An American Story

General Finishes was started in 1928 by a Milwaukee lumber company to make stains and finishes for their cabinet shop customers.  For decades, the company plodded along slowly, narrowly averting a disaster in 1971 when  GF’s product supplier, the sole owner of the formulas, closed down.  Rescuing the formulas, General Finishes managed to survive until 1984, at which time George bought the company. GF was then selling $200,000 a year out of a 2000 square foot store front with two employees (George was sales and Rob was production). We made our stains in an old washing machine and poured them one can at a time. George sometimes helped.

In 1988, General Finishes established its presence in the unfinished furniture market with the purchase of Prelude and moved into a new 4000 square foot plant. We purchased our first automated equipment, a pour machine that filled six (wow!) cans at a time and a forklift.  Jeff named the forklift Elle after the famous Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, because she looked so beautiful to Jeff who otherwise would have had to lift all the boxes by hand. The ranks of employees expanded to five!

By 1992, we again outgrew our facility and built a new 7000 square foot plant in New Berlin, a Milwaukee suburb. In the same year, we introduced our award winning water based line, which really launched our growth. Two years later in 1994, we added another 8000 square feet for a total of 15,000 and our employment finally reached double digits. We added 2 more pouring machines and another automatic labeler. Jeff is now the plant manager.  Rob, Tom and Sheryl are the hungry sales force angling for new offices, while George tries to look busy.  Elle still looks beautiful. And thankfully sales have increased more than 20 times since 1984.

In 2004, Bill Leightner joined General Finishes to develop our new industrial sales division. And in May of 2006, we have moved to a new 35,000 square foot manufacturing facility in East Troy Wisconsin.

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The Country' s Finest Manufacturer of Wood Finishing Products
Phone: 800-783-6050. Fax: 262-642-4707
2462 Corporate Circle, East Troy WI 53120