Summerville, SC—For the past 22 years, Jim King has been a fixture in the South Carolina wood industry. He started out as a one-man operation back in 2000, when he opened his custom mouldings and trim workshop, King Products and Services, Inc. From the earliest days, King was committed to superior customer service, offering radius mouldings, small batch custom mouldings, mantles, and other specialty interior wood trim components. Then, between 2002 and 2003, the company began to shift in terms of its focus.
“Finding a niche in producing off species and made-to-order stair components, the company grew into a wholesale manufacturer of stair treads and floor transitional mouldings,” King recalled.
When Joe Ratliff partnered with King in 2016, the pair rechristened the company as K&R Wood Products, located in Summerville, SC, and continued to build on a well-established customer base. King founded the company and now both men are partner/owners.
Red and White Oak account for the bulk of the manufacturing – 4/4 and 5/4 Red and White Oak make up 95 percent of K&R’s material consumption, which amounts to between 3 million board feet and 3.5 million board feet annually – but the company remains committed to offering its customers a variety of options.
Recalling how the company evolved, King said, “Joe was hired as a plant manager in 2015 with a buy-in option after one year if we jointly agreed this was the right thing for the company, which it absolutely was. He has greatly increased our overall efficiencies and introduced significantly better buying and processing practices, which almost doubled our bottom line over the years.”
When Ratliff joined the company, he was bringing his considerable talents to a well-established team, including Johnny Cooper in sales and Clark Moore as Production Manager. Like the old company, K&R continued to operate out of Summerville, SC on a 4.5-acre campus that features a 67,000 square foot facility that contains all of the company’s operations.
The facility houses multiple Weinig 12-inch moulders and optimizing cross cutting systems, as well as two Mereen-Johnson 524 optimizing rip systems. The company also employs three James L. Taylor clamp carriers and a wood tech prefinished line.
King said that the company has evolved over the years to meet the changing needs of its customers.
“Our product line has changed in direct relation to the evolution of the flooring market,” he said. “In the mid-2000s, we produced mostly job-specific unfinished product in a large variety of species, reflecting the market at that time, which was heavily dependent on various wood species, including imported varieties. Currently, our production is heavily focused on Red and White Oak, with a strong demand for prefinished product.
“We manufacture stair treads in both job specific and stock bulk truckload quantities. Our products are available in prefinished and unfinished options. We also produce all standard floor mouldings and transitions,” he noted, adding that the company sources a wide array of species. “While our product is heavily produced in Red and White Oak, it is also available by order in various grades and species of pine, as well as reclaimed, and imported Brazilian Cherry, Cumaru, Ipe, Tigerwood and Sapele. American Cherry, Birch, Maple, Walnut and Hickory are also available.”
King noted that the variety of species will always remain dependent on the changing needs of the company’s extensive customer base.
“The species we use are determined exclusively by the current trends in the flooring market,” he said. “Most of it is readily available for shipment within a few weeks, and we don’t have to forecast out four to six months what our needs are going to be.”
K&R purchases all of its stock kiln-dried, net tally, hit or miss planed from concentration yards and mills that are equipped with drying and surfacing capabilities. The company sells primarily to wholesale wood flooring distributors, building material companies and lumberyards, as well as second-tier distributors and prefab staircase manufacturers. Jim added that the company always has an eye toward meeting its customers’ needs, maintaining an incoming raw material and stocked finished good inventory to cover a six-week time span of projected sales for high-velocity items.
With a solid history of meeting the needs of its customers, King said K&R is poised to build on that foundation as it sets its sights on the future. Still, given the uncertainty of today’s retail environment, which has been ravaged by the ongoing pandemic, the company is being prudently strategic in terms of its immediate plans.
“Similar to many wood component manufacturers, we are currently seeing unprecedented demand for our product,” he said. “We are implementing internal manufacturing changes that will increase our efficiency and overall output. These changes will allow us to alleviate current bottle necks, allowing room to double our current production capabilities.”
No matter what the future holds for K&R, the company will continue to rely on the relationships it has cultivated with customers and vendors over the years, offering them the versatility that has become the company’s hallmark.
“I think our strongest asset is our flexibility and customer relations. We don’t exactly do anything another manufacturer in our industry does not do, but we do it on a scale that allows us to meet customer demands and expectations, be it one piece needed in a hurry to complete a job, or an entire truck load of stock inventory with the same efficiencies,” King said. “We are a large enough manufacturer to be efficient, but small enough to be flexible, whereas a smaller or larger operation cannot feasibly do one or the other.”
To learn more, go to www.krwoodproducts.com.
