Mark Toni is a firm believer that, when it comes to the finishing industry, what happens off the shop floor is just as important as what happens on it.
“The office in a business like ours is just as important as the shop is,” says Toni, president of Chicago’s Belmont Plating Works.
And after celebrating their 75th anniversary in business last year, who can argue with him?
“You do the work in the shop,” Toni says. “But if you don’t have a good office to follow up on jobs, call the customers, collect the money, and do everything needed, you’re going to go broke.”
Connecting with Customers More than Ever
That’s why Toni has made it his career goal to connect himself to his customers more than ever at his sprawling, 4-acre 78,000-square-foot complex in Franklin Park near O’Hare Airport.
To make his point even clearer, Toni extends both his hands with his fingers spread out.
“I’ve got 10 fingers, and if you’re one of my customers, you’re a finger, and you are connected to me,” he says. “It’s not a job for me. I want to feel like I own your company, too. They can call me anytime on my cell phone. I’ll go out and see them. I want them to make money; I don’t want them to lose money because then it’s a loss for everybody.”
That’s one reason why Belmont Plating Works tries to be all things to everyone and offers numerous processes that most finishers do not, including zinc, tin, copper, nickel, electroless nickel, cadmium, and chrome plating.
Their specialty is high-volume, high-quality barrel zinc plating for a variety of materials such as nuts, bolts, washers, metal stampings, and automotive parts, but their automated lines are also set up for most other processes, too.
“A lot of shops do only zinc, or they do only nickel, or they do nickel and chrome,” Toni says. “We do everything. Not just high-volume zinc plating in barrels and racks, but we also do high-volume cadmium plating in barrels and racks and many others. We do it all because we want to be a full-service shop.”
Founded in 1947 in Chicago
From left, Stanley Golec, Mark Toni and Bob Bethel.Belmont Plating Works was founded in 1947 by Toni’s father, John, who was a tool and die maker until he met some friends who wanted to open up an electroplating shop. In the beginning, John and his partners worked 18 hours a day and slept at the facility. With no plating experience, they made their suppliers teach them how to work the chemicals, the baths, and the process lines.
“None of them took a dollar for eight months,” Mark says. “It was all hard work.”
After each graduated from college, Mark and his brother, David, went to work for their father, who was now the owner of Belmont Plating Works. Their father worked at the facility until he passed away in 2003, at which time Mark and David ran the operation.
“Every year, we would expand it,” Toni says. “When my dad started, we were a hand operation, and we had 10,000 square feet. But now we have seven automatic lines, which is why we can turn around so much work, and we can do such a good job.”
But as Toni decreed, running the business is just as critical as finishing the parts. He is constantly looking at ways to grow margins and reduce inefficient operations where ever he finds them.
Take Belmont’s delivery and pickup service, for instance. Their base is generally around 80 miles or so from the, and the company often had its own drivers making the routes picking up and delivering parts to customers. A few years ago, Toni decided to lease the delivery and pickup operations to an outside firm, which he says saves him headaches.
“I used to own all my own trucks, but it was such a pain,” he says. “You had the DoT permits, you had the truck costs, even if I had bought new trucks, you got braking issues and mechanical things. If something happened, such as you couldn’t get drivers for your trucks, then they’re sitting there for a week or two.”
He still customizes his delivery trucks with the Belmont Plating Works’ name, and every two years, he gets promised a new set of trucks that will make the deliveries and pickups for them.
“They supply the drivers for us, so if one guy here was to take a vacation, I can’t afford to have a truck down,” Toni says. “They’ll send me another driver to get in that truck and keep going with my business. And it costs me more money to do that, but it’s the best thing we ever did.”
As for Capacity: ‘Bring It On’
Roy Newman and Mark Toni.Belmont Plating Works’ General Manager Roy Newman says the facility has enough capacity to handle new work, and the labor issues facing a lot of businesses haven’t put too big of a dent in staffing their operations.
“We get calls from people all the time who ask us how much capacity we have,” Newman says. “I tell them, ‘bring it on.’ We have unlimited capacity, to be honest.”
Toni says he has been blessed by having a team of managers running the office and the shop processes who have experience and know-how to handle jobs, even if they might be short-staffed or have some newer platers working lines.
“I’ve got managers that have been here for over 20 years,” Toni says. “I’ve got a good manager on a night shift, and I got two good managers on a day shift. They watch over everything and delegate jobs effectively.”
For example, if a job seems to be very intricate, the manager may assign it to a more experienced plater. Likewise, on easier jobs — such as a simple zinc coating — he can give it to this plater who is not trained as much.
“There is always a level of training going on in the shop, and you have to know who can handle what work,” Toni says.
Profits Down Due to Rising Costs
Belmont Plating Works did just about the same amount of work in 2022 as it did the previous year, Toni says, but their profits were significantly down due to rising costs such as fuel, supplies, chemistry, and labor.
But having a handle on the business operations — as well as the finishing operations going on on the shop floor — is what makes the difference in staying afloat or struggling to make ends meet.
“You can’t make your business any better when you’re doing it the most efficient way with the biggest barrels,” Toni says. “Then you are forced to raise prices, and that’s what we did last year. We went five years without raising prices, but last year wasn’t a normal year.”
In fact, Toni says he has to pay closer attention to all costs — big or small — because this is the most expensive he has ever seen to run a finishing operation. While he routinely upgrades or reconditions lines, things have become costlier than ever, with inflation and supply chain issues pushing the prices up of almost everything being utilized in a shop these days.
“What costs $1 million even six years ago is now close to $1.8 million,” Toni says of some upgrade costs. “Replacement parts on all these lines are huge money.”
The one saving grace for Belmont Plating Works and other job shops is that OEMs that have traditionally done their own finishing in-house have seen these costs rise, too, and therefore are getting out of the plating and finishing business.
“They had plating lines inside their plant, and they have gotten rid of them, and they’ve sent the work to us,” Toni says. “They don’t have to deal with people, they don’t have to buy chemicals, they don’t have to do the environmental; they just get a finished part from us, and it is so much better for them.”
