Village Squire, 1979-04, Page 191
J.H. Fabian demonstrates a machine used to assemble veneer -
fur furniture.
in Clinton. each claiming the other was at fault. Then came a
crackdown by the Ontario Ministry of Labour taking the company
to court for improper safety conditions at the plant. In those days
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the plant was going ahead, despite the controversy. Employment
was growing. By contrast, the plant seems very quiet today with
only a few employees.
Where the problem lies is hard for an outsider to establish.
There's a touch of "us against the world" in the speeches of the
Fabians. They've tried to sell their process to major
manufacturers but they won't listen, the Fabians say. J.H., the
son, says that they have approached companies like Electrohome
and tried to interest them but all the company wanted to do was
find out what the production capability of the method was ana
how great a danger it was. "We had patents on these two
corners here (pointing to the rear corners of a drawer) so maybe
they were afraid in a sense but we didn't get the patent to control
other manufacturers. This (press) cost over $60,000 without
labour so that's why we had to secure ourselves."
"We came with good intentions," he says of the move to
Clinton. "We didn't get no help from no government." He says
there have been people ready to invest in the company when it
first started before the process was even proven but his father
turned them down. "It's not good to take peoples' money when
you're just starting because you can lose control and so on. I
mean it's better once you've formed a limited company and so
on." Mr. Fabian Sr. wanted to sell shares after the company was
on its feet but the investers wanted none of that, his son says.
Perhaps it is this fierce independence on the part of the family
that has led to the lack of growth with the company. Some people
in the community feel they have wasted the immense potential of
their process by not getting government or some outside
financing to get the plant operating to potential.
J.H. Fabian agrees the potential is not being used. Two things
stand in the way of using the potential of the machine to its
greatest, he says. One is key personnel. The need for trained
furniture makers with the U-bend process is far less than with
traditional manufacturing methods he claims. Unskilled labour
can be utilized to a larger degree and still turn out a top quality
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April 1979, Village Squire 17