Chad’s Creative Concepts designs and manufactures wood furniture. Founded by Chad Thomas on the banks of Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio, the company began by producing custom-made wooden furniture for vacation cabins located along the coast of Lake Erie and on nearby Kelly’s Island and Bass Island. Being an “outdoors” type himself, Chad Thomas originally wanted to bring “a bit of the outdoors” inside. Chad’s Creative Concepts developed a solid reputation for creative designs and high-quality workmanship. Sales eventually encompassed the entire Great Lakes region. Along with growth came additional opportunities. Traditionally, the company had focused entirely on custom-made furniture, with the customer specifying the kind of wood from which the piece would be made. As the company’s reputation grew and sales increased, the sales force began selling some of the more popular pieces to retail furniture outlets. This move into retail outlets led Chad’s Creative Concepts into the production of a more standard line of furniture. Buyers of this line were much more price sensitive and imposed more stringent delivery requirements than did clients for the custom line. Custom designed furniture, however, continued to dominate sales, accounting for 60 percent of volume and 75 percent of dollar sales. Currently, the company operates a single manufacturing facility in Sandusky, where both custom and standard furniture is manufactured. The equipment is mainly general purpose in nature in order to provide the flexibility needed for producing custom pieces of furniture. The layout puts together saws in one section of the facility, lathes in another, and so on. The quality of the finished product reflects the quality of the wood chosen and the craftsmanship of individual workers. Both custom ...