Marketing, technology keys for Elochoman Millworks success in recession

Bob Jungers is proud of Elochoman Millwork, a Cathlamet company whose primary market is the highest of high end homes in Hawaii. The business produces doors and does custom millwork for residential and commercial facilities like hotels, condominiums and time-shares.

Bob and Dawn Jungers began the business in 1984, which currently has 15 employees, some of whom are family. Jungers handles sales, bidding and purchasing, his nephew, Robert (Roman) Jungers is the chief engineer who works with computer assisted machines and scheduling. Jungers’ wife, Dawn, works in both the office and the shop, having responsibility for purchasing and “the 1,001 things that need doing” Bob Jungers said. Sister-in-law Rona Droullard is office manager.

After weathering the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 “due to some decisions we made,” Bob Jungers said the business is solid. “At present we’re swamped,” he said.

An article in Honolulu magazine listing the 25 most expensive homes in Hawaii, is a short list of Junger’s clients.

“We served five of the top 10 homes,” Jungers said. His clients include Michael Dell, Charles Schwab, John Chambers and Ellis Short, an investment banker.

“During the recession of 2008 and 2009 business was extremely slow,” Jungers said. “But we came through well.”

Many companies didn’t. “I see machinery for two or three cents on the dollar,” he said.

While other companies are struggling to catch up, Jungers is taking advantage of the improving market. “We’re coming out with a greater market share,” he said.

Jungers believes that violence in Mexico is increasing tourism to Hawaii, where he’s worked since the late 1980’s. He’s recently expanded to Mexico City, Mexico.

The company has some product in the Street of Dreams in Portland, but Jungers said he doubts much will come of it.

Bruce Wilson of Longview is the shop foreman. Wilson said, “I love the combination of high tech and what I call old school millwork.”

Those skills are combined in products like a custom garden gate and a coffered ceiling installed in Hawaii. The ceiling, made from American black walnut, included several panels at varying heights from the floor in a room 30 feet wide by 40 feet.

The ceiling, which had panels with beam caps and medallions, was designed in modular units and pre-assembled in Cathlamet. It required 37 foot beams, so veneer was applied with 14-inch finger-joints and folded three times, which matched so well when assembled, “the joints disappeared,” Jungers said.

When he flew to Hawaii with Wilson, Jungers said, “the project came together flawlessly.”

“The owners were beside themselves when they saw it. This was a project I couldn’t pass up,” he said.

The skills needed for the complex ceiling are the same as those needed for the doors that are the bread and butter of the company.

Computer numerical controlled machinery planes wood to size. Veneer is added, the pieces are designed and cut, by four or five head computer assisted drafting and manufacturing machines.

The business started in the “old Standard oil boat plant” in Cathlamet in 1984 and moved to its current location on Boege Road in 1989.

In 1994, Jungers expanded the 1950’s era shop. He has another machine to come on line and he’s running overtime to ease a bottleneck. If business continues as he hopes, he may be looking for another site.

Foreman Wilson has been with the business for five years. His job is to keep work flowing smoothly.

Wilson said he likes craftsman skills--working by hand, old world skills, like those needed in the final fitting of the panels in the intricate ceiling assembled in Hawaii.

Wilson is considering creating a corner to do millwork the old fashioned way.

Jungers said he went into the trade because he was “hungry and needed to earn a living.” He learned from his father, initially building cabinet doors, but gravitated to general millwork—the manufacturing of wood products other than cabinets, such as doors standing and running trim, case boards and case molding.

“People think back to their high school shop class. If you were a bonehead and you weren’t going to do anything, you went into the trades,” Jungers said.

“But with computer assisted design, if you can imagine planes--the machines can cut them, including free form rounds or spiral stair cases.”

“If you can create it in virtual space, within a certain size limit, we can make it. It’s almost spooky,” Jungers said, as he gave a tour of the plant.

The shop has the clean smell of wood, with a background whirr of machines and stacks of doors in varying states of assembly.

Jungers indicated a bundle of 12,000 square feet of veneer made from one 11-foot log and considered the type of mahogany it was.

“I love wood, it’s my life,” he said.