On one of the first clear days in a week, it seemed appropriate to gather outdoors to commemorate a major expansion for children's furniture company Jonti-Craft, Inc. A tent was set up on the grass behind Jonti-Craft's Puzzle-Craft factory in case of rain, but no one really needed it.

“If we knew it would stop the rain, we would've ordered the tent a little sooner,” joked Cathy Schwarz, co-owner of Jonti-Craft.

Jonti-Craft CEO Don Schwarz joined Cathy, area officials and company employees in lifting shiny red shovels to break ground for a new warehouse Monday afternoon. Construction on the 51,000 square foot facility will begin later this month, the Schwarzes said.

The new building represents a gain for the company, the region, and the city of Wabasso, which will gain 25 full-time jobs over the next two years.

“We want to continue to grow, serve our customers better and compete in a global market,” Don Schwarz said. The warehouse, which will adjoin the Puzzle-Craft factory building on the south side, will consolidate storage for Jonti-Craft. The company currently rents warehouse space for inventory and materials in both Redwood Falls and Morton. “The question 'Where are we gonna put this?' -- that's where this all started,” Don Schwarz said. The current Puzzle-Craft production space will also be retrofitted to allow for more furniture production, said Nick Schwarz, vice president of marketing at Jonti-Craft.

“I'd like to congratulate you today,” said Redwood County Board Chairman Gene Short at the groundbreaking ceremony, which included short comments from company officials, county commissioners, Sherry Ristau of the Southwest Initiative Foundation, and State Representative Marty Seifert.

Short said the expansion was “really heartening” to see at the county level. “We're all concerned about new business, but we're primarily concerned with business retention,” Short said. A lot of people in southwest Minnesota gain through Jonti-Craft's success, Representative Seifert and other officials said at the groundbreaking.

Over the past 20 years, Jonti-Craft has become a major employer in the Wabasso area. The business came to Wabasso in 1980 with just three employees, said Jonti-Craft sales and operations vice president Tom Franta. Today, it employs 140 people.

Financing for the expansion came from several sources, Schwarz said, including the Wabasso EDA, the Southwest Initiative Foundation, Alliant Energy, and the Minnesota Investment Fund. Under the Minnesota Investment Fund, he said, it's the city of Wabasso that receives a $350,000 grant, which is loaned to Jonti-Craft. When the company repays the loan and interest, the city gets to keep the funds. “To secure these funds, we had to start our construction later than we originally wanted to, but we knew these funds could mean a great deal to our community,” Schwarz said.

It's the employees and the community that have made Jonti-Craft what it is today, Don Schwarz said, and Jonti-Craft plans to support them both. “For every person here in the room, there are probably ten in the background that helped make this possible,” Schwarz said.

Story and Photo Credit: Deb Gau, The Marshall Independent.