BUSI NESS
written by SHERIL BENNETT TURNER & photographed by JOHN FOWLER
Spotlight on Business
SATTERFIELD WOODWORKING, INC.
W
hen Alvin Satterfield began his small business around 1941, he probably had no idea just how much his three-employee cabinet shop would grow and become an industry institution. From its humble beginnings in downtown Greer—in an old paint shop that used to sit where the City Hall complex is today—Satterfield Woodworking, Inc. today has a workforce of 50 and has recently moved into a new state-of-the-art complex on Poplar Drive. Known throughout the southeast for their quality cabinetry, dependable staff, and getting the job done on time and on budget, Satterfield continues to flourish under the direction of Alvin’s son Wayne. “My father,” Wayne says, “graduated from high school and went into the Army Corps of Engineers, where he was actually injured and got out early. After that, he went to work for another cabinet GreerNow JULY/AUGUST 2009
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BUSI NESS
shop in the Greenville area for about a year, and then he thought, ‘I can do what this guy is doing.’ So he carried an employee from the other shop with him and started Satterfield Woodworking. That employee, incidentally, stayed with my father for over 30 years.” As Alvin’s small business grew, in 1972 a new 48,000 square foot facility on Hwy 101 was built to house Satterfield Woodworking. “That’s where I got my start as a teen,” Wayne recalls, “working in that building.” Wayne, one of six children, was the only one to follow his father into the business. “During high school, if I wasn’t involved in sports, I was working here. It was an opportunity to learn some stuff, and I learned it from a lot of different employees here. I like working with my hands—working on cars and on machinery—and I have been doing it ever since. At one point in time when I was young, I wanted to be an architectural engineer. I started Greenville Tech to be an architectural engineer, but some personal issues came up and I never finished.” At Satterfield Woodworking, Wayne worked his way to the top, taking on responsibility at an early age to become sole owner in 1995. He admits he was fortunate, though, to have had righthand man Gene Fowler, who has worked for the company for eighteen years. The two friends laugh as they recall their first job together when they were just in their twenties. “One of the first jobs that Wayne and I worked on was for Fluor Daniel,” Gene remembers. “I was the project manager,” Wayne says, “and the first day he worked on the job with me, I don’t know what he did but . . .” “. . . we were cleaning up,” Gene says, “and I reached down to unhook the air compressor hose, I pulled the coupling with my foot …” “. . . and,” Wayne continues, “the hose went WHOOPLASH and hit a 4 foot by 9 foot glass office storefront and it went into about a million pieces!” “And I thought, well, I was really enjoying this job,” Gene laughs. Gene wasn’t fired, though he did leave the company for a few years only to return to work with Wayne. Today the two work closely together and even partnered up to purchase the land and build the existing building that shelters Satterfield Woodworking. “We are like brothers,” Wayne says. “I look to him for advice on a lot of issues. In some ways we are opposites, which makes for a good combination for the business side of it. I had to be more involved in the accounting and business side, the direction side of the business. Gene does the estimating and some project management. We support each other.” Satterfield Woodworking got its start as a residential cabinet shop, and during the housing boom of the 60s and 70s, was involved in multi-housing (apartment complexes) from Florida to Virginia. In the late 70s, some of their contractors got involved in commercial-level work, and Satterfield was pulled into that side
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of the business with them. At the same time, smaller cabinet shops started cropping up in the area, some started by prior employees who had learned their trade at Satterfield, and they picked up the residential work as Satterfield continued to lean toward the commercial side. In the 80s as recession hit, Satterfield, who once employed during their peak over 80 employees, got down to 16. “We didn’t strive at that time, we struggled,” Wayne says. “And we struggled for about 5 years.” “That’s when the whole company went through a change,” Gene says. “A lot of people left, management changed, everything changed.” But bounce back they did. “We were in the right place at the right time as far as the growth in Greenville and Greer is concerned,” admits Gene. “Even Spartanburg has grown a lot in the past 15 years. Another thing is that Alvin has built up the name in the southeast and when someone said “Satterfield Woodworking” you knew who they were talking about. When the building boom started back up, there were so many people who were only two to three years into it, who did not have the background like we did. And when you get into this big construction you have to have some money behind you; you’ve got to have some backbone to you as far as financial goes and we were fortunate enough that we had a little bit of money and we could get involved with the jobs.” Today there is not a cabinet shop within miles that has the capacity to turn out the volume of work that Satterfield does. For large jobs, Satterfield Woodworking is usually at the top of the contractor’s list as evidenced by their work on the Bi-Lo Center, the Peace Center, Furman University, Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium, and the new Greer City Hall and Municipal Court Building to name just a few. But—big job or small—Satterfield can do it all. “We do projects anywhere from 250 dollars to 1.4 million,” Gene says. “We can do the wood, we can do the laminate, we can do the solid surface, we can do the whole deal.” There is even a special solid surfacing division for residential customers and, within their new location, a showroom where designers, architects, and contractors can look at samples. “I honestly believe, and my mom and dad taught me this, if you work hard and you’re fair and honest with people, then you are going to get your fair share of what’s going on,” Gene says. “That’s one of the things that I feel has helped us in our success.” “Also,” Wayne says, “we’ve known the cabinet guys in our shop for 15, 20 years. We’ve worked side by side with some of them. When you do well as a company, you share that with them. We try to show our employees that we really appreciate them. They take care of us, they make us successful, and we try to make sure they and their families are taken care of. It’s a team effort from the bottom to the top.” For more information on Satterfield Woodworking, please visit their website at www.satterfieldww.com. GreerNow JULY/AUGUST 2009
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