doing business as
Bellmont Cabinets
Rather than shutting its doors when demand collapsed during the Great Recession, family-owned Bellmont Cabinets forged a new path.
Steve Bell, president and CEO headquarters: Sumner products: Residential kitchen and bath cabinets for remodels and the new, single-family home market.
a family story: Steve Bell was building homes with his father-in-law in the late 1970s and, to make extra money, started making cabinets for those homes in his garage. He started his own company that now includes two of his sons, Casey( chief operating officer) and Tyler( vice president of sales and marketing).
changing the world: To live out one of the company’ s core values, compassion, Bellmont seeks to help those in need, from its own employees and neighbors to people around the world. Its Bellmont Family Support program helps employees enduring hard times. It works with many local programs, like homeless support at Vine Maple Place in Maple Valley and home construction with Habitat for Humanity. Internationally it works with communities in El Salvador, Africa and Latvia.
ups and downs: In 2008, the company was having its best year ever, with employment reaching more than 200. That fall, however, the recession took hold and sales dropped by 60 percent. They cut employment by 110 people but were making only 100 cabinets a day— not enough volume to pay overhead costs on their production facility.“ We could not just hunker down and hang on and ride it out,” Casey Bell said.“ It literally wasn’ t an option. We had to grow out of it.” Desperate to simply bring cash through the door to keep the lights on, they gambled everything on a new product line called the 1600 Series that had the same features and benefits of the company’ s higher-end cabinets, but at a lower cost. It was a huge hit. Bellmont is now up to 300 employees with their product carried in 550 Lowe’ s stores across the nation.
how’ s business? Bellmont has been growing so rapidly that in 2015 they actually turned down business to focus on better management. Coming out of a recession, it was a hard decision to say no to sales, but now a sustainable 20 percent growth rate allows them to run a tighter, better company.“ There’ s a balance here,” Casey Bell said.“ You can’ t try to do everything and be mediocre at everything.”
Casey Bell, chief operations officer( left), and Nick Johnson, chief financial officer
— Brian Mittge
46 association of washington business