Concept 32 finds profit in its cabinets, closets

LONGMONT — The road to success is rarely without its rocks, ruts and turns, and the co-owner of Concept 32 surely remembers one of particular significance.

“Friday, Sept. 13 of 2013; do you remember that date?” asked Isaiah Rozek. Of course, that’s the date that several feet of mud and water flooded his production facilities in Longmont during the epic Front Range deluge.

Despite the devastation, the closet and storage company hardly missed a beat. For five days, it moved production to subcontractors as its team cleaned up more than two feet of mud. Once they had production going, they still were working in a shell of a building, without restroom facilities, for months.

“I didn’t think I had much of a choice; we started cleaning up,” Rozek said. “The company office staff moved into my unfinished basement until we decided that was too far away and moved into rented mobile job trailers. We operated out of there for about two and a half months.

“We lost a half a million dollars that day.”

The company had about 20 employees at that time, doing about $2 million annually. Today Concept 32 has almost 70 employees with showrooms in Denver, Longmont and Highlands Ranch, and does about $8.6 million in business annually.

Concept 32 is a custom kitchen and bathroom storage provider, using advanced software and manufacturing techniques. Cabinet Vision is the software it uses to design the cabinets and closets, but Rozek said that one of the best moves it made was going to a laser-banding method, that joins materials almost seamlessly.

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Concept 32

351 Coffman St., Suite 216

Longmont, CO 80501

303-682-5009

concept32designs.com

Isaiah and Michelle Rozek, owners

Founded: 2002

Employees: ~70

Primary service: Cabinets for closets, garages, offices, pantries, kitchens and entertainment centers.

Growth: 69%

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“We’re one of the only companies in the U.S. that does laser-edge banding on everything,” he said. “Our clients can tell it.”

In Colorado, Rozek said, the kitchen/bath cabinet business is almost all based on referrals, with about 90 percent of that coming from home contractors. However, homeowners account for about 75 percent of the closet design and manufacturing business.

The advanced manufacturing methods employed by Concept 32 also have allowed the company to expand far beyond the state lines. The company manufactures cabinet doors out of difficult materials and sells them to cabinet makers in markets from Los Angeles to Montana.

“We now have distribution in 20 different markets,” Rozek said. “Just the fact that we’re not just relying on the Colorado market is important, and we’re adding new accounts almost daily.”

Rozek said the business originally was created by his wife and fellow owner, Michelle Rozek, along with her parents, Marty and Mary Wehr. Marty Wehr previously was a vice president at Starbucks.

Rozek was selling insurance at the time, having recently graduated from the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business, before coming into Concept 32 in 2005. The Wehrs retired in 2012.

While Rozek admitted he knew little about the cabinet trade when he signed on, he said success is really more a measure of determination.

“You stick with and get good at it. Then you should succeed,” he said. “This business came to us very organically.”

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