History
North Atlantic Corp. is comprised of employees working for: Horner Millwork, Horner Commercial Sales, Remodelers Outlet, Cleary Millwork, Wholesale Doors, Central Woodwork and Cenwood Appliance. Our customers know us by these names, however all the divisions or companies are represented by employees of North Atlantic Corp.
An addition to expand the Somerset office and showroom space in the early 1980s.
The Beginning
Horner Millwork was established in 1948 by William Horner. At the age of 21, Horner, a pro soccer player, immigrated to the US from Belfast, Ireland with $100 in his pocket. He built a business selling ‘prehung’ doors during an era when carpenters were still mortising frames by hand. The time and convenience of being able to pop in a framed door established Horner Millwork as the preferred supplier of doors and windows in Eastern Mass and Rhode Island.
In 1978, a devastating fire destroyed two-thirds of the property, but Horner, at age 71, had no plans to walk away and Horner Millwork was rebuilt. In 1980, the Humphrey family, owners of PDH Lumber and Building Company at the time, purchased Horner Millwork from Mr. Horner. The Humphrey family has been in the lumber and building products industry for over 100 years. The company was led by Peter D Humphrey.
An addition to the existing warehouse would house Builders and Contractors Supply (today Horner Commercial Sales).
1980s and Expansion
Soon after the sale, Horner Millwork purchased Builders and Contractors Supply (today Horner Commercial Sales) to expand into the commercial construction market. Horner also began selling kitchen cabinetry and opened a new satellite office in Southboro to expand reach to central and northern MA.
Growth in the 1990s
In 1991, Horner acquired Cooper Stairworks of Fall River, MA and began to manufacture pre-assembled stairs and stair parts. This acquisition enabled us to expand our manufacturing capability to include custom windows and doors in the Architectural Products Division (APD). This year, Horner also acquired competitor Phoenix Millwork of Fall River, MA. Horner later opened another satellite office and showroom in Pembroke, MA serving the South Shore.
In 1992, with the acquisition of the wholesale millwork distributor NAMCO, we were able to expand sales to lumber dealers and North Atlantic Corp is established. We also acquired Winter Building Products to expand our wholesale customer base.
In 1994, NAC opened Remodelers Outlet in Fall River, MA. What began as a retail channel to sell returns and factory seconds at low prices has evolved over the years into a successful retail store that stocks new inventory as well as closeout products.
To support our growth, we added another 30,000 square feet to the Somerset production facility to expand our custom capabilities and formed the Architectural Services Group to serve the specific needs of the architectural community.
With the acquisition of Cooper Stairworks in 1991, North Atlantic expanded our in-house manufacturing to included custom stairs, doors, mouldings, and windows.
Square footage, customer base, and custom capabilities all increased during the housing boom.
The Housing Boom (2000-2006)
North Atlantic continued to grow into the new millennium. In 2000, we expanded into the South opening HomeSouth in Savannah, GA and South Florida Millwork in Naples, FL. The acquisition of Design Door (Medford, MA) allowed us to expand our commercial market to metro Boston and northern MA.
In 2002-3 we acquired Martin Millwork (Springfield, MA) and Cleary Millwork and merged them with NAMCO to form Cleary Millwork. Our new wholesale division, based in Rocky Hill, CT, reached lumber dealers all over New England.
Another 40,000 sq ft addition brought our manufacturing facility to 215,000 sq ft and North Atlantic introduced Captiva Custom Wood Doors as a proprietary custom line.
The Great Recession
Although the Great Recession technically lasted 18 months (December 2007-June 2009), it took about 5 years for the housing market to recover. During this time we saw downsizing, closed the Cleary manufacturing facility in Rocky Hill to consolidate production in Somerset, and closed South Florida Millwork.
On the positive side, Cleary acquired Saginaw Millwork (New York) and opened a sales office in Albany to serve Eastern New York lumberyards.
The Housing Market Recovers
Acquisitions
In 2013, Horner acquired Home Genius, a home automation and custom cabinetry company in Swansea, MA and lauched Barì, an in-house custom cabinetry brand. Cleary Millwork acquired Wholesale Doors (Watertown, MA) in 2017 and expanded our product offering of commercial doors, frames, hardware, aluminum frames, toilet partitions and other products to specialty door frame and hardware businesses on a 2-step basis.
After selling HomeSouth to Guerry Lumber, a 90-year-old building materials company based in Savannah, North Atlantic again moved into the South with the acquisition of Central Woodword and Cenwood Appliance (“Central”). Central is a Tennessee-based, millwork and appliance company with locations in Nashville and Memphis. Established in 1945, it is a third-generation family business that was owned and operated by brothers Mark and Pat Schaefer. Read more about their history here.
Plant Expansion
In 2015, NAC broke ground for an expansion to our manufacturing facility with 45,000 square feet of additional manufacturing, prefinishing, loading/staging and an additional state-of-the-art CNC machine to expand our customer manufacturing capabilities. Once completed, we installed 4,250 solar panels to the roof which provide about 90% of the plant’s electricity. Another addition brought our square footage to 300,000 square feet.
The plant additions allowed us to close the Watertown facility and consolidate manufacturing in Somerset. A Cleary/Wholesale sales office was opened in Braintree.
We also added a new work cell for Captiva Custom MDF Doors.
Investment in Technology
North Atlantic made major investments in technology over the last few years. We installed the Barbaric, a robotic and artificial-intelligence warehousing system, (only the second of its kind in the US). This door-picking system allows us to maintain 100% accuracy on doors needed for production and reduces warehousing space for about 30,000 door slabs, stacked from the ground up. We also invested in Kuka robots and automatic conveyors to streamline the prefinishing process.
On the digital side, North Atlantic launched Cleary 365 and Cenwoody365 for customers to get quick online access to inventory and pricing, as well as Captiva BUILD for architects to design and quote our custom wood doors.
The Captiva MDF workflow uses a number of clamp stations so once the last door is constructed, the first is dry and can be moved.
March 2020 - July 2022
North Atlantic remained opened as an essential business throughout the pandemic. While new home building and remodeling remained strong, breakdowns in supply chains and labor shortages due to Covid caused delays all over the country. Many commercial job sites were completely shut down.
From the start of COVID in March 2020, through summer of 2021, much of the office staff worked remotely while on-site employees were masked and tested every 2 weeks. As COVID restrictions lifted, the majority of the staff returned to the office.
At the present time, the building industry continues to deal with many challenges from unprecedented price increases, product shortages, labor and transportation issues; all while continuing to deal with the pandemic. The housing market remains strong, although there has been a slow down due to inflationary factors (including interest rates rising to 5% and the Fed’s substantial rate increases in a short time period).
Acquisitions
In July 2022, NAC acquired Van Millwork. Van Millwork was founded in 1967 and prides itself on supplying high-quality interior millwork, with a focus on interior doors, trim and stair parts. Van’s production operation is in Bellingham, MA with a showroom and design center in Needham, MA. Read more about Van Millwork’s history here.