Lakeview Millworks crafts custom doors

Lakeview Millworks has been one of Sisters' best-kept secrets for the past eight years. Now, the secret is out.

Lakeview Millworks crafts stunning custom doors, windows, millwork and more and has been a significant player in the wholesale market in Central Oregon and across the West.

Now, with a new showroom in Town Square in Sisters, Lakeview Millworks is stepping boldly into retail sales.

"We've had lots of people come through our door and say, 'Brad, I want to buy your product,'" said owner, Brad King, "and we have to send them to a (distributor)."

Now, folks in Sisters can choose their entryway and work directly with King and his team. Selections of beautiful wood entryways will be on display at the showroom at 141 E. Cascade Ave. (upstairs from Sundance Shoes in Town Square).

"We're going to have a full line of displays - doors, flooring, hardware and millwork," King said.

This step into retail is driven partly by the need to respond to the plunge in construction activity due to a severe recession.

King pushed hard to diversify his network of distributors.

"We decided to branch out even further," he said. "We added in about 12 new distributors since January."

That was critical to broadening the company's client base.

"No one particular client is busier than the next," King said. "No particular region is busier than the rest. But collectively, we're starting to see an increase in orders at our plant."

King's wife, Kelly, a designer by profession, has come into the business to help in the office, and Mark Kramer has moved up from Truckee, California, to manage regional distribution from the Sisters office.

"We're bringing everyone in-house here under one umbrella," King said.

That includes Ken Roberts, who will manage the retail operation.

Roberts and King go back a long ways.

"I started 30 years ago with Brad at Pozzi (Windows)," Roberts said.

Working in sales in Portland was great during the boom, but lousy when it went bust.

"I could have probably stayed in Portland and suffered through," Roberts said. But a conversation with King changed his course.

"I called him one day and complained about what was going on and he said, 'Come see me; I might have an idea.'"

In a way, Roberts is coming full-circle: Long ago, King manufactured and Roberts sold all the windows in Town Square, where they now are launching their retail expansion.

King sees the new showroom as part of a revitalization of Town Square.

"The face of Town Square is definitely going to be changing," King said. "Mike Reed (the landlord) has definitely been helpful in getting us moving in this direction."

Local folks don't have to go far to see the quality of Lakeview Millworks' product. They have done work at FivePine and in the Ponderosa Lodge expansion. Their work is well-known to contractors like Steve Keeton and Curt Kallberg, who encouraged King to expand into retail.

But the work has flown below the radar of Sisters homeowners.

"It was low-profile because we were doing wholesale only," King said.

King is confident that retail customers will now have the same reaction that contractors do to the quality of the product and the service they receive. The woods are exquisite; and many doors are made of reclaimed woods. They work with the best craftsmen to produce hardware and provide installation by Dave Scarborough of West Construction Services in Bend.

King has created proprietary software to facilitate seamless communication running from the customer to the 100,000-sqaure-foot manufacturing floor in Lakeview. The value of the product is apparent to the look and the touch.

"Once people get our quoting platform and see our product, we're good to go," King said.

For more information call 549-0968.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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