Sealed with a 'Kiss'

By Helen Kuhl

	Kiss Cabinet Inc. Las Vegas, NV Year Founded: 1972 Employees: 20 Shop Size: 17,600 square feet FYI: Kiss’ new 3,500-square-foot showroom will feature upwards of $500,000 worth of cabinets, appliances, tile, stone, lighting and other kitchen-related products. • Today’s residential projects in the booming Las Vegas area can involve as much as $370,000 worth of high-end cabinetry.

For most people, Las Vegas, NV, is a tiny spot of glitz and make-believe in the middle of a desert, which people visit for short spurts of fun. But for long-time locals such as Steve Kiss, who has lived there for 30 years, it has been a constantly growing area with a steady demand for high-end cabinets that doesn’t seem to quit. And Kiss’ business has grown right along with it.

“What’s happening in Vegas amazes me, and I have been here forever,” Kiss says. “This was a ‘one-horse town’ when I first came here, just a little over 200,000 people. Now we’ve got 1.2 million. In those days, a 5,000-square-foot house was big. Now we’ve got 18,000 to 20,000 square-footers.”

Kiss came to the United States as a boy with his family, which fled Hungary during the 1956 revolution. His father was a master furnituremaker, and Kiss grew up learning woodworking from him. “It was not something I had to learn, it was just osmosis,” he says. While Kiss started out studying architecture in Los Angeles, he moved to Las Vegas with his bride, Sophia, to help his dad, who was living there at the time. His dad left, but the Kisses stayed.

With Sophia’s help, Kiss started Kiss Cabinets in a 2,500-square-foot shop, drumming up business during the day and building cabinets at night, literally sleeping on his tablesaw occasionally to get everything done. Gradually he hired employees and expanded into a 7,500-square-foot space.

This year, he realized his dream of designing and building his own facility, combining his architecture background and marketing ideas for a grand showroom into a 17,600-square-foot shop and design center. With the two-story showroom still in progress, it ultimately will cover 3,500 square feet itself and include 15 kitchen displays, a library, a Victorian-style pub and several home office vignettes. For future expansion, Kiss also purchased the same-size lot next door.

	This expansive kitchen includes three islands and lots of open shelving areas and glass doors. It is white oak with a brown and white glaze. At back, two 36-inch Sub Zero refrigerators are housed in an enclosure with overlay panels.

“This building is my dream,” he says. “Sophia and I designed this completely ourselves. Our plans were meticulous, and you can see that it’s not just a big old box. It worked out well.”

Networking for success
Kiss’ new building represents not only the culmination of a dream in terms of the physical space it provides, but also as an opportunity to fully establish a business networking strategy that he has envisioned for years.

“The showroom is going to be awesome because of a networking system with seven or eight other suppliers which I have been working on for many years,” he says. “In the past, other tradespeople in town tried referring customers back and forth and paying a percentage of the job for it. But that never works. I’ve got a network now with some suppliers: Walker-Zanger for stone and tile, Econ for appliances, Southwest Stone and Tile for countertops, and we even refer architects and contractors to our customers. All we ask is for them to send us their customers in return. It’s a one-stop shop for the contractor and the homeowner. With the new showroom, the suppliers will have their products on display as well as a conference room where they can have all their samples to work with.”

Each vendor is providing his own labor, time and materials for his part of the displays. Kiss says each will have a flyer about his company with a map showing his location, so customers can be referred there easily. Vendors also can use the conference room for their client meetings. The arrangement should benefit everyone involved.

“I know which suppliers are good, and it’s my reputation on the line if I recommend somebody who is a flake,” Kiss adds. “That’s why I stick to the people who I know are respectable and don’t gouge customers. I have a pretty good relationship with all of them.”

A reputation built on quality
Kiss’ own success has been built on his reputation for quality work and word-of-mouth referrals. He started his business by “hitting the pavement” and doing good work. “You take care of people and they take care of you,” he says.

