Bitter cold and a wet, whipping wind greeted me as I crossed the parking lot of Euroview, a closet company and more, my first stop on a whirlwind multi-day tour of closet factories and showrooms across two states. The tour would take me into industrial parks, through Amish country, a suburban mall, and a big city industrial site.

The excursion was organized by Amish Country Woodworx (ACW), an Elkhart, Indiana-based, national provider of dovetail drawers. While the company was not a financial sponsor of the tour, Jim Troyer, owner and founder of ACW, had graciously set up the visits, which included three of his customers. 

ACW offers custom dovetail drawer boxes built in 1/16 inch increments, as well as specialty wood-based components. Many options are available, including wood species, engraved logos, front scoops, and chase drawers.
The company has two series for easy online ordering. The Express Series is made from UV-finished white poplar in standard heights, with custom widths and depths available, and has a 5-day production lead time. The Custom Select line is hand sanded and finished using raw wood stock, comes in custom heights, widths and depths, and has a 10-day normal production lead time.

First stop
Euroview was my first stop on the tour. The facility is located in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, a large suburb outside of Chicago and adjacent to O’Hare International Airport. The company has traditionally been well-known for its glass, shower doors, window treatments, and interior and exterior doors, but in the last decade has integrated closets and organizational solutions to its product mix.

From a large master closet to a small reach-in closet, Euroview can customize the closet to meet its customer’s specific needs. The customer can select from a wide range of options including hanging, double hang, shelves, drawers, hampers, tie racks, belt racks, and more. Outside of the bedroom, the company can provide organized solutions for living areas, home offices, mudrooms, laundry areas, and garages. 

Adam Paskewic, the operations manager at Euroview, said the company strives for a high-end look, which is why they purchase the dovetail drawers from ACW.

“We’re able to do things like offer Amish’s boxes, which is not common in the closet industry where most people are doing PVC boxes or even melamine boxes,” said Paskewic. “Being a small family-owned company, we’re able to offer a higher-end product and still keep our prices lower than the competitors.”

Euroview was already using products from ACW when Paskewic came to the company. “I personally looked into other options because coming from a larger company it was always ‘get the cost down, get the cost down,’ but I saw on a regular basis those penny pinching measures turning into high dollar service calls. 

“In an industry where it is common to have a lifetime warranty on the installation of the product, I’ve been here now a little over four years and have yet to have a major problem with our drawer systems —  and that is probably more than half of the service calls I would see when I was out with another company,” he related.

“When you’re doing these $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 closets and customers are putting 30 or 40 drawers into a master closet with an island and other accessories, it’s really important to not to have to go back and fix things,” Paskewic continued. 
“In my previous job, it was not uncommon to go back to customers three or four times over the first two years working on their drawers. Now, that is not an issue.”

Amish country
Day 2 of the tour found me in Amish country, Elkhart County, Indiana. 

Our next stop was at Closet Craft where Troyer and I met Rolando Ortiz, owner and lead designer of the well-known company that produces high-end closets for customers around the country who want “stunning designer closets customized to every sense of style, space and wardrobe,” as one reviewer described it. 

Located in the historic Goshen Churn and Ladder building in Goshen, Closet Craft manufactures closets “piece by piece.” The company utilizes a Homag panel saw to cut sheet goods, which are then sent to a SCM Cyflex F900 machining center to bore holes in vertical panels, and a Brandt edgebander for parts with exposed edges. Ortiz and his team use Cabinet Vision software from Hexagon for the design and production. “We cut everything by hand here and everything’s optimized with a software program,” he said. “All the engineering’s pre-done. I try to have all the machining, everything done here” versus at the job site.

So, if they can produce so many parts with their equipment, and the plan is to further upgrade the technology in the near future, why do they buy their drawer boxes?

Ortiz explained that he is a big supporter of local companies with good representation. “A ‘sales rep is a sales rep,’ but he (Troyer) does not just sell me, he takes care of me. That is what the value is. I’m not buying the drawer. I buy him first, because there’s instances where we need things, we need help, and they’ve always been more than accommodating with that.” 

Day three
The weather had not abated by day three as cold winds roared and an intermittent rain spat down. In contrast to the gray skies, my first stop was the delightful and vibrant showroom of Meridian Closets in Fishers, Indiana. 

The Northside Showroom, said Lauren Schwartz, president of the Indianapolis-based company, is a large showcase space set in the Hub & Spoke building, a 94,000-square-foot master-planned mixed-use development and partnership that is home to a design lab and a variety of design-centric businesses. In addition to the showroom, the company also operates a southside facility with a showroom and manufacturing facility it shares with its sister company, the Bedder Way Murphy Bed Company.

The showroom features vignettes showcasing its closets and organized solutions, along with the high-end Murphy beds, side cabinets and other organized solutions that are created.

“In terms of our closet systems we can kind of do a wide range of things,” said Schwartz pointing out a fancy closet that includes dovetail drawer boxes from ACW, which she said is a high-end feature and a draw for customers who come looking for “all the bells and whistles.”

Another of Meridian’s most popular items is what she calls a corner shoe spinner. “It rotates and has 360 degrees of storage,” Schwartz said, pointing out the showroom sample. “This one has drawers and adjustable shelves. Shoe lovers really love this piece. It is fun to of incorporate something unique in a closet and give custom storage solutions that the customer may not find anywhere else.”