From the Inside Out By Janet Clark
Phil Stephenson, owner of Atlas Kitchen and Bath, began working with wood when he was still a child.
"I owned a radial arm saw: I believe I got it when I was 10 years old," Stephenson said. "I sold all-occasion cards door-to-door and saved up enough money to buy a radial armed saw. I built my own dresser." There it started: his life-long fascination with wood.
"I just knew it was my thing," he said. "I didn't really know that it would be what I would do for a living, but I liked working with wood."
When Stephenson was in the eighth grade, he went to work for well-known craftsman Curly Rathermel, who owned Custom Builders Supply, now Custom Builders Cabinet Shop. He worked there through high school and later worked at Sears, where he sold cabinets. Then in 1978 Stephenson and his wife JoLynn opened Atlas Kitchen and Bath.
Originally called Atlas Home Improvement, Atlas's first location was on Fifth Avenue South. Later they relocated to Central Avenue in the old Ferguson Hardware Store on the square. Then in 1986 they bought the building where Atlas is now located, at 1903 First Ave. N. Situated about midway between downtown and the Crossroads Mall, the Stephensons say this is an ideal spot for their business.
Atlas Kitchen and Bath sells good quality cabinetry and countertops at reasonable prices, but there's more to the business than that.
"First and foremost we're a design center. I'm a certified kitchen designer," Stephenson said. He is one of only a few certified kitchen designers in the area, a credential Stephenson earned in 1982.
"CKDs (certified kitchen designers) make sure you understand all of your choices during the planning process," Stephenson explained in his brochure. "We know kitchens from the inside out: from the wiring, venting and plumbing hidden inside the walls, to all the technical and aesthetic alternatives you weigh as you look at cabinetry, appliances and surfacing materials."
Stephenson's understanding of kitchen design, as well as the whole crew's attention to detail has earned repeat business for Atlas, generally when the customer moves to a different home. Even if the home is out of town - way out of town.
"We've had people we've worked with who were moving out of town, and they brought all their information back and had us do their design work in their next home in Colorado or whatever," Stephenson said. They have designed kitchens in homes on the West Coast and as far east as Detroit.
Of course, most of their customers are in the region: Fort Dodge, Humboldt, Webster City, and the surrounding areas. And it's not just the well-to-do who can afford Atlas's services. Stephenson said the average kitchen remodel runs about six to seven thousand dollars, but they can go as low as three thousand or as high as ten to twelve thousand and up.
Some people think Atlas only carries high-end products, but that is not the case, Stephenson said. They have cabinets in most price ranges, often comparable or even more economical than the big home improvement chain stores, he said. He urges people who are thinking about remodeling to check out their locally owned small businesses. They might find the price is less than what they'd expected, and the service is excellent.
"We give the same attention to detail, no matter if it's a large job or a small job," said Gloria Spiegel, who has worked at Atlas for 16 years. Countertops
Atlas Kitchen and Bath offers countertops in a wide variety of colors, styles and prices, ranging from Formica to Zodiaq and Corian. Stephenson is a certified fabricator for Corian; only certified fabricators can buy and install Corian. The fabricator is responsible for any errors in the countertop installation; if he doesn't repair them to the customer's satisfaction, he can no longer purchase Corian.
"We've found it to be just one of the best products, both in terms of the quality of the material and the way the company backs it up," he said.
The Corian and Zodiaq countertops are non-porous, leaving no place for germs to hide and making for a more sanitary kitchen, Spiegel said. Both are solid surface countertops, which means they can be resurfaced by sanding them down.
"A person can do a remodel, live there for 10 years, and for the cost of an hour or two of labor and some sandpaper, you've got a brand new top when you go to sell the house," Stephenson said. Cabinetry
"Cabinetry is constantly changing and upgrading, moving ahead," Stephenson said. "Door styles change, (wood) species get popular, hinging and drawer mechanisms are constantly getting better and better." The most popular type of wood cabinets in the Midwest continues to be oak, although many people are buying cherry or maple, also. "Nationally, oak has dropped way off-while oak used to be in the 55-60 percentile of woods being built into cabinetry, it's dropped off to less than 15%, I think, with most manufacturers." Here in the Midwest, oak cabinets are still about 55-60% of the market, he said.
Other wood species that Atlas uses for cabinetry are lyptus, a commercially grown mahogany, and alder wood, a light-colored wood similar to knotty pine.
As Stephenson said, cabinetry keeps improving as new innovations are developed. Catalyzed varnish finishes are one example.
"Probably that's the best thing that's happened forever in cabinetry," he said. Finished wood used to get dark and gummy around the hardware because of the body oil in people's hands, but the catalyzed varnish finishes wear much better and can't be stripped off, although they can be sanded.
"You want to pick a color you like, because you're not going to change it. From a dealer's standpoint, it's one of the best things that's ever happened, because they've improved the drawers, the drawer boxes and the drawer guide systems, and the hinging systems to the point where there's virtually no problem anymore and the last thing was the finish," Stephenson said. "They've now got such a good finish on them, we can sell a product that can last a lifetime."
Atlas Kitchen and Bath sells cabinets made by Custom Cupboards of Wichita, Kansas, and by Wood-Mode of Pennsylvania. Wood-Mode has been around since 1942 and is recognized in the industry as one of, if not the, best cabinetry made in the United States, Stephenson said. Atlas has sold cabinetry from Custom Cupboards and Wood-Mode for about 15 years.
As mentioned before, cabinetry has improved tremendously over the years. Atlas's showroom carries samples of the latest in kitchen cabinetry: full extension drawers; cabinets with recycling containers; a cabinet with a sandwich center; and "soft touch" drawers that always shut quietly, even if slammed.
"You just can't make it noisy," Spiegel said.
Another trend in cabinetry is to build cabinets of varying heights, which adds interest and provides space at the top of some of the cabinets to display collectibles. Generally it's the corner cabinet which is taller than the others. The cabinets differ in depth, also.
Atlas carries samples of various types of cabinet doors, including glass. They carry lots of different colors of wood. And the styles range from ornate to prairie style. What they don't have in stock, they can order.
Stephenson can't say enough good things about Wood-Mode. With his life-long love for woodworking, he knows quality when he sees it.
"I always tell people, every company has one thing that they're most noted for, and Wood-Mode is most noted for their furniture grade quality," he said. Wood-Mode submitted their finish to the U.S. Fine Hardwoods Association, where they test for characteristics such as color retention, abrasion resistance and repairability. A "Super Finish" would score 600 or better, and Wood-Mode scored at 722.
"Nobody has a finish like Wood-Mode," Stephenson said. Length of time for kitchen remodeling job
The average kitchen remodel takes about ten days, Stephenson said.
"And it takes a lot of coordination to make that happen." The cabinet and countertop installers, the floor people, the appliance people, all need to work around each other's schedules. "We generally consider that to be one of our duties, is to find out who the other people are, so we can be in touch with them and try to make that coordination so the job goes as smoothly for our customer as possible," he said. Business Philosophy
While continual change is the norm in kitchen products, Atlas Kitchen and Bath itself hasn't changed much over the years. Stephenson's philosophy is, if it's not broke, don't fix it.
Another part of the business philosophy at Atlas is to treat each customer the same, whether they're coming in to choose a $15,000 kitchen remodel or just to pick up some hinges and hardware.
"We like to treat people the way we'd like to be treated ourselves," Stephenson said. "It's hard to go wrong when you do that."
From Fort Dodge Business Review, January 2005