Chad's Creative Concepts

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. Customdesigned

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 and

standard furniture compete for processing time on the

same equipment by the same craftspeople.

During the past few months, sales of the standard line

have steadily increased, leading to more regular scheduling

of this line. However, when scheduling trade-offs had to be

made, custom furniture was always given priority because

of its higher sales and profit margins. Thus, scheduled