One way he impresses customers is by including most accessories as “standard equipment” in his cabinets. He automatically equips kitchens with items such as sink caddies, pull-out towel bars, swing-out trash cans, spice racks and silverware trays, manufactured by Rev-A-Shelf and purchased mostly from Louis & Co. and Hafele.

“All my base cabinets have roll-outs, drawers. I never put in shelves,” Kiss says. “On the women’s bath vanity, I put in a double drawer with a single face; if you pull it out, there’s a little drawer inside for makeup. Underneath her sink I put a blow dryer holder. Underneath the man’s sink, I put a trash can. That’s all included in every cabinet that I do.

This Tuscan-style kitchen was done for the 2000 “Street of Dreams” home in Las Vegas. The cabinets are maple with a glazed finish.

“Other shops ‘nickel-and-dime’ customers to death,” he adds. “We don’t do business that way because we think that turns the customer off. These items don’t cost that much. I’d rather absorb it and give the client what he needs right off the bat. So I put in the extras, and then customers show it off to their friends. That produces word-of-mouth and that’s how I get most of my business.”

Kiss’ cabinets are “loaded” not only on the inside, but also many are full of what he calls “frou-frou” on the outside — he uses a great deal of ornamentation and mouldings purchased from Raymond Enkeboll & Co. and Superior Mouldings to create popular “Old World” styles. His showroom includes an expansive “Tuscan” kitchen with elaborate decorations and Viking appliances. However, there also are a couple of contemporary-style vignettes with aluminum doors or high-gloss thermofoil doors for the “techie-type” homeowner, which is a smaller part of the customer base.

The showroom also will include several home offices, because Kiss says that is a growing market for him. “We used to do one home office per house,” he says. “But then the wife started saying, ‘I want an office, too.’ Then came the kids. We do as many as three or four home offices on one house now. And I can do as much in a home office as a kitchen. You can add another 30 percent to your sales, easily.”

More space for a pared-down shop
Contrary to the norm, when Kiss moved into his larger shop facility, he pared down his equipment because he began to outsource the bulk of his components. As a result, he says his productivity increased dramatically.

“I used to make my own doors and other components. I couldn’t get ahead and I couldn’t figure out why,” Kiss says. “Then I just decided to sell all of my door and drawer-making equipment and buy all of it outright. Suddenly, I doubled or tripled my production. Outsourcing really increased my business.”

In addition to the decorative items purchased from Enkeboll, Kiss buys the bulk of his doors from Decore-ative Specialties (thermofoil doors are supplied by Brentwood Inc.). He purchases door panels and uses them as cabinet ends. For one of his contemporary cabinet displays, he is using the Alustyle aluminum door system from Grass America, which already is being received with enthusiasm from customers.

The white epoxy Metabox from Julius Blum is Kiss’ “standard” drawer; on the higher end it uses a dovetail drawer with a Blum Tandem slide. Kiss buys the dovetailed drawers from Oasis Kitchens, a local shop. The shop uses Grass hinges exclusively.

Because of this outsourcing, Kiss sold his shapers, planers, jointers and widebelt sander before moving into the new building. Shop equipment now includes a Striebig Optisaw vertical panel saw, SCMI Basic 2 edgebander and a Ritter 46-hole boring machine, which does the holes for hardware and adjustable shelves.

Virtually all cabinets are frameless, although Kiss doesn’t use a true 32mm construction. “It’s a Euro-style box, but I don’t do doweling. I do part 32mm system and part dadoing. We dado the two sides, the top and bottom,” he says. “When you do a dado, you can put more glue in there and you can nail it together. It holds better, in my opinion.”

While the box work is straightforward, there is a lot of hand work done in assembly, which encompasses the addition of the decorative ornamentation.

The company buys its wood doors unfinished and does all its own finishes, except for faux looks. The new building has an open spray booth with a 28-foot face, equipped with HVLP airless spray guns from Wagner. Kiss Cabinets does a lot of glazed and fly-specked finishes and custom colors, mixing its own stains. It uses Sherwin-Williams products.

