PORTSMOUTH -- When local entrepreneur Terry Cotton saw an unfilled domestic need for specialized flooring products, he also saw an opportunity to bring manufacturing jobs back into the country.
As chief executive officer and founder of Drytek Flooring Solutions Inc., he's doing just that and says, "It makes more sense cost-wise to manufacture locally than it does to import product manufactured abroad."
Within two years of operation, Cotton's Portsmouth-based company posted $6 million in sales for 2006, and he's forecasting growth of up to $35 million in annual revenue within five years.
The product is contract manufactured at Conproco in Dover.
Chris Brown, owner of Conproco, said, "The relationship between Drytek and our company is extremely positive and has allowed both organizations to grow and prosper."
A quick ride up to the Kittery, Maine, outlets provides more evidence of the company's initial success, with some of Drytek's national clients using their flooring products, including Gap, Gucci, Coach and Dolce & Gabbana.
The first major user of Drytek's unique self-leveling cement product was the nationwide retailer Target, which immediately saw the value of a product that would lower overall construction costs, reduce labor costs for implementation and allow for a quicker opening of its White Plains, N.Y., location by three months.
Overall savings for Target on that project alone was $225,000 and Drytek secured preferred-vendor status with the retailer nationally.
Drytek first opened its doors in March 2005, but the history behind the company extends much further. Originally from Rochester, Cotton followed his wife to her native Sweden more than 10 years ago, where he started U.S. Building Materials, a company that sold U.S.-produced building materials to the Scandinavian market.
Through his dealings abroad, Terry came into contact with a form of self-leveling cement being used in Europe that enabled construction times to be reduced from months to days.
"Once I noticed that this was a product that had a great amount of potential for the U.S. market, I decided to work with a (research and development) specialist to form my own brand of self-leveling cement," Cotton said. "The cement itself acts as a quick-drying surface that creates an alkali barrier between traditional substrates and finished flooring applications."
Through extensive market research in European markets and reverse engineering of similar products, Cotton said he eventually came up with Drytek, or "self-leveling cement light," as he calls it. The founder went as far as to market the term low alkali cement as a means of providing potential buyers an idea to grasp on how the Drytek product works.
The primary benefit to users of this unique application is a 10 percent to 15 percent cost savings on front-end materials due to the need for little substrate preparation, plus an equal amount of projected cost savings on labor and project efficiency.
Aside from trying to be a low-cost producer to capture market share against competition such as the much larger German rival, Ardex, Drytek is marketing the "green" advantages of its product as well.
According to marketing director Nathan Tennant, "Drytek is manufactured with up to 30 percent of recaptured industrial by-product that would otherwise end up in a landfill."
Tennant said Drytek's rise in the marketplace has been matched with a doubling in sales from 2005 to 2006, with the same expected for 2007.
Drytek also chooses raw-materials suppliers based on their proximity to its manufacturing locations as a means of reducing the amount of fossil fuels used in transport.
With 15 employees comprising a mostly sales and operations staff, Drytek services clients from Maine to Puerto Rico via regional and local distributors. These distributors are given regularly scheduled product seminars and updates as a means of keeping the sales channels abreast of product modifications.
As part of Drytek's long-term growth strategy, Cotton insists that it will be important to maintain a low number of trusted distributors -- not to exceed 15 --who understand Drytek's product nuances as they move across the country.
Cotton sees growth markets in points westward, including California and the Southwest, as well as a potential market test of a few undetermined Latin American countries. Cotton is also looking to establish production facilities the West or Midwest.
Beyond Latin America, China has also showed interest as a potential destination for Drytek products. But Cotton says market penetration into China would most likely require the help of a joint venture firm due to the complicated nature of doing business there.
