100 years and counting: Zelazoski Wood Products ready for the future

One hundred years is a long time.

But if you ask Co-owner Ben Zelazoski, he’ll tell you he hopes Zelazoski Wood Products – the family owned specialty wood manufacturer located at 839 9th Ave. in Antigo, WI – will be around for 100 more.

Though Ben, 74, said turning 100 as a company is a great honor and there has been a lot of company history, running a business for that long has also been challenging.

“We refer to ourselves as a custom job shop,” he said. “There has been a lot of good but also some down times – it’s been quite a ride.”

Ben said he attributes being around for 100 years to his father.

“His foresight was to be better, not bigger,” he said. “So many people try to be big right away, and it’s all about growth. Though we certainly won’t turn down any growth, we’ve seen a big change in our product line over the years.”

Beginning operations in 1924

Ben said his grandfather, Thomas, worked for an Antigo company that built houses named Mattef more than 100 years ago.

Tragedy at that business, Ben said, led to the beginnings of Zelazoski Wood Products.

“My grandpa built door frames, cabinets and stuff like that,” he said. “One night, Mattef had a fire, and it burned down. The company he worked for figured the building boom in Antigo was just about over with, so they decided not to rebuild.”

That’s when Ben said his grandpa took advantage of the situation.

“My grandpa had a wife, two kids and a mortgage he had to worry about,” he said. “He pretty much started up his own company doing the same thing he was doing for Mattef. Then he got into making potato crates because there were a lot of potatoes being grown here.”

Ben said after that, his grandpa continued to branch out.

“There was a guy who wanted to know if we could make a handle for a curved wire scratch brush, so that’s when we got into the brush industry,” he said. “In the 1930s, we made crutches, and Grandpa sold those out of the backseat of his 1932 Oldsmobile – or whatever it was – during World War II.”

In the 1950s, Ben said Zelazoski started making cutlery for the West Bend Company.

“The cutlery was a gift traveling salesmen would give while going around selling their pots,” he said. “If they made a sale, then they had this cutlery they would give for a prize. One of their salesmen was from Antigo, and he came to us and wanted to know if we could design a rack where people could store these knives. We made those for quite some time.”

In the 1960s, Ben said Zelazoski began making parts for folding chairs.

“That was one of our busiest times,” he said. “People weren’t up scraping the paint off their house or sweeping their floors, they were sitting (in chairs) sucking down a Pabst or a Miller and enjoying the fruits of their labors – that worked out pretty well.”

Suick Lure Manufacturing in Antigo was next to reach out to Zelazoski, Ben said.

“We are still in the business of making fishing lures,” he said. “Several years ago, we were also approached by a company that was getting into the baseball bat business. They wanted to know if we could turn the bats for them, and then they found out we could finish and imprint them and everything else. We were basically making the bats here and shipping them to whoever.”

Ben said making bats eventually went by the wayside.

Over the years, Zelazoski Wood Products has made anything from cutlery racks to fishing lures and baseball bats.

“The cost of doing business with Major League Baseball was extreme,” he said. “The bat company couldn’t sell enough bats to make a good cash flow.”

In 1958, Ben said his father, Clarence, and Uncle Bernard took over the business from Thomas.

And then in 1986, Ben said he and his brothers – Jim, Mike and Charlie – and cousins Tom and Joe became owners of the company.

“Charlie and I remain active,” he said. “The others have since passed away.”

Over the years, Ben said Zelazoski has made hundreds of different parts.

“It’s kind of nuts,” he said. “We have several walls upstairs that have our samples on because it’s easier to look at a 3D item than picking up a blueprint and trying to read it. Quite frankly, all of the parts we make aren’t even up on the walls.”

Ben said Zelazoski is now making an animal grooming tool and still makes a good number of brush and broom blocks.

“We’re still a variety manufacturer,” he said. “We’ll make all sorts of things. We don’t really have a product that’s saleable directly to the public, but Fleet Farm and some other hardware stores used to sell brushes we made blocks for. Now, so much of that stuff is coming from overseas, so we don’t get much into that high volume, low markup stuff anymore.”

A young start

Like many family owned businesses, Ben said he got started young, helping out his father and uncle.

He said when he was about 10, he began earning money for rides at the fair.

“I would nail potato crates together for 10 cents apiece,” he said. “Rides were only 25 cents, so it wasn’t bad. I started part-time legally when I was 14. Back then, you could work for your parents in a manufacturing atmosphere as long as you weren’t around machinery.”

Eventually, Ben said he went off to college.

“I went off to school because my dad thought that we needed to be something other than in a woodworking business,” he said. “He wanted us to get a job that would actually pay something.”

Ben said he first wanted to be a data processor.

“That was in 1968 when data processing was basically sorting punch cards,” he said. “I decided I didn’t like that, so I switched to accounting. I didn’t find a job in accounting I really liked, so I figured I’d just go work for Dad until something better came along – that was more than 50 years ago.”

A need for the future

Ben said currently, Zelazoski has 18 employees.

He said getting employees into the trades is becoming increasingly difficult.

“That’s one of the reasons the wood technologies class was started at Northcentral Technical College years ago,” he said. “We’ve hired two people from that. People don’t have much of a problem (right now) trying to find a job, so the enrollment isn’t as high as we would like it, but it’s doing okay. We’ve turned out a lot of good graduates who have gone into either sales, manufacturing or repairs – it’s been a really good program.”

Ben said the program “is very much needed” because, soon, many of Zelazoski’s long-time employees will begin to retire and will need to be replaced.

“The thing is, we’ve done such a good job of retaining our employees that we’ve got some who have been here 40 or 50 years,” he said. “They’re about ready to retire, so we will have all that knowledge going out the door. We’ve got to bring some people in to take their place.”

Being in his mid-70s, Ben said he’s thought about his future at Zelazoski as well.

“I’m already coming in for less time, but I remember my dad – who passed away at 89 – getting the mail for us in the morning,” he said. “Then he’d come here and shoot the breeze with us for a while and then go home and do whatever he wanted with Mom. He enjoyed coming to the plant and saying ‘hi’ to the guys and gals.”

Ben said that’s what he envisions for himself.

“It’s been part of my life for so long, so it’s kind of hard to just drop it and say, ‘I’m not coming in anymore,’” he said. “In the position I’m in, if I don’t want to come in, then I don’t have to. The plan is for my nephews, Brett and Andy, to take over and lead Zelazoski into the future.”

For more information on Zelazoski Wood Products, visit zwpi.com.

Source/Author: Rich Palzewic, The Business News