The Environmentally Responsible Choice
Finding the unique - and profitable - powder coating angle
Troy Greenberg of RedLine Closets has been powder coating heat sensitive substrates like wood and MDF for many years. We sat down with Troy to learn more about how he came to be a powder supporter and the challenges and changes he has faced along the way.
Tell us about your products? What do you make and how are you different?
I guess what we really sell is the peace of mind that comes with organization and storage. We sell closers, closet components (which can be used not only in the closet but also in several other areas of the home. Redline Closet Systems is sold and installed through a network of dealers. They are not DIT, but DFY – Done For You!
Our products are completely custom. We don’t buy doors or drawers we produce them Just In Time like every other part. From a coatings perspective we offer 25 different finishes, and 11 of them are solid colors.
Which parts of your products are powder coated with IFS powder?
We powder coat the doors and trim.
How do you choose the colors to use?
Aside from white – which isn’t going anywhere - we look at colors that are trending. Arauco is the Melamine company we use and they really are fantastic. So then we have the solid colors matched for powder.
How long have you been coating heat sensitive substrates and how did you get into powder coating wood and MDF?
We were looking into what we want to make everything out of and I had only seen powder coating on wood maybe one time, up in Madison, WI. We had a lot of experience with liquid finishing, but for some reason I had held onto this one sample piece of powder coated wood because quite frankly I loved the finish. I decided that powder coating was what I wanted to do and originally the long-term plan was to send our parts out of house to be powder coated. That’s how we started, but there were issues, especially with color variability which in turn caused inventory and matching problems.
It was 2007 and the Closet show that year was in Chicago – just an hour away from our plant - so we decided to exhibit. At that time there weren’t a lot of people showcasing garage closets, and we were probably the only company powder coating, and we were SO busy!
At that show, I met Mike Chapman, who at the time was selling powder coating systems equipment. He suggested I should be powder coating my own products. To be honest I hadn’t considered it, but we knew we had issues with the external coaters and we wanted to move to Just-In-Time management. We thought doing the coating ourselves would help. I met with Mike and I had a long list of “must haves” – including the ability to run JIT, switch colors easily, batch doors together so there are no color matching issues and many more. The other person who was extremely helpful and knowledgeable was Jeno Muthiah – an expert. At this stage, powder on MDF was in its infancy – the powder wasn’t as good as it is now with the IFS PureClad product. With Mike, who is now running WolfRayet, I learned how to properly powder coat and I knew almost immediately that this was the right thing to do. Mike was so supportive, and continues to bring his expertise in application technology and curing to my business, and he’s now a genuine friend. Fast forward a few years and Mike introduced me to IFS and very quickly the IFS team came up with some incredible powders that we use today.
Why do you continue to powder coat over other available finishes?
We have been using powder for a long time now and have seen the advances that have been made. We use it for it’s technical performance – scratch resistance, fingerprint resistance, color retention over time, the fact it doesn’t yellow, along with the choice of colors and effects and of course the sustainability advantages. There are advantages for the planet – no solvents so negligible VOCs, less energy, the ability to reclaim etc., but also advantages for me and my team in terms of working in a much safer, more pleasant smelling environment, using less product, production efficiencies and unseen but very real advantages in terms of ease of getting new operators up to speed, and much reduced permitting.
You’ve been doing this a long time, tell us how your coating needs have evolved over the years, you must have made some process or design changes as you went along?
We used to sell a lot of Vinyl doors. Another company would make them, ship them to us to drill holes for the hinges etc.. Many companies that sell wholesale like we do only produce one part of the system – for example, they might produce the melamine parts but if you need drawers you have to buy them from somewhere else. What we have done is what we call “Job in a box” – everything that is necessary for that job is in the box. We provide all the hardware, closet rods, doors etc.
Pre-Covid, we used to buy out a lot of vinyl doors, but Covid made us realize having more control over our processes is super important due to issues with lead times etc. so we no longer buy any vinyl. Instead, we make all of our Shaker doors available in all of our colors, and we powder coat them. A powder coated door is far superior to a vinyl wrapped door in terms of aesthetics, performance and sustainability. It’s also really separated us from the rest of the competition. We have really fine texture and matte finishes that match the melamine really well. One other huge thing we’ve noticed since switching to your powder is that now our doors don’t fingerprint at all. That’s maybe not as noticeable on white doors, simply because you don’t notice fingerprinting as much on white, but with the blues, greens and other trend colors we don’t see any fingerprinting when you touch or handle it! Some companies actually send their melamine to Europe to have a special coating put on it to stop it from fingerprinting – and it costs twice as much. We don’t have to do that.
How important is sustainability in your product and company choice?
Are you making any changes to be more sustainable? We were given this planet to live on and being responsible for what we have been given is very important to us. We try to source sustainable materials wherever we can, for example the wood we are using for both MDF and Melamine is sustainably farmed and responsibly grown, and we love the fact that there are no solvents with powder. Our team really appreciate that also. I mentioned we did a lot of finishing over the years and to be honest, I’m OK if I never smell lacquer thinner ever again!