Company: Lance Industries International
Owner: Steven Lancia
Location: 55 Industrial Circle, Lincoln
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
Learn More
Employees: 100
Year founded: 1982
Type of business: Manufacturer
Revenue: WND
If it can be imagined, they can make it, said Julie Lancia.
Lancia is creative director of Symmetry Products Group Foam Technology, a division of Lance Industries International, which she runs with her brother Steven. From a 40-foot tiki god in Connecticut to the 20-foot friendly dragon that surveys the city from atop the Providence Children’s Museum, the Lincoln-based company has made some installations that seem well beyond the imagination.
Lance Industries International did not start out doing such outlandish displays though. Beginning in 1975 Steven and Julie’s father Rocco Lancia ran the company as a foam packaging business. Six years later a five-alarm fire destroyed the company and claimed the life of their father. The next year Steven decided to carry on the business and take it in new directions. He incorporated Lance Industries and brought Julie on board. She had just finished up at Parsons School of Design in New York City.
It wasn’t long before the siblings began venturing off in directions more creative than packaging.
“We just found different things to do with the material,” said Julie.
Lance Industries began working on retail store displays and making synthetic bark, bricks, stone and marble columns in the mid 1980s. The company’s first such account was at WM. H. Harris Furs in Warwick. Now Lance Industries does everything from displays at FAO Schwartz to waterfalls at miniature golf courses to realistic architectural replication.
The architectural embellishments include columns, bas relief facades, elegant scrolls, exterior moldings, cornices, archways and trims, quoins, window headers, and balustrade railings.
It all starts with tiny balls of foam. If you look closely at any piece of Styrofoam you can see the separate dots bonded together to form one big piece. Billions of these balls are put in a ceiling-high vat and puffed up with steam to make huge Styrofoam blocks. The blocks are then dried in a kiln and later cut to the specifications of each job. The scrap is ground and shipped to toy companies for stuffed animals.
Although Lance Industries has found its calling in display work, the company still makes the pieces of Styrofoam that prevent products from getting knocked around in boxes during shipping. Julie said 35 percent of the business is still packaging, another 35 percent are display and miscellaneous jobs and the other 30 percent of the work is architectural.
The shipping materials are cut and assembled en masse in one of the company’s newer buildings. The display and architecture pieces take a little bit longer.
Draftsperson Greg Fischer has a toy Tonka truck in his office but it’s not for the purpose of play. He has made markings on it and calculated the measurements on how to make an enormous foam replica of the toy for a display.
”When I graduated with an engineering degree I thought I’d be drafting lids for cups or something,” said Fischer. “I never thought I’d be doing something cool like this.”
Fischer’s drawings are then taken downstairs and given to workers to actualize. Workers On Khiev and his uncle Sareoun Tep hold a hot wire between them and carefully shave a piece of foam off a 5-foot block. Along with On’s brother Sam Khiev, the three Cambodian immigrants with wood-sculpting backgrounds have been with Lance Industries for the past three and a half years.
There’s room for improvisation, said On, looking up from the children’s clubhouse sculpture he and his relatives have been working on, and that’s the beauty of it. On said his favorite job to work on was the 40-foot tiki god. Assembled on site at the Timexpo Museum near Interstate 84 in Waterbury, Conn., the three had to use a cherry picker to finish the job. On said it was fun to have people passing by on the highway beeping and waving.
Julie, who signs off on the jobs done by the brothers Khiev and their uncle before the Styrofoam is covered with urethane, said hiring the trio was a great advantage to the company.
”When sculptors come in for job interviews we give them a block of foam and a picture, and ask them to come back the next day with a reproduction in foam, and these three just blew us away,” she said.
The display work is the most exciting, said Julie, because she gets to watch it go from an idea on a piece of paper to an expression of amazement on a spectator’s face.
She doesn’t work in foam herself much anymore but every now and then a need arises.
”I inevitably end up doing all the props for my daughter’s school plays,” she said.
