R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press At Anthony and Company, fan handles on their way out of a tumble dryer shoot from one conveyor belt onto another, where they are sorted by valued employees. The products started their journey at the Escanaba business as logs of white birch. 

EDITOR NOTE: The Daily Press will be featuring a series of articles on local businesses, highlighting their history and what makes them unique. The series will run on a regular basis in the Daily Press.

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By R. R. Branstrom

rbranstrom@dailypress.net

ESCANABA — Anthony and Company, Inc. is an Escanaba business that has put to work four generations of a local family plus many longtime employees in the manufacture and distribution of wood products.

Tucked away on North 23rd Street on the northern outskirts of town, the business probably flies under many people’s radar — even if they see its products coming out of Menards, 4imprint, and various other organizations and businesses as promotional materials.

Paint paddles and yardsticks are the major output of Anthony and Co., but they weren’t on the original product list.

Co-founder Willis J. Anthony had worked in various positions in the wood veneer industry. After his son, W. John Anthony, returned home after serving in the Navy during World War II, Willis J. suggested that the two go into business together.

Early products of Anthony and Co., which was incorporated in December 1947, were wooden ice cream sticks and spoons and toothpicks.

“Our start was pathetic,” wrote W. John in 1997, reflecting on half a century of business. “It became obvious that there was intense competition in that field.”

For a couple years, they made plant labels — the kind that stick into flowerpots — again without much success.

At some point, W. John saw that paint stirrers were being made in Menominee, and realized they were something Anthony and Co. could manufacture, relayed David Anthony, W. John’s son and current company president.

Before retooling their entire equipment line, W. John took some handmade prototypes of paint stirrers (also called paint paddles) down to Chicago “and called on paint manufacturers there in an attempt to interest them,” he wrote.

It took off — finally, they had a product whose sales could become the backbone of a strong business.

In 1953, W. John was one of a handful of entrepreneurs who spoke to the Escanaba Rotary Club about owning a business. Anthony & Co.’s product line then included “ice cream sticks, coffee stirrers, splints used in chemical laboratories, (flower)pot labels, paint paddles, and the latest — ornamental picket fencing for use around your prettiest flower beds,” as Clint Dunathan recorded for the Daily Press.

The plant sticks to label flowerpots didn’t stay on because they didn’t do well made from birch, which was the wood that worked best for the other products. A stronger wood like pine would have been better for sticking in the soil, whereas such a material would have imparted its flavor if used for coffee stirrers and ice cream sticks.

In its earliest days, Anthony and Co. operated in an old wooden building at 1924 4th Ave. N. that used to be Bird Eye Veneer’s green mill. At that point, everything ran by steam.

“My understanding is: they had a steam-powered drive shaft kind of going down the building, and then off of that they would run belts that would operate the machines,” said David. “And the story was they kept tightening the belts and pulling the building apart.”

Around 1950, they raised a new building nearby at 1911 4th Ave. N. That location is now the home of Andex, a sister company that W. John started in 1961 and which is now run by David’s brother John.

In 1956, the yardstick was added to the Anthony and Co. line and is now a popular advertising product. Around the same time, the company designed and had manufactured for them a combination paint can opener and closer.

In 1960, Anthony and Co. purchased a building at 1501 N. 23rd St. “that had been put up by the Chamber of Commerce for another firm, but was left vacant,” W. John wrote. It is where the business has remained for the last 65 years.

David said that a building on the site had previously been occupied by a company that made fishing lures.

The electrical machines Anthony and Co. installed at the 23rd Street address were an improvement to their older methods. 

“Then (W. John) continued to make improvements in the production process and expand the business,” David said. 

Detached buildings were added to the premises to accommodate greater production and eventually were remodeled to connect.

In 1968, Anthony and Co. featured on a tour to delegates and guests from the Upper Peninsula Commission for Area Progress (UPCAP) as one of many stops in Gladstone and Escanaba to showcase “the variety of manufactures in the joint community (and) the large amount of construction underway to permit expansion of industrial production.”

In 1985, after earning a degree in business management from Northern Michigan University, David joined the family business.

Computerization has been incorporated into some of the processes, but trusty old machines keep humming, doing many of the same tasks as decades ago.

A tour of the facility sheds light on the many steps to producing Anthony and Co.’s long-trusted and best-known product, the paint paddle. (Similar steps are also taken for fan handles, rulers and yardsticks.)

In the yard on the north side of the facility, white birch logs are delivered by various loggers from around the Upper Peninsula. Sprinklers shower the stacks of logs, keeping them moist.

Indoors, the logs are cut to lengths that the various sizes of paint paddles can be cut from. Anthony and Co. makes paddles at lengths of 9, 12, 14 and 21 inches; when logs are first cut down, they leave an extra inch on either side. Then —

“We steam the logs overnight — for 12 hours — and then they are put on the lathe to be peeled to make rolls of veneer,” David said.

The steam helps make the wood pliable. Rolls of veneer then go into a machine that stamps out the shape of the paint paddle, like a big cookie cutter.

Afterwards, the cut paddles go into massive tumble dryers that serve to also polish the products as they rub against one another.

Anthony and Co.’s products are usually used as a form of advertising material by the purchaser — whether the customer is a business like Menards or Pittsburgh Paints, or another company filling an order for a smaller party, they usually request an imprint of a logo, business name, and/or slogan. Yardsticks ore often varnished with a particular color before being printed upon.

Scrap wood goes into a boiler that heats the building, powers the dryers, and generates steam that is used to prepare logs for veneer-peeling. 

The various jobs involved throughout the process require good, reliable staff to keep production rolling. Anthony and Co. presently employs 17 people, and through their retirement plan is providing pensions to 26 former employees.

Some of the current employees who have been on board a long time and add to the heart of Anthony and Co. are Mary Beth Pellegrini in accounting and human resources, handling accounts payable, receivable and payroll and more; Lana LaBonte, customer service representative who works in the front office, tracking orders and inventory and communicating with customers and suppliers; Rich Williams, who designs artwork, makes imprinting plates and prints on some of the products; and Katie Fournier, who works in accounts receivable and does customer service and logistics.

Besides David, stakeholders in the company are W. John’s other children: John Anthony, Mary Sherman and Eileen Vocke. 

David’s two children, Tyler and Joshua, have put in time working at Anthony and Co., but may not remain involved long-term.

Although it’s a family business, there’s a reason Willis J. and W. John didn’t name their startup “Anthony and Sons” but instead “Anthony and Company.”

“The ‘and company’ is the company that we keep,” David explained. “It’s the employees that are the company, it’s the customers that are our company, our suppliers that are the company. We have good people working for us, and we have good suppliers and good customers that have helped us be successful.”