Page 40 - MetalForming March 2019

FABRICATION
Lasers
To keep up with soaring customer demand, this maker of fabricated wall art finds lasers to be the answer.
Cut It for Home Décor Leader
BY JOE JANCSURAK, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Perfect edges matter greatly when your business is cutting- edge (pun intended) home décor—think wall art with scripted letters and names, hearts and anniver- sary dates, symbols and critters, to name a few—cut from aluminum, as well as galvanized, mild and stainless steel. That’s true of Southern Designs in Vidalia, LA, where founder and CEO Tance Hughes, with his brother Seth heading up production, oversees one of Inc. Magazine’s fastest-growing companies, reporting $3.3 million in 2017 revenue accounting for growth
of 664 percent since 2014.
“Our team is honored to be ranked
as one of the country’s fastest-growing companies for the second year in a row,” says Tance, who also earned a spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 honoring standout manufacturing entrepre- neurs. “We hope to continue steady growth and job creation in our com- munity for many years to come”
Clearly the company is on track for doing just that. Founded in 2008, Southern Design didn’t start out as a fabricating company. Instead, it began as a screen printer. With just five
Customized wall art by Southern Design relies on quality laser-cut edges.
employees in a 1250-sq.-ft. facility, Southern Design pivoted in 2013, when it began making wall art with four CNC plasma cutting tables. This proved to be such a great move that within four years, the company, with its four machines running 24/hr. per day, had difficulty keeping up with demand. Today, Southern Design equipment still runs 24/7, the difference being that fiber lasers instead of plasma tables now do the work at the company’s 30,000-sq.-ft. facility, where 35 employ- ees design, produce and ship 700 to 1000 art pieces daily, most of which
38 MetalForming/March 2019
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