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Do IT this week: Layering
Barberton firm makes linens, window treatments
By Paula Schleis
Beacon Journal business writer
Published on Saturday, Jan 24, 2009
Women sit in front of sewing machines, pleating drapes and hemming bed linens. In another room, two men cut extruded aluminum into lengths for curtain rods and attach necessary hardware.
A scene from Mexico or China?
Try Merlin Manufacturing in Barberton, a supplier of window treatments and bedding to American hotels.
For 21 years, the company has adapted to keep up with a fickle industry while trying to stand out in a mature market where there is little room for innovation.
While most of its orders are outsourced, including overseas, Merlin added its own production line here when suppliers couldn't keep up with its growth.
And growth wasn't a choice.
Hotel consolidations and stricter franchise rules have resulted in corporations seeking only vendors who can meet their high-volume demands.
So a year and a half ago, owner Mike Ligas led his 45 employees into a 43,000-foot home that tripled their space and gave them a shot at courting those fabric-hungry clients.
Capital budgets might be shrinking in the current economy, Ligas said, ''but we only own 2 to 3 percent of the total market, so there's lots of room to grow.''
Looking for work
Ligas laughs out loud as he recalls the way his career was decided.
It was 1972, and he had just returned from serving in the Air National Guard when he found himself chatting with friends at Marshalls Department Store in downtown Barberton about his job search.
Ligas worked at Marshalls while in high school, and the woman who ran the drapery department overheard his conversation and interrupted him to announce: ''You're my new drapery installer.''
''Before I knew it, I was running that department, ordering hardware, measuring the jobs, helping with sales, managing the inventory and installing,'' Ligas said.
Eventually, Ligas set his mind to owning his own company, and he applied for a sales job at Fabri-Centers of America (now Jo-Ann Stores) so he could learn as much as possible about a future competitor.
When his commission job earned him as much as the company's top executive, the company sought to ''promote'' him into a lower-paying managerial position. So Ligas made his move.
He named his company Merlin, bringing to mind the legendary wizard as a play on Barberton's reputation as ''the Magic City.''
But Merlin Manufacturing didn't launch in Barberton. When two Fabri-Center customers — Bob Evans restaurants and Cross Country Inns — decided to give Ligas' new company all of their business, he opened his office in Columbus to be near their headquarters.
For more than three years, Ligas commuted to Columbus for the workweek, sleeping in the bed of a display in his office. He kept his arrangements to himself, fearing his sales staff would think they worked for a fly-by-night operation.
In 1991, Ligas began the year with the Air National Guard in the Gulf War, and ended the year diagnosed with cancer.
Confident in his relationships with Bob Evans and Cross Country, he ordered Merlin Manufacturing moved to Barberton to be close to family and fulfill his original goal.
His brother, Ben, organized the move to Wooster Road while Ligas was hospitalized.
Merlin was on life support, as well. The company had existed for four years on the brink of bankruptcy, funded by Ligas' life savings and his children's college funds.
But the company held on, and overwhelming growth in the hotel industry in the 1990s helped make it a success.
Even though Merlin called itself a manufacturer (it purchased the fabric and installed the final product), the company outsourced all of the sewing until 2000.
''I tried to get all my reliable suppliers to increase their productive capacity but I couldn't talk them into it,'' Ligas said. ''It's very difficult to recruit people who want to sit in front of a sewing machine in the United States of America, and they said they had trouble replacing people who were leaving, let alone find more.''
So Merlin began to hire its own seamstresses, calling its new production division ''Perfect Drapery.''
Pizza-proof material
Ligas has witnessed many trends in the past two decades.
''When I started in this business, the objective was a quilted bedspread that you could drop a pizza on it and not have to clean the bedspread,'' he said.
Then in 1999, Westin debuted its pure white ''Heavenly Bed,'' and others followed suit.
''If you had told me in '88, or '98, that they were going to be putting pure white bedding on a hotel bed, I would say you're out of your mind,'' Ligas said.
Mattresses went from 21 inches to 27 inches thick. Hotels that had spent about $40 covering a bed in the late '80s were putting nearly $400 into seven-layer beds that had dust ruffles, duvets, bed scarves and bolsters.
Window treatments changed, too, from stiff ''blackout'' drapes whose first priority was to shield sleepers from blazing external security lights to soft layers of sheers, decorative panels and valances that could meet the same need.
''We didn't create the trend, but we're the beneficiary of it,'' said Ligas, whose company has been through multiple renovations of the same hotel.
The trend is changing yet again, with some hotels moving away from the high-maintenance white rooms, and Ligas points to a cart filled with gold quilts sporting a polar fleece lining and a white fleur-de-lis print, destined for Argosy Casinos.
Merlin also stays current on technological changes, and that's why it's able to maintain manufacturing in the U.S.
A sewing machine worth upwards of $100,000 combines four jobs in one, allowing a single seamstress to mark, tack and pleat drapes while sewing nylon hanging pins into place.
''When I started out, those were four different people doing four different jobs,'' Ligas said.
Some of Merlin's competitors have moved south of the border to take advantage of cheap labor, ''so we have to be super efficient to stay competitive,'' Ligas said.
When it comes to bedding, Merlin turns to a supplier in China when the purchase order has a long lead time or enough volume (say, 100,000 blankets) to fill a shipping container.
But other bedspreads are made in Barberton, where employees can quickly fill smaller orders.
It also makes sense for the drapes to be made here, Ligas said, because every hotel room window is measured, and each drape is custom fit. Fabric tags are sewn into each panel, sheer and valance marked with their final destination, down to the room number.
Ligas' brother, Frank, oversees the production floor, where packaging tags reveal orders destined for Wisconsin, Washington, D.C., Florida and Las Vegas.
Meanwhile, Merlin keeps looking for ways to technologically distance itself from competitors, including a unique transporting system that keeps fabrics wrinkle-free and eliminates the need for packaging that ends up in landfills.
The company also has a patent pending on a spring-loaded wand that keeps closed curtains from falling open, and on a vertically adjustable rod that could bring some standardization to drapery sizes.
''Draperies and bedspreads have been around forever, so you can't be that much better than everyone else,'' Ligas said. ''You can only be a little better here and a little better there, and you just constantly look for every little edge you can get.''
The need to grow
Ligas figures there are about 30 similar companies of his size in the United States.
But remaining this size isn't an option anymore, he said.
Hotel chains have been merging into larger monoliths that need bigger suppliers to feed their needs. They're implementing stricter franchising rules, and contractually binding franchisees to preferred vendor lists.
Getting on those lists is a daunting task, and many corporations will only allow suppliers to apply online so they can quickly dismiss anyone who doesn't meet their paper expectations.
And since Merlin had sold off its restaurant clients a couple of years ago, it was 100 percent invested in the hotel industry.
''Hilton or Marriott isn't going to do business with us in that little building we had,'' Ligas said, referring to the 10,000-square-foot building the company left in 2007. ''So it was grow or perish.''
Another challenge is selling product to a hard-hit industry that has been putting renovation plans on hold.
But there are areas of the country that are still doing well, Ligas said, and Merlin has had some success coaxing hotels in those markets to redo a handful of their shabbiest rooms by using money from healthy operating budgets.
''The other piece of the puzzle is stealing market share from competitors, and we're doing pretty good there,'' he said.
''The last two years were the best two years ever,'' Ligas said, with annual revenue of $10 million each. And if the company can match that in 2009, he said, ''we would consider it a great success.''
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com.
Women sit in front of sewing machines, pleating drapes and hemming bed linens. In another room, two men cut extruded aluminum into lengths for curtain rods and attach necessary hardware.
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