Murat Dogan and Karl Schenk at IWF
Murat Dogan, president of IMA Canada Corp. and Karl Schenk, president of Schenk Architectural Imports Ltd. of Calgary, Alta. were pleased to announce a first for their companies at last months IWF 2012 in Atlanta. At a news conference, Dogan and Schenk announced the sale of IMA’s first laser edgebander in Canada to Schenk Architectural Imports Ltd. The new machine will be delivered in November and commercial production is set to start by Christmas.
“This is a first and I believe they (Schenk) are paving the way for a number of other suppliers and large-scale manufacturers in the Canadian market,” says Dogan.
Given the growing popularity of high gloss finishes, especially in kitchens, Dogan believes more high-volume kitchen manufacturers and suppliers will take a serious look at laser edgebanding in the next three to five years.
“Laser edgebanding is the way to do these high-gloss finishes quickly and efficiently,” he says. For Schenk, the move was all about being able to offer their customers a high-quality product and taking control of the entire process - including manufacturing - made perfect sense. It will also allow for faster delivery times to their customers.
“I guess for us it all came down to taking control of the product line,” says Karl Schenk.
“We have not been completely satisfied with the products we could source in North America so we looked at Europe. We found they had better products because of laser edgebanding (no glue lines), which is still much more widespread there than it is in North America.
“We looked at the business case, it took us a couple of years, but then we decided to go ahead with it.” Schenk says he believes the company is now in a good position to really deliver a superior product to customers.
Marketed under the ‘Stijle’ name, Schenk feels small shops, renovators and even large manufacturers who may not have a need for their own laser edgebander, will take advantage of this new product range Schenk can now offer its customers.
“It’s all custom work and since we are taking manufacturing of the line in-house, we will be able to meet our customers’ needs and offer faster de- livery times,” says Schenk. He added that people have higher expectations now, they see know what can be done in high-gloss finishes and a glue line is just not acceptable anymore.
