Wanted: master cabinetmakers.

Now that Michael J. Brown Cabinet Makers LLC has secured a $275,000 loan and moved into its new home – a former Ford dealership on Central Street in Millinocket – its workers are concentrating on their primary task: building furniture and kitchen cabinets.

“Our problem is that we have too much work,” company co-owner Ronald Preo said in an interview earlier this week. “We could use some more skilled workers. If we had more skilled labor, somebody we wouldn’t have to put two years into [training], one-man shows who could step right into a project and run with it, things would be moving a lot faster.”

Not that Preo and Brown are complaining, but such skilled workers could probably get good-paying jobs helping them churn out wares to sell at Sky Burrill’s Majesty Hardwood Floors in Bangor. Burrill is assembling an expanded 7,000-square-foot showroom that is scheduled for a grand opening from Jan. 22 to Jan. 29 at his 1209 Broadway store in Bangor.

Burrill has partnered with Brown Cabinet Makers to have the company custom-make high-end kitchen cabinets and furniture – everything from dressers and entertainment centers to bookshelves and fireplace mantels – that will be displayed and sold in Burrill’s showroom. Besides the Bangor store, which also sells items such as hardwood flooring, carpeting and lighting, Burrill owns a similar store in Watertown, N.Y., that also will feature the Millinocket cabinetmakers’ creations.

Burrill will build a showroom for the products at the new Brown Cabinet Makers facility in Millinocket as well.

“It took them a little while, but I am pleased with what they have done,” Burrill said of Brown and Preo’s operation. “They have some display cabinets down here and they are making three or four more. It’s good quality work.”

Public funding

The $275,000 Maine Rural Development Authority loan to Brown Cabinet Makers was part of a $560,000 investment that included loans from KeyBank and Coastal Enterprises Inc., a private, nonprofit corporation that develops job-creating natural resources and small-business ventures in rural regions.

The Maine Rural Development Authority is a state Legislature-funded agency created in 2002 to help develop speculative commercial and industrial buildings and to help develop or redevelop underutilized commercial industrial properties in rural areas such as the Katahdin region, which includes East Millinocket, Medway and Millinocket.

Financing was delayed about a month and a half because of questions about the viability of the company’s business plan in a softening housing market. But the Maine Rural Development Authority eventually approved the loan in mid-November, which helped the partners secure the rest of the funding they needed.

“If it wasn’t for that [delay], we’d be up and running,” Burrill said, “and that’s fine. We’re taking our time and doing it right.”

The funds were used to buy the Central Street building and three new woodworking machines, and will help pay for constructing the showroom that is expected to open next spring at the new facility in Millinocket.

Brown Cabinet Makers finished moving into the building earlier this month.

“It’s coming along very well,” Brown said. “This space is pretty much everything we want. It’s going to look really good, and the interest we’re getting is really gratifying. We don’t have anything in the showroom, and yet people keep stopping in.”

No local training

Brown Cabinet Makers employs six people, including Brown and Preo. One worker had to be let go earlier because of the delay in getting funding, but the company hopes to eventually employ 12 to 20 full-time workers. However, no new hires are anticipated until the summer unless they are master cabinetmakers or other highly skilled woodworkers, Brown and Preo said.

“We need to iron things out, get ourselves more operational,” Brown said.

“We’d love to hire more people immediately, but the training time is what kills us,” Preo said. “This isn’t work you can just step into unless you’re very, very skilled.”

Despite the Katahdin region being within one of North America’s largest contiguous forests, the area has no educational offerings available specifically for furniture-making or cabinetmaking .

Beginning in March, an adult education program at Schenck High School in East Millinocket will offer, for the first time, a basic woodcarving and ornamental wood burning program for the region, according to school officials.

Northern Penobscot Technical School, the vocational-technical high school in Lincoln that handles Region III, which includes the Katahdin area, has a strong industrial welding program, but does not offer classes in cabinet- or furniture-making, officials there said.

Nor do the other public schools in the area, or other facilities such as the Training and Development Corp. branch office and the Katahdin Region Higher Education Center, both located in East Millinocket. TDC is a national worker training and retraining agency, according to its Web site: www.tdc-usa.org.

“There never has been the need,” said Deb Rountree, director of the Katahdin Region Higher Education Center.

“Other than in the southern part of the state, I don’t think I have ever seen anything in this whole area of the state that has been developed specifically for woodworking or furniture making,” she added. “If the need is there, then maybe that’s something that we can work on.”

Also called the University College at East Millinocket, the Katahdin center is affiliated with Eastern Maine Community College and the University of Maine System. It offers a bevy of training courses, everything from seminars to master’s degrees in business, social work, education and health-related fields, according to its Web site: www.learn.maine.edu/eastmillinocket.

The center works with business owners such as Preo and Brown to train workers in specific fields or to get skilled workers or students to a business once a need has been identified, Rountree said.

“I know Mike Brown and I will probably give him a call,” Rountree said, “but it sounds like they need somebody there yesterday.”

Hiring and training inexperienced workers eventually pays off, Preo said, but the company’s first priority now is to clear its back orders.

Reaching into new markets

Brown Cabinet Makers wants eventually to produce one finished kitchen a week.

A typical Brown kitchen consists of base cabinets, wall cabinets and full-length pantries, plus spice racks, rollout shelving, and lazy Susans, all made of the customer’s choice of hardwoods. Costs range from $12,000 to $25,000.

Individual furniture pieces – everything from desks, entertainment centers, end and kitchen tables, fireplace mantels, bookshelves, and custom-made furniture except couches and beds – can range from $200 to $4,000, Preo said.

The company could eventually employ more than 20 workers if its business with Majesty takes off – good news in a region that typically has unemployment at double the state average and about half its population at or below the poverty line.

Brown’s company, and its connection with Majesty, is strong evidence that the region’s forestry and manufacturing industry and work force can successfully identify niche products that can reach into untapped markets, said Bruce McLean, executive director of the Millinocket Area Growth and Investment Council.

The quasi-public business development agency helped the company secure its financing and a state Pine Tree Zone designation, which affords special tax breaks.

Brown expects to have the production line creating one kitchen a week by mid-March. The company is refining and ramping up its production line as it works to clear about five full kitchen back-orders, Brown said. He added that he has tentative commitments for eight more kitchens.

The new showroom on Central Street will probably be built by Majesty workers by mid-April, Burrill said.

“I already have some displays built,” Burrill said. “It’s just a matter of getting stuff up there, tearing up the floors. Quite a lot has been done already. It will be a nice showroom and good for the area.”