Quilting machine company sews up international market

A-1 Quilting Machines Inc., 3232 Evans Road, manufactures several high-performance quilting machines, the core product being the A-1 Long-arm.

Owners Stewart and Kelly Plank got into the quilting machine business when Stewart learned he was going to be laid off from his job as an aircraft mechanic. Through his father, he knew of a man who wanted to sell his business, which had short-arm, industrial sewing machines.

Plank purchased the existing company in 1987. He believes it was started in Ohio in 1945.

These days, it’s a business – and a market – that’s growing by the yard.

“When I got into business in 1987, there were about five quilting magazines at the newsstands,” Plank said. “Now there are about 17. That speaks volumes as to how it’s grown. As the baby boomers are retiring, they are picking up all kinds of hobbies. If they take a class on quilting, they have to take the quilt top to someone to have it quilted.”

The industry has expanded as well.

“I just got back from a dedicated long-arm show in Seattle. Ten years ago there was no show like this.

Today there are three shows like this in the United States, one in Australia and one in England,” Plank said.

Plank said A-1 Quilting does 90 percent of its business in the United States, but the market is quickly expanding in Australia, England and France.

“Quilting has gotten really popular in Japan as well,” Plank said.

Innovation

Change has been the name of the game since the Planks purchased A-1 Quilting.

“I bought the company to take it to the next level, which was bigger machines. I started out selling the short-arm machines with the intent of selling long-arms,” Stewart Plank said.

Plank utilized his mechanical background to redesign and manufacture a long-arm quilting machine.

The A-1 Quilting Machines’ Long-arm Model 923 has the distinction of being made of cast aluminum. According to the company’s Web site it is the only cast aluminum quilting machine made in the United States.

“The cast aluminum is a stronger, last-longer, more efficient means of manufacturing product, but it costs more to get there with molds,” Plank said. “But once you have the mold made, it’s a little cheaper to manufacture the machines that way.”

“All commercially-made garment-style machines are cast. When I designed this machine, I decided that it should be cast,” Plank said.

The machine, together with the table, is about 500 pounds, and the average table is 12 feet long.

The A-1 Long-arm Quilting Machine costs about $15,600, Plank said. The low end is just under $10,000 and the most expensive they’ve sold was about $17,900.

“We sell about 50 to 60 machines in a year,” Plank said.

A-1 Quilting Machines has three in-house employees besides the Planks, and they use several outside companies to make specialized parts.

Customers

A-1 Quilting’s customer base is largely people using the machines at home. Of those customers, Plank said, about half use the machine for their own quilts and half use it for a home-based quilting business.

“It’s always avid quilters. They all want one of these machines,” Plank said. “For an avid quilter (for whom it’s) pretty much their whole life, this is the ultimate equivalent of a John Deere tractor for a man to mow his yard.”

The company promotes its products through word of mouth, its Web site, www.800longarm.com, and sponsorships.

For instance, A-1 Quilting Machines is a major underwriter on a sewing TV show called “Quilt Central,” which produces about 26 episodes a year, Plank said.

Competition

Also, Plank said, champion quilters have endorsed his quilting machines just as champion fishermen endorse boats.

According to Plank, in the beginning, machine-quilted quilts weren’t allowed into competitions.

Now, he said, about 60 percent of the quilts entered into competitions are machine-quilted. They are no less of an art form than the hand-quilted ones, Plank said. “Now it’s more of an art form. With the machine, there’s more and more of an art flavor going on.”

In five years, Plank said, he believes the product will be even more mainstream than it is now.

“It’s rapidly happening,” Plank said. “Five years ago, people that sewed didn’t know what they were. There are quite a few companies now that have jumped into this business recently.”

“It’s pretty feverish. With more and more people getting into this all the time, it’s running as hard as you can to stay ahead of them,” he said.

And that’s where quality comes in.

“What I sell is the high end of the market, probably the most precision machine out there,” Plank said.

“There are some people getting into it with a kind of Tinkertoy machine that’s cheaper. I’m kind of the Mercedes of quilting machines,” he said.