Plato Woodwork
Headquarters: Plato, Minnesota
Inception: 1893
Family name: Pinske
What the company does: Manufacturing custom residential cabinetry
Type of ownership: Private corporation
Principal owners: Karl Pinske, Mitchell Pinske, Marlys Pinske
Employees: 165
Family members in the business: 2
Family members on the board: 4
“I think the six generations of being here tells people that we’re going to be here when we put a warranty on a product.”
–Karl Pinske, president, Plato Woodwork
Here’s a story that encapsulates Plato Woodwork’s durability: One of the first “products” constructed by Theodore Pinske, the building contractor who founded the company in 1893, was a barn near Plato, the small farm town the business still calls home. Though the barn was torn down in 2007 because of neglect, about 75% of the timber, joists, and boards were salvageable and were used to build the house where Karl Pinske, the family business’ current president, now resides.
Plato is roughly an hour west of the Twin Cities on U.S. 212; these days, the population numbers about 330. From its little hometown, Plato Woodwork builds cabinetry that it sells to residential construction companies nationwide. The company is now run by members of the fourth, fifth, and sixth generations of the Pinske family.
“We’re active in about 32 states right now,” says Karl Pinske, Plato Woodwork’s president and a fifth-generation family member. What’s made the company last and grow? “We diversified into design-build firms versus just straight-up kitchen-design companies,” he says. “It’s not necessarily direct-to-contractors, but it is diversifying the market of people we can choose to work with.” From a growth perspective, it might have been easier “to choose the volume route versus the custom route,” he says. “We stuck with the custom side, and it’s really worked out for us.”
The Pinske family remains firmly rooted in their hometown. “Plato has been very good to us as far as providing the infrastructure that we’ve needed,” Karl says. But there’s another reality that has propelled the company: the disappearance of family farms over the past 20 to 30 years. It meant a lot of hardworking individuals were looking for jobs. “That has really helped us take the work ethic of those people and keep it going inside our factory,” Karl says.
The conversion of U.S. 212 from the metro into a divided highway has made transporting goods and supplies easier and faster. In recent years, Highway 212 “has become almost a distribution channel,” Pinske says. “There are a lot of warehouses by us that serve Minneapolis, so the backhaul side of it has been really good for us.” He adds that his company has had no trouble finding supply sources. “We’re actually on what [distributors] call the milk runs” for hardware and other components.
Not that everything has been easy, of course. The biggest challenge that the current generations of leadership have faced, according to Karl, was the housing crisis associated with the Great Recession of 2008-09. “That was a tough thing to manage through,” he recalls. “It was the only layoff we’ve ever done since I joined the company 32 years ago.” What made it particularly difficult is that Plato is, in many respects, like a big family. “Because it’s a small community, you’re affecting a lot of people,” he observes. “So that was a difficult thing to do.”
Along with the layoffs, the company had to work its way back from a huge drop in revenue.
And it has. “Luckily, we’re 30% to 40% growth from where we started at before that,” Karl adds. He credits much of that to the 11 independent salespeople who cover territory nationwide. “They’ve done a remarkable job in getting business back and growing it,” he says.
One of the company’s longtime customers is Jamie Bottcher, vice president and COO of Bozeman, Montana-based SBC, a custom, residential general contractor. In 2005, when Bottcher’s company was in the market for a new millwork cabinet supplier, it found Plato’s handiwork on display in a kitchen showroom in Nebraska, where SBC was doing remodeling work. “We could tell from the samples that the quality of their product was on the forefront,” Bottcher says.
It’s not only the quality of Plato Woodwork’s products that keeps SBC ordering cabinetry from a manufacturer 1,000 miles away. “They’re one of the few companies left that truly value what correct customer service can do for the longevity of the brand and the company,” Bottcher says. And he notes he has been welcomed by Plato Woodwork’s team, from its top leadership to its craftspeople on the production floor.
Three years ago, a member of the sixth generation of Pinskes joined the family business. Mitchell, Karl’s son, came on board after graduating from Mankato State University with a business management degree. Among other duties, he’s rolling out a new online ordering system for Plato Woodwork’s dealers.
Karl likes to think that Mitch’s presence is a selling point for Plato Woodwork. “I think the six generations of being here tells people that we’re going to be here when we put a warranty on a product.”
