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First State Manufacturing to add 30 percent more workers

Scott Goss
The News Journal

Anyone who said Delaware manufacturing is dead forgot to tell Eli and Sher Valenzuela.

The couple announced plans to add more than 25 new positions at First State Manufacturing, the Milford upholstery and sewing company they founded two decades ago.

"We want to put people to work as soon as possible," said Lori Tovcimak-Speed, the former first lady of Dover, who became FSM's marketing director in 2015. "We have the work now and we plan to keep growing."

Filling those new positions will expand FSM's workforce by nearly a third – growth that will equal the number of jobs the company has added over the last three years.

FSM is now looking to add a second shift to its operations, which mostly focus on industrial sewing jobs for government agencies. Its contracts include providing seat covers, headrests, aircraft ground covers and various textile assemblies for a client list that ranges from  Amtrak and the Washington, D.C., Metro system to the U.S., Israeli and Japanese armed forces.

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While FSM has been steadily hiring for several years, the current boom is largely being driven by three contracts the company recently landed with Amtrak.

Last fall, FSM won a five-year contract to supply the carpets that line the floors and walls of Amtrak's roughly 2,100 passenger rail cars. A few months later, the company landed two more multi-year deals to supply all the new seating cushions on Amtrak trains, as well as the repair and re-upholstery of any salvageable cushions pulled out of rail cars undergoing full refurbishment.

Stacks of seat cushions used on Amtrak trains waiting to be covered with fabric at First State Manufacturing in Milford.

Every seat cushion that goes into an Amtrak train will now pass through the company's 76,000-square-foot headquarters nestled between a residential street and the Milford Little League baseball fields. A recently added warehouse now holds a rotating stock of 40,000 used seat cushions, with as many as 20,000 repaired, re-uphostered and trucked back to more than a dozen Amtrak yards throughout the country each week.

FSM provides a similar service for the both the subway system in the nation's capital and the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

"It may look like we're growing all of the sudden, but what you're seeing now comes from several years of hard work," said Scott Crothers, FSM's vice president of contract administration. "A lot of effort goes into data collection and gathering the technical knowledge it takes to bid on these projects."

FSM might be one of the fastest growing manufacturing companies in Delaware. But it's hardly alone.

After years of steady declines, Delaware has seen the number of manufacturing jobs gradually rebound since 2014. The state is now on pace to reach 28,000 manufacturing jobs this year, a number not seen since the early days of the Great Recession in 2009, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That's still about 20 percent fewer jobs in the sector than a decade earlier, but the trend is now moving in a positive direction.

Cheryl ‘Sher‘ Valenzuela, co-founder of First State Manufacturing and a former candidate for state office is seen in this 2014 photo.

"Manufacturing has certainly faced its share of obstacles, but I think our heart beat is really strong," said Sher Valenzuela, a former Republican candidate for lieutenant governor and treasurer. "I think a lot of that has to do with the resolve of the small businesses that form the backbone of America."

Manufacturing a path to success

FSM also has faced its share of obstacles since 1997 when she and her husband started the business in a garage.

Eli had taken a sewing course in Germany while serving as a tank operator for the U.S. Army. After the couple moved to Delaware to help care for Sher's mother, he landed a job as a civilian employee in the upholstery shop at Dover Air Force Base.

Soon after their son was diagnosed with autism, the couple launched FSM as a way to help pay the bills. They eventually quit their jobs to focus on the business, which then re-upholstered car seats and repaired restaurant booths.

"I remember spending nights working on our business plan and my mother would ask what we were doing," Sher said. "We would tell her we were crafting our vision and she would answer, 'You don't even have a job.'"

Damon Walker moves a stack of seat cushions used on Amtrak trains at First State Manufacturing in Milford.

The company eventually got off the ground with the help of a $25,000 federal loan and a steady diet of government contracts, aided in part by FSM's certification as a minority-owned business and its inclusion in a U.S. Small Business Administration program that helps small companies owned by women and minorities.

"A big part of our success has been our effort to leverage the resources available to us," Sher said during a phone interview, while on a family trip to Virginia. "We made it a point from the beginning to understand what was available to help us at the local, state and federal level."

Yet the business almost closed in 2001 when many of its U.S. Department of Defense contracts were frozen after Sept. 11. More recently, FSM was dealt a major blow with the death of David Hitchens, who had been promoted to CEO less than a year earlier.

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And in between, Sher briefly became a darling of the national GOP, which invited her to speak at the 2012 Republican National Convention, right between Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Her own political aspirations ended in failure, however, including a loss to Democrat Matt Denn in the lieutenant governor race that year, followed by a loss in the Republican primary for state treasurer to Ken Simpler in 2014.

Valenzuela says she no longer has an interest in seeking public office.

"It's a fascinating time for politics and I'm glad to see the party establishment being turned on its head," she said. "But I'm fine watching that from my living room. Right now, I'm happy doing what I always wanted to do when I ran and that's growing Delaware jobs."

Sewing the seeds of opportunity

FSM is currently seeking to fill a number of positions ranging from executive posts to the production floor.

A new human resources director started work Friday, while a new facilities manager will start Monday.

Other positions include full-time production technicians, shipping associates, warehouse staff and, of course, sewers, who work on the roughly 70 Juki sewing machines that whir away in the air conditioned assembly plant.

Most of the jobs are entry level but pay about $9 to $11 and include health and dental insurance, two weeks of paid vacation and overtime.

Patricia Beever, sews a piece of fabric at First State Manufacturing in Milford.

The majority of FSM's employees are unskilled workers who come from the growing Hispanic population between Dover and Georgetown – a point of pride for Valenzuela whose husband is of Mexican descent.

"We always wanted to help foster dignity by creating work for the disadvantaged," she said. "We hire a lot of the formerly incarcerated and from groups that don't always have an opportunity for well-paying jobs that lead to a career path."

While the privately held company does not release revenue figures, Speed said FSM has experienced a 24 percent growth rate since 2012 and anticipates that trend will continue.

The company's current growth, combined with plans for additional hiring in the future, means FSM must now begin to weigh the need for space beyond the current headquarters.

Leonard Barmor moves stacks of seat cushions used on Amtrak trains at First State Manufacturing in Milford.

That could include a possible expansion of its existing location or the potential addition of new space elsewhere.

Crothers said the company's headquarters, meanwhile, while remain in Milford for a long time to come.

"There might be some things we can do to better utilize the space we have now," he said. "But our goal is to continue growing by about 30 percent a year so we're looking at all of our options."

Contact business reporter Scott Goss at (302) 324-2281, sgoss@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @ScottGossDel.