I own and
manufacture all the items you see on The Shelf Factory website. I started
this business in the early 80's before the time of the internet. I worked for Kuester's, a small chain
of Hardware Home centers in the Evansville Indiana area.
There was a demand for wood shelf brackets and I started making them for them to
sell in the stores. After a while, people wanted shelves to go along with
them so I started making shelves and I designed some display unit to put in the
stores and I titled the display, "Shelf Factory". I did well
with the sales but as I said, it was well before the time of the
internet. After many years of working for someone else and moving to the Raleigh, North
Carolina area, I decided to resurrect "The Shelf Factory". In
2001, just a month before the tragedy of 9-11-01, I purchased a
website address with 3 starter pages, www.shelffactory.com, and began to put together a website.
I had no idea of what
the internet was about but over time, I taught myself a few tricks of how
to get people to find my website on search engines, a little about HTML codes
and did my best to make a website. I took pictures of things that I was
making for the customers, started putting them on the website and
amazingly started getting orders. This website I use is the same one as I
started with as well as more pages added by addidional web addresses as well as
free pages with my ISP. . I see no sense in having an expensive
website, I need no shopping cart with custom orders, so for now I
will leave it this way, it works for me.
Over the years, I
have had many different kinds of requests and sonetimes even an unusual ome but I have filled most every request within reason. I could not begin to show pictures of all the things I have made for customers, so I try to show a variety of different ones to give people an idea of the work I do. I leave it up to the customers imagination as to what they want and I try to make them something that
they want, not just something "off the rack" I do offer many coded items in which I can ship them in a week or so, but the custom shelf units take longer (3-6 weeks plus+/minus-) as they are more complicated and usually the customers require finishing with stain or paint. This is confusing to to some people because they are so used to just buying something ready made and do not have to decide how they want it. I offer something different, not an "out of the box" item, but custom made to your specifications. It takes longer, but, as it is said, "Good things come to those who wait".
Everything on the
website is made to order. I do not stock anything. It may take more
time to ship, but I believe it is worth it and when I package it to
ship, it has been inspected during the manufacturing process and
absolutely will not be shipped unless it is in top condition.
Read the customer
comments on the home page at www.shelffactory.com. I have more, but this is a collection of
some of them and every once in a while, I add more. If you are
a past customer, Thank you very much for your business. If you
are thinking about purchasing something, I would appreciate your business
and assure you that you will be satisfied. If you are just
looking, I hope you enjoyed yourself looking and hopefully one day you may come back and be a customer. If you would like to send me a note about the website or anything other than an inquiry for purchase, please email me at shelffactory.com@earthlink.net. For inquiries about purchasing, please use the email address on the product web pages. Thank you!
Your
friend, Mike
Another friendly note for my potential customers:
I just
received a suggestion from a very good customer. He told me that if I
could have side by side comparisons of the brackets and shelves that I make on
my website, compared to the items that the big stores sell, that
people could see the quality that I put in my products. I have placed
many pictures of things that I have made on my website pages which may not do
justice to them. You can not see the time and effort that I have put into
everything I make. I do not have fancy mass producing machines that churn
out product. I make everything one at a time and I put my heart and soul
into every piece I make. Most of the other companies that you find,
the products are made somewhere outside of the United States and mass produced
where they are hardly ever touched by a human. Where is
the quality? No amount of me comparing what I do to other
things you find in the "big box" stores will entice you to buy from
me. The main thing that I can tell you, is that I make my items in
the proudest traditions of what made the USA the greatest country in the
world. If you do not buy from me, please make sure that when you
buy, you buy "MADE IN THE USA" to keep all Americans working as we need it now more than ever!
