F&S Carton Co. credits its work force for its success.

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Custom folding carton manufacturer F&S Carton Co. has much to boast about: 50 years of business, three generations of ownership and attentive service. Yet, the company’s greatest bragging point might be its loyal work force, with an average employee tenure of more than 16 years. Each one of those employees holds great value to the company, President John Scranton explains, because they are fluent in most of its operations.

“I think that’s the key to our success,” Scranton notes. “All our supervisors that have started at the bottom and worked up to supervisor can run every piece of equipment here.”

Plus, “they’re able to talk and work intelligently with everyone, which is key,” he adds. “It’s important to have supervisors that are truly informed and understand what they’re doing.”

That combined experience enables F&S to “find a way to do what our customers need,” Scranton says. “Whether it’s structural design graphics or quick turnarounds, we’ll find a way to make that happen. When it comes to service and quality, we’re second-to-none.

“We believe pretty strongly in family – we have a lot of husbands and wives, sons, daughters, sisters and brothers here – everybody is well aware that this is our life blood,” he adds. “We all work very hard as a team and are pretty family oriented.”

Staying Current
F&S Carton produces stock boxes, windowed cartons, “Litho-Lam” and handles die cutting and finishing. The company recently installed a signature folder gluer – a half-million-dollar investment – to diversify its production capabilities. “This will open new opportunities for us,” Scranton acknowledges. “It allows us to run the existing business more efficiently.”

Because the company’s current equipment is older, Scranton says, F&S needed to step it up and produce newer styles of cartons. “It really fits nicely for a custom manufacturer,” he says. “We need to keep thinking out-of-the-box – no pun intended.”

Surviving the Downturn
“With the downturn in market commodities across the board, it had an impact,” Scranton says. “Our margins are tighter than they ever were before so our costs have gone up.”

Fortunately, the company’s strong customer relationships are carrying it through. “With our customers, we really strive to keep them involved from design to shipment,” he says. “Throughout the manufacturing process, we give [customers] a heads up on the schedule and we talk to our customers frequently.”

This begins with the company’s sales force. “We actually do more than most,” Scranton explains. “In the application processes, whether somebody brings in sketches or not, we assign guys to find out what [the customer’s] product is and what carton will fit best.”

F&S also has a wide customer base that “helps us weather the downturns of economy,” Scranton says. The company serves the medical, auto aftermarket and food and bakery sectors. No more than 25 percent of its sales are in any one market.

“We have a big base but our big base is in the entire market – we don’t put all our eggs in one basket,” he says.

Green Achievement
F&S operates out of a 100,000-square-foot facility in Grand Rapids, Mich., but only requires one dumpster pick-up a month, thanks to a heavy emphasis on recycling.

“We’ve been using a complete recycling program for more than 20 years,” Scranton says. “For example, in 2008 – just with paper, not with plastics – we saved 23,797 trees, [nearly 10 million] gallons of water, 4,600 cubic yards of landfill space and saved 110,500 gallons of oil, just with our paper recycling alone.”

The company encourages recycling by keeping recycling barrels adjacent to trash barrels, and is careful to separate all recycled items.

F&S’s Future
Scranton says the company’s goal is “nice, steady, stable growth. We’re not out there actively pursuing those big accounts,” he continues. “Our goal is to increase sales by 10 to 15 percent per year, within the next five years and every day we work toward that goal.”