dust gets carted away.

The state-of-the-art machines are a huge help when it comes to minimizing waste and precisely cutting boards and drilling holes for latches and handles. But there are some tasks that humans can do better, and painting is one of them.

“Machines can’t coat wood at the quality level we are looking for,” said McGuire, who doesn’t hesitate to call the company’s painters artisans.

Same with drapes and window coverings. Every window is measured in the field, and drapes are cut and assembled specific to those measurements.

“We do this old style, with highly skilled seamstresses” he said. And while the handiwork does add to the cost, the company claims it remains competitive.

Most manufacturers, in Colorado and nationally, run on fewer than 20 employees, Bugnitz said. Larger manufacturers are about 5 percent of the total nationwide.

FW Manufacturing is in the middle, allowing it to offer customization, but on a scale and in a time frame that smaller shops can’t match.

“We aren’t the cheapest, but we aren’t outside what the market can bear,” McGuire said.

Before its move to Lone Tree, FW Manufacturing called 38th and Walnut streets in Denver’s River North Arts District home. When the company set up in RiNo, it was an old industrial zone with cheap real estate. Over time, FW came to occupy a half dozen buildings.

But as the neighborhood transitioned into a hip area with new apartments, bars and restaurants, finding the room to grow, much less bring big trucks in, got harder.

“We needed more space. It wasn’t a place to manufacture anymore,” Davine said.

Although gentrifying neighborhoods often market the charm of what they are displacing, they aren’t always accommodating of the long-time residents and businesses that provided that identity.

“Developers seem to be looking for a particular ‘vibe’ in their businesses, and cooler and cleaner  manufacturers like breweries, outdoor products, electronics, especially startups, are more appealing to them than non-sexy traditional manufacturers like machine shops,” said Bugnitz.

At the start of the year, FW Manufacturing moved into a facility formerly occupied by a medical device company just southeast of the intersection of Interstate 25 and E-470. The building had 100,000 square feet, which allowed the company to bring everything under one roof, with room to spare for future growth.

The location had easier truck access, open space surrounding it and plenty of power to handle heavy machinery, Davine said.

FW Manufacturing continues to focus on supplying hotels and apartments, a highly competitive market. Going forward, the company expects more of its growth to come from a proprietary cabinet design for the residential market called Avalon Trueframe.

Traditional American cabinet designs, the kind found in higher-end homes, are made with solid wood that is painted. While sturdier, the construction uses up more space than the more open Eurocase design that Ikea has helped popularize.

Avalon offers the sturdiness and more refined finishes of the American design, but with the greater capacity of the Eurocase, minus the laminate that somehow finds a way to peel off. And it is trying to catch the eye of homebuilders.

“We have a unique product to offer the market,” Davine said. “We have a lot of capacity, and we have a lot of work to be done.”

Davine said the company tries to source American-made materials and components as much as it can and is finding more of the people it is talking to are trying to do the same.

“The cabinet production that is overseas is mostly Chinese producers, and the quality is quite poor,” said Amanda Conger, executive director of the Cabinet Makers Association, an industry trade group.

Add in rising freight costs and stronger trade agreements, and the conditions are right for a comeback in U.S. manufacturing, Davine said. Even in places like Douglas County.

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