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PRODUCTS FINISHING — PFonline.com 15 THE VOICE OF FINISHING 80 YEARS Today, Valley Chrome makes the Wingmaster series of stain- less truck accessories, fabricating and bending stainless and mild steel in its expansion facility, which includes more than 125 employees fulfilling orders from more than 1,000 dealers. "We are a job shop that has evolved," Ray says. "We almost lost everything in the process, but we've moved from plating other people's products to doing nothing but our own now." Car Bumper Plating The transformation from being close to locking the doors to becoming a worldwide leader in truck part accessories is nothing short of astounding, but knowing the Lucas family, one might have garnered the idea that they would survive. Their father, Anthony Lucas, joined the business with his brother and another partner in the early 1960s, having moved his family of eight children from Gary, Indiana, to Fresno, California. Several years later, Anthony bought out his partners and Valley Chrome Plating was all his, plating every- thing that came in the door, including car bumpers for local body shops as well as motorcycle parts for a variety of shops and motorcycle clubs such as Hells Angels. Soon, truck drivers would stop by and ask Anthony to custom make a bumper for their rigs, which he gladly did. The business went from sometimes three handmade bumpers a week to as many as 15. Ray Lucas had already joined his father's business, and by the 1970s other siblings joined, too: Tom is CFO, Cathy is treasurer, Greg is production manager, Christine is human resource director, and Matt runs the quality division. In the 1990s, Valley Chrome was doing more than 2 million trailer hitch balls a month and truckloads of furniture from customers, as well as the car and truck bumpers. But the more lucrative work on the truck lines pushed the lead times of the other customers further down the line, and eventually some- thing had to give. They were also losing a lot of money on the car bumper business, with expensive labor that was spent on straightening bumpers before they were re-plated. "We weren't doing those other customers justice because of all the other work we were doing in the truck business," Ray says. "We made the choice to get out of the car bumper business, and we let go of some of our production accounts just so we could focus on the truck bumpers." At the time, Valley Chrome was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and moving toward insolvency. The decision to make a huge shift in doing business—or the lack thereof—was especially painful because it wasn't the typical plating business model, and first and foremost, it was a family business. "This business was helping to take care of my parents, too," says Cathy Booey, Ray's sister. "It wasn't a decision we could make to just walk away from the business because it was failing. We had to figure something out because, everything that was happening, we had to take it home. We couldn't leave this at the office." Redesigning the Business Instead of closing, the Lucas family set out to redesign their business. They decided to manufacture their own products and sell them, a turning point which meant they needed to learn the mass fabrication business, the retail and online industry, as well as the shipping and merchandising industry. "We decided to go after our own niche, and that meant manufacturing and plating it ourselves," Greg Lucas says. "Doing it all ourselves added quality to the entire process. We knew we could compete that way because we were cutting out the middlemen, and we could do it faster." Ray said the decision to manufacture was made, and there weren't many alternatives. "We were in such dire straits that we were trying everything we could to not let the business die," Ray says. "By changing the business, we knew we were putting all of our eggs in one basket with the truck bumpers, but that basket already had a lot of green in it." Matt Lucas says the family members quickly learned the manufacturing and fabrication side of the business because almost all of them had spent so much time on the shop floor. "We were known as platers, but we also knew a lot about metals and machinery," Matt says. "The other thing is that we had been fortunate enough to see a lot of the trends that were happening in manufacturing, especially in the automo- tive market." Greg also spent a considerable amount of time at manufacturing and fabricating shows, seeing what new machines were available and eyeing the latest trends. "This could have been a nightmare for us," Ray says. "But it really has gone pretty smoothly for us since everyone has focused on different areas of the business, and we've worked well to bring it together." BUMPER CROP FOR VALLEY CHROME