The company makes finish samples for the customer and, once a color is selected, Kiss “insures” himself against later problems by taking a door sample, having the customer sign it on the back and cutting it in half. “The customer gets half and the finisher gets half. It’s insurance in case they say, ‘That’s not the color I wanted,’” Kiss says. “It’s all signed, sealed and delivered.” He says that procedure has worked well for him and has reduced a lot of headaches.

	Kiss Cabinets does a lot of home theater/entertainment center cabinetry for its customers. This maple unit includes an open area at the left for base speakers. Other speakers are housed in the ceiling.

Shop air is kept clean with a Murphy-Rodgers dust collector. In addition, each dust-producing machine is equipped with an Eco-Gate system, which opens and closes the dust collection connections automatically when machines are turned on and off. Kiss says he purchased the Eco-Gate system after seeing it at last year’s Anaheim Fair and he has been very pleased with it.

The company does all its own installation and to reduce on-site damages, it makes a first delivery of the cabinets without doors and drawers. Everything else is installed so that the electricians, plumbers, tile installers and other tradespeople can complete their jobs. “Then when everybody else is out of there, I’ll bring my doors and drawer fronts in,” Kiss says. “They come right off the paint rack to the house and there is no damage. You walk away and you have a beautiful job.”

Kiss says that this method has two advantages: it keeps the cabinets protected, and he doesn’t order the doors until he receives his 40 percent payment. (He receives a 50 percent down payment, 40 percent upon first delivery and 10 percent when the job is complete.) “If I don’t get my 40 percent, the doors don’t get ordered and I’m covered,” he says. “I have been doing this for at least 25 years and to me it makes common sense all the way around.”

Twenty ‘kids’ in the shop
Kiss currently has 20 employees, which he says he considers as family. Several have been with the company as long as 15 years.

“They are not my employees, they are my boys,” he says. “They grew up with me. I start all of them sweeping the floors; I don’t hire experienced people. I take people and start them from the bottom and we train each one of them. Then we bring them up. I want them to be proud of who they are and where they are from, to have pride in their work. I never have to worry about their work ethic; they are very conscientious.”

Kiss and his wife also have two sons, Sean 18 and Steven Jr. 23, who have been raised in the shop in the same manner. Kiss is hopeful that the company will stay as a family business under their direction one day.

His day-to-day duties are focused mainly on design, sales and “overseeing everything.” He also lays out each job. For the past five years he has used Cabnetware. Dean Zika heads up sales and design with three designers and sales people using the software, and there are plans to train some additional employees from the shop. Zika has been with Kiss Cabinets for six years and has been instrumental in the company’s growth, Kiss says. Sophia Kiss takes care of all the payroll, accounting, ordering and other office work.

Annual sales were $1.75 million in 2001 and Kiss expects this year’s sales to reach $2 to $2.5 million. The company recently started handling Wellborn cabinets and Wood Harbor cabinets and interior doors. With that expansion and additional business generated by the new showroom, Kiss foresees growth to $5 million within a five-year period.

“We started taking on a couple of lines because we got to the point where we can’t manufacture all that we sell,” Kiss says. A Wood Harbor interior door order on a typical job can be a $40,000 sale, he adds.

In addition to using the showroom as a networking vehicle with other vendors, Kiss has several marketing ideas to generate business. He hopes to make one of the kitchens fully functional and hold periodic cooking demonstrations to attract customers and “create a buzz.”

He also plans to hold a grand opening for designers when the showroom is finished. His goal is to have everything complete so that he can celebrate next New Year’s Eve in the second floor showroom “pub” area, enjoying the view from a window that faces Las Vegas’ casino strip in the distance.

As he reflects on the business he has built in the past 30 years, he says, “Papa would be proud.

“I love what I do. It’s me,” he adds. “I’ve done this all my life and I wouldn’t know what else to do. I used to do all the installations myself, and when you stand back after you have installed and think, ‘I did this,’ wow, it makes you feel good.”