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The Only Software Solution for Cardinal Fine Cabinetry
With a team of inspiring individuals who breathe the company culture of quality, attention to detail and craftsmanship, Cardinal Fine Cabinetry balances innovative design and sustainable practices, with state-of-the-art case goods and furniture for the whole home. For a business positioned for significant growth, Cabinet Vision paired with Planit Canada’s expertise was the only solution.
We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Paul Bilyea, owner of Cardinal Fine Cabinetry in London, ON to check in on the final stages of their Cabinet Vision implementation, see how their staff was doing with the new tool and chat about a custom catalog project. From their zero-waste philosophy, to the beautiful showroom and impressive shop, the growth and success of Cardinal Fine Cabinetry continues to reach beyond the normal.
Whole Home Millwork
Cardinal Fine Cabinetry produces custom work, complete with residential and builder lines, and pride themselves on doing something unique. A combination of bespoke companies operating under one banner, each bring a unique creative process to the table and a wide range of talented individuals with years of collective experience.
Looking beyond kitchen cabinetry with a concept dubbed Whole Home Millwork, Bilyea and his team seek opportunities within the home to tie in wallpaper, bar stools, and other details that allow the client to feel engaged in the creative process.
“We’ve really set ourselves apart by allowing people to come through the door and be a little bit more creative – and allowing the creative process to engage their experience here, because we don’t really shove kitchens or cabinetry in their face right away. We want it to be more of a design firm and a design studio that allows the concept of being able to create new ideas.”
-Paul Bilyea, Owner of Cardinal Fine Cabinetry
Thinking Outside the Box
Two key tenets of the Cardinal Fine Cabinetry philosophy are innovation and sustainability. Putting these beliefs into practice, they’ve built a collaboration with a company in Alberta who provide an organic volcanic rock compound that, when mixed with sawdust, results in a working compost used by local farms.
“We are here because we want to make a difference, we want to make a change, we want to do some things that are bold and beyond the normal.”
-Paul Bilyea, Owner of Cardinal Fine Cabinetry
They draw their clients right into the sustainable fold, sourcing trees from their property that have fallen or are being removed. This adds significant, personal meaning when incorporated into their furniture. This allows the Cardinal Fine Cabinetry team to tell a story that engages, and hits home for clients.
These initiatives are set into place to turn around waste and, ultimately, produce zero-waste in the near future. Cabinet Vision will play a key role in achieving this goal, as Bilyea’s engineers will leverage panel optimization and off cut management features.
Why Cabinet Vision?
When asked why Cabinet Vision was the right solution for his business model, Paul Bilyea’s immediate response was: “It was the only solution.” Nothing else could fit where they are headed as a company, especially in terms of their desire to reduce waste, improve processes, and track costs.
A lover of unorthodox thinking, Bilyea appreciates that a powerful software solution like Cabinet Vision “frees you up and expands the mind.” He explains: “I love the fact that we can challenge Cabinet Vision, and we can bend it.”
“I really like the fact that CV can make that change on the fly. We can engineer it here first, before we go out there and build it. And that’s really exciting for us.”
-Paul Bilyea, Owner of Cardinal Fine Cabinetry
The natural match for mind-expanding flexibility, is cold hard numbers. Having brought in a process consultant, Bilyea understands that to achieve their expansion goals, they would need a clear understanding of costs and how to control them. Implementing Cabinet Vision has provided for them, not just an accurate picture of costs, but a tool for minimizing them.
Making the Switch
When asked about the staff’s reaction to implementing Cabinet Vision, and switching from their previous CAD/CAM software, he responds: “They can’t get it fast enough. They can’t get the product of Cabinet Vision quick enough in their hands. […] It’s a process that everyone is very excited about because of its flexibility. That’s the biggest thing for them and for us. To be able to manipulate the cabinets and getting the answers that we need because we have such a breadth of different companies and designers […] and each have their own slant on how they want to do some things.”
“Cabinet Vision just clicks. Products move [and] everything just integrates with one another. There [are] a lot of companies that piggyback on top as third parties to Cabinet Vision that makes it run so smoothly.”
-Paul Bilyea, Owner of Cardinal Fine Cabinetry
Planit Canada Expertise For the Win
The team at Cardinal Fine Cabinetry opted to lean on Planit Canada’s experienced service staff to save them countless hours of custom catalog work and they’ve not regretted the investment.
Bilyea explains: “I would have to admit that even though we think that we can tackle a lot of these things ourselves, the use of having somebody that has catalog experience as well as pricing experience has been great.”
The implementation of a catalog in Cabinet Vision is a huge asset for the team at Cardinal Fine Cabinetry. The catalog has been built based on Cardinal’s extensive library of cabinets, but in a way that allows them to modify cabinets in size, and/or configurations, based on individual client needs, and requires no more effort to send to the CNC machines. The software has been setup with all the requirements to allow the design team to manipulate cabinets and designs from the beginning, and ready to be pushed through to production efficiently.
The catalog allows them to drag and drop standard cabinets into their designs, and make changes, or additions, to make custom cabinets quickly. Because the catalog is built to Cardinal’s specifications on how they build cabinets, what materials and hardware options they offer, projects are designed quickly with a high level of accuracy for both the basic projects and especially with custom projects.
“It has been a wonderful experience to be able to belong to an organization that has it together, that has never been met with ‘well I don’t know that answer let me find out.’ It’s always been ‘yes, we have a solution and let me get some more information on that for you.”
-Paul Bilyea, Owner of Cardinal Fine Cabinetry
Passion for the Business
Paul Bilyea’s passion for his work and business is shared by the whole team and translates into all that they do. “We love what we do. And when you love what you do, you’re at it all the time because it doesn’t feel like work. And when it’s not work you enjoy what it is.”
For more information on Cardinal Fine Cabinetry, please visit their website at http://cardinalfinecabinetry.com/
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