(Editor’s note: This is the 30th installment in a monthly series highlighting some of the region’s unsung manufacturers that make products essential to the economy and, in many cases, our way of life. See previous installments here.)
For Tracey Beck, co-owner and chief operating officer of North Smithfield-based The Beck Cos., the workday is never 9-to-5.
Always on the lookout for new and profitable investments, her brother-in-law, Ken Beck, and her husband, Brian, have a penchant for buying entities to add to the company’s portfolio.
It all began when Brian Beck attended a business auction to “look,” said Tracey Beck. Instead, he came home with a troubled stone fabrication company based in East Greenwich that the Becks relaunched as KB Surfaces.
“It was supposed to run itself,” Beck joked.
Not keen on continuing to lease, the Becks eventually bought a building in Johnston with the hopes of expanding.
“We don’t like to rent,” Beck said. “And we started running out of room.”
After some negotiating, the Becks were finally able to purchase the North Smithfield location, the site of a former steel beam manufacturer, transforming the “big cement cavity” into what is now a mix between a Silicon Valley campus and a metropolitan loft building.
The Becks didn’t stop with KB Surfaces. They eventually added custom countertop manufacturer Atlas Fabrication Inc.; Dark Horse Metal, which focuses on steel and metalwork; CAS America for commercial shelving and casework; and closet maker Closettec.
The company also purchased Great American Recreation Equipment Inc. in 2017, producing pool, shuffleboard and air hockey tables, among other games.
The six companies all work within an 85,000-square-foot facility, described as more of a “megaplex” that includes state-of-the-art manufacturing and fabrication divisions, as well as a showroom displaying a menu of granite, marble, soapstone, custom closets, and even pool tables.
Though the company started out with 80% of residential clients, today it is the reverse, Beck said.
Over the years, commercial clients have included Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox; the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, N.J., which houses MetLife Stadium, home of the New York Giants and New York Jets; Starbucks, which built a new store in the Back Bay neighborhood of downtown Boston; the Hard Rock Cafe at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Conn.; and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
CAS America has made prototypes of anesthesiology medical carts, specialized tables for clients with disabilities, and cataloguing fulfillment stations. Atlas Fabrications has made engineered surfaces for the health care and hospitality industries. The list goes on.
[caption id="attachment_488939" align="alignright" width="470"]
PLEASING DESIGNS: Leo Pimenta in the engineering department of The Beck Cos. designs items for the North Smithfield manufacturer, which produces products for six different companies.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
The Becks recently brought all the companies under one umbrella, which not only helps merge paperwork and regulatory compliance but also helps with the cross-training of employees to be proficient in multiple jobs.
From five-axis computer numerical control saws to Baca dual bed robots for precision tooling, operations can all be seen through the large plate-glass window from the facility’s control room, where a handful of employees pore over engineering and design specifications on several computers.
Though massive and cavernous, the North Smithfield facility is really a one-stop shop, Beck said.
The Beck Cos. doesn’t have much outright competition in the region; it’s mostly smaller firms that specialize in one of the company’s various trades.
“There are other stone companies and other mill companies, but usually a company will not mix mediums,” Beck said.
The greatest challenge is still securing adequate labor talent. Beck said the company – which now has annual revenues of about $18 million – would likely not survive without the ability to cross-train employees.
You may have arrived at Beck Cos. with aspirations to be an engineer before finding you’re better suited in the gaming production room, she said.
“You can sample six or seven different trades here,” Beck said. “You can find if you like something or if it’s not for you.”
But juggling so many different balls comes with its own headaches. Beck says the company’s payroll costs are “through the roof.
“That’s the main reason I have to cross-train staff,” she said. “Because today you can’t keep paying someone to do just one thing. Our good employees know they will need to learn other skills. I can bring you over here and you can put the cabinets together. Or I can send you over there and you can assemble a pool table.”
A more recent challenge is the clampdown on immigration, which Beck fears could hamper the company’s talent pipeline, which predominately hails from places like Brazil, Columbia and Haiti.
“They deal with this medium in their countries and are a really big source of labor for us,” she said.
Beck does her own recruiting, but it’s often not enough.
“The problem is we are both big and small. Every day, my biggest challenge is finding employees,” she said. “Everybody wants to be a project manager; it’s our biggest weakness. Our customers don’t want to hear that it snowed and someone didn’t show up for work.”
Beck says it’s tough to find younger workers willing to take on dangerous tasks, such as the stonework that involves working with large slabs of heavy material. It takes the proper mix of brawn and precision to operate a massive five-axis saw to cut stone slabs the size of tandem trailers.
While the company has added new automated equipment over the years, operations in certain divisions are still “old school,” Beck said, such as with Great American Recreation.
One employee can be seen wrapping bumpers for a table, while another cranes in the slate before it’s felted.
“The mechanicals are all put in by hand,” Beck said.
Cost overruns from materials can usually be handled with so-called “value engineering,” but Beck says manufacturers can’t avoid the rising costs for shipping.
“It is outrageously expensive,” she said.
To date, The Beck Cos. has never had layoffs. And while Beck aims to keep it that way, today the company has around 60 employees, down from about 80 in 2023.
Beck says she has all but given up using local trade schools to fill the void.
“It’s not real life if you’ve only experienced machine simulations,” she said. “Over here you may be wearing respirators and headphones. You are dealing with dust and heated water. You are manually handling stuff and must use your brain. This is not for the faint of heart.”
