Firm begins $10 million expansion

Look at the boxes and bottles in your grocery or drug store or other shops - particularly the labels.

Are they readable? Do the colors and letters look crisp? Are some brighter or darker than the rest?

This is what Don Farris (chief executive officer of Total Label USA) and the company's workers look for - on the job and off the job.

Eight miles northwest of Whitefish, Total Label's almost-three-year-old plant has produced millions of labels, expecting that volume to grow enough that construction of a larger facility is planned as soon as this winter's snow melts away.

The new building is expected to be ready in early 2008.

Right now, the company has a 16,000-square-foot plant with about 35 employees near Whitefish.

The new one-story building will cover about 60,000 square feet in a huge field down a private road from the current plant. The printing operation will move into the new building with the current facility to be used for research and development.

The new building is supposed to be able to hold 150 employees. Farris expects Total Label USA's work force to grow to more than 100 people in five to seven years.

Overall, the old and new buildings, plus the homes of Farris family members, will occupy about 20 percent of the 800-acre site, with the rest to remain forested.

The ramp-up is expected to be gradual with the company predicting it will invest $10 million in the complex over the next seven years or longer.

Farris declined to discuss most of the company's financial figures.

However, he said the Whitefish plant expects its revenue to increase to 10 times its current level during the next 10 years. The company's 2005 payroll was roughly $1 million with the average salary about $50,000.

One way to measure the plant's output is to know that a 3/4-mile length of adhesive printing paper can hold 10,000 to 20,000 labels. "We do hundreds of miles a day," Farris said.

The Whitefish plant has a graphics department that designs labels, chemical equipment to convert the designs into plates to be put on rollers, and "label converting machines" that are vaguely like newspaper printing presses, but much smaller and more complex.

The Whitefish plant has three label converting machines. When the business moves into the new building, it will add a fourth machine. The new building will be capable of holding 15 label converting machines.

One reason for a predicted slow increase in business is that it takes 12 to 18 months to train a Total Label USA employee. Besides the technical skills, the employees have to develop highly discriminating eyes to detect slight changes in color or label features that don't line up perfectly.

"Labels are either 100 percent right - or they're 100 percent wrong and go in the Dumpster," Farris said.

The current facility is working at top capacity with any new employees being crammed in.

"We thought we'd be at this point in 2011," Farris said.

In the late 1960s, Farris got out of the U.S. Army and began working as a janitor for a labeling shop in Tennessee. Back then, labeling was an industry in its infancy. Farris, now 56, became fascinated with the new industry, believing it had plenty of potential to grow.

"Everything has a label," he said.

So he started his own small shop called Screen Graphics in 1970.

That evolved into Resource Label Group with two plants in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn. The 80,000-square-foot Nashville plant has 11 label converting machines and roughly 100 employees. The 30,000-square-foot Memphis plant has about 40 employees and six label converting machines.

Meanwhile, he found time to earn a history degree. Four years ago, Farris retired and moved with his wife, Beth, to the Whitefish area, along with their now 7-year-old son Jack. After a while, Farris began listening to local economic development experts, who convinced him to open another label plant in the Flathead.

Then his son Chris, who studied neurobiology; daughter Janet Henderson, who studied molecular biology; and architect son-in-law Scott Henderson decided to move to Whitefish because of the quality of life and begin new careers at the plant.

Chris Farris is now the Whitefish plant's operations manager. Janet Henderson is the administrative manager and Scott Henderson is sales manager.

In 2006, Resource Label Group changed its name to Total Label USA to reflect the company's ambitions to obtain more and more business outside the United States. Farris estimates that about 10 percent of the company's business comes from outside of the United States, mostly Canada and Mexico - although the firm has some overseas customers.

The key to the company's growth plans will be attracting new customers and keeping repeat business, and Farris is confident that Total Label USA can do both.

Research and development will be one way to attract new customers.

Labels have become more complicated with smaller print needed to handle all the legal disclaimers, instructions and extra lines in foreign languages. One way to deal with these complexities would be to produce labels with flaps - which is harder than it sounds.

Meanwhile, Total Labels USA has stressed the facts that its people are readily available to clients with little or no advance notice, the company can design and print orders quickly and reliably, and get it on the roads fast to a client juggling its own fluctuating inventory concerns, Farris said.

Eventually, the company expects to be open 24 hours a day and seven days a week to improve its accessibility, capacity and turnaround speed.

Farris said: "It's been lots of fun. … There's a lot of creativity. You go through ups and downs. … And you can go out to the stores and see your products in practically every darn store."

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com