Meeting the challenge: three area success stories.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy
• Position: Regional Report North Central

Martin Yale. If your office has a folding machine, paper cutter, printer stand, keyboard drawer or three-hole punch, it's likely that a Martin Yale product is at work for you, says Terry Frandsen, vice president of finance.

The company's lines also include the Master and Premier brands, and it recently acquired Schleicher International, which makes Intimus shredders.

Purchased by Evansville-based Escalade Inc. in 1972, Martin Yale, which had been operating in Chicago since the 1930s, moved its headquarters to Wabash in 1990 when the company acquired a former Swingline facility there. Today, 137 of Martin Yale's 434 employees work at the 141,000-square-foot Wabash facility, and that number is growing.

"One of the keys to our success has been price discipline," Frandsen says. "It's very easy to sell if you can give it away. The real skill comes in getting a decent price, a reasonable price."

Maintaining price levels means delivering quality, he says. "Our strategy is to be top-of-the-line, to be the best."

Syndicate Sales. What began in 1946 in a Kokomo barn as a mom-and-pop business making plastic tubes to hold water for cut flowers is today a floral hard-goods giant. Syndicate Sales employs 250 at six Kokomo sites, totaling 884,000 square feet and 64 acres, and a transport subsidiary

It supplies wholesale florists and large retailers across the U.S. with hundreds of products. "We are a manufacturer, importer and distributor," says president David Hendrickson.

Plastic products, which include containers, cardholders, picks and the original robe product line, are all made in Kokomo, as well as arrangement foam and a mixture that keeps vase water clear. Glass and other product designs are created there, too, with products made by leading U.S. manufacturers.

"We have competition in every line, but no other single company in the wholesale floral supply chain has all our products under one roof," which has made Syndicate Sales an industry leader, he says. "In our product lines, we're either No. 1,2 or 3 for volume in every one."

Operating its own...