Just wanted to tell you about how we got here as to the best of my memory! In the Summer of 1990 Capital Office System’s a 52 year old company that Ben Francis, Jeff Hutson and myself were working for began having financial trouble and was starting to fail. The writing was on the wall and the 3 of us started planning our future. That meant starting our own business. With the help of 3 investors, one of them being Hide’s father, we obtained a $40,000 loan. We then had to come up with a name for the company and we did this while out eating lunch. The way I remember it, Ben came up with Commercial, I came up with Interiors and Jeff came up with West which left us room for a North, South and East division in the future. Then we had to come up with a place. At first while drinking a couple of beers in Jeff’s back yard (It was Bud Light back in those days!) we thought about using his 200 square foot garage with a dirt floor as our warehouse, office and shop. After sobering up the next day we thought we would need a little bit more room than that and maybe not a dirt floor so Ben, Jeff and I went looking for a spot and found a 1500 square foot warehouse next to the main runway of McClellan AFB. We had a 20 square foot office with a bare concrete floor a couple of desks, a file cabinet and one computer that Rick Gewerth had built for us. This computer had a 20 MB hard drive and 16KB of RAM in it. Anyway just as we had everything set up and ready, COS did file for bankruptcy and suddenly we had their left over business and our old crew to jump start our business. John Everson and Eric Bakken were the first to come over and most of the others by the end of the week. There was about 2 months of work left over from COS and that kept everyone busy for that time period. We had growing pains of course and soon learned what we needed to run jobs in multiple locations. Ken Mitchell let us know one piece of equipment we needed on the jobsites that we didn’t have and no it wasn’t 4 wheelers, hand trucks or panel dollies. It was a microwave! Well in those few months of left over business we also picked up other clients too, the main one being Pacific Bell, but we really didn’t have enough work for everyone so we lost a few guys to the new Steelcase dealer. Luckily we were able to keep some of the best ones busy and they were able to stay with us. Also during this time Jeff started his own company Custom Transitions and had installed a paint booth in our 1500 square feet. That and storing customer product we quickly out grew the space. So we leased the warehouse next to us doubling our size while Jeff moved to his own at the opposite end of the complex. We also bought a truck from Ben’s cousin, an old fork lift from a neighbor along with some pallet racking and a 486 computer. About this time Victor Moreno who had another job delivering candy to grocery stores but would help us on weekends joined us along with Steve Doupe’ soon after, Then there is Bob Gavia. In maybe our third year he came aboard after being a DJ at a strip club. Of course he joined us in our 10th year, and then again in our 20th year as he had to leave for reeducation a couple of times. So we started to feel like we had great crew in a great location and we were set for years here. Then Statewide Record Services moved in. It didn’t take long to figure out some new digs were in order. Out shopping we went again and found our present location which was 20 times larger and had a loading dock. SRS with Kathy and Ann took the front half for their business (not sure how that happened) and CIW got stuck in the back. Custom Transitions moved in across the parking lot and now we did have a great location! Some of the early guys that helped us in the beginning are still with us, not just employees but friends too. Hide’ graduated from college with a business degree and came to work for us temporarily until he could get a real job. Shaun Muscarella walked in with a buddy looking for work and we hired both of them. Well his friend didn’t last long but 27 years later Shaun is still here. Glen Goff who had his own company at one point also joined us and is part of the OG’s. As our kids got older they became the second generation to work here. Blayne started at probably 10, while Matt and Bo started at a more reasonable age. Of course we had the brothers Justin Valice, Jason and Jerison Lamb and Matt’s cousins Justin Oliver and brothers Sean and Danny Brown. Their friends opened up a younger pool of talent and Mike Lowney, Jeff McCoy being a couple of them. Hell we even had a few of Kathy and Ann’s brothers Jeff, Don and Pat help us too. We also stole a couple of Jeff’s employees, Ken Mitchell and Yogi Walton who saw the grass was greener across the parking lot. I haven’t mentioned everyone that works for us now and definitely not all that have worked for us before but CIW is what it is because of each and every one of them and of course having the best business partner a man could ask for, I am proud to have been a part of it all !

October '24 | |