Muskego-based InPro Corp., a manufacturer of interior and exterior architectural products used in the health care, hospitality, education, government, marine and retail sectors, recently completed a 102,000-square-foot expansion of its headquarters.
The majority of the new space is used for InPro’s distribution center and warehouse. The company formerly leased about 48,000 square feet of space in New Berlin for warehousing and distribution, about seven miles from its manufacturing facility and headquarters at S80 W18766 Apollo Dr. in Muskego, said Evan Bane, public relations manager.
InPro was able to move its warehousing and distribution functions to its expanded space in Muskego in late 2005, he said. The move has allowed the company to save transportation costs and streamline its operations.
“There’s no more trucking,” he said. “It all flows from manufacturing to our distribution center or to our docks on the west side of the building.”
After just six months in the expanded facility, Bane said, InPro has made big improvements in efficiencies.
“The main thing is the flow,” he said. “We ship in days, while our competition ships in weeks. If we can take stuff off the line, package it and put it on a truck, it will save us steps.”
The expanded space also features 15,000 to 20,000 square feet of office space. Only half of that office space has been built out now, Bane said.
The expansion also included a new lunch room for the company’s staff. The old lunch room has been converted into the Muskego Room, a meeting area that community organizations can reserve for free use.
Even though InPro has additional room to handle its future office expansions, the company also has more space in Muskego’s industrial park for future projects. That land includes its parking lot and a former dental clinic on the south side of Apollo Drive.
A large portion of the company’s newly constructed office space will be dedicated to InPro’s sales staff, set to grow by about 30 percent later this year.
The company has about 100 sales staff now, and it’s planning to add another 30 people to that department, Bane said.
“We’re trying to put the staff in place to cover a logical progression,” he said.
That logical progression has taken InPro from about $36.5 million in revenues in 2003 to just less than $50 million in 2005. Average annual sales growth has been about 9.3 percent, Bane said, and InPro is expecting to see revenues of more than $50 million for 2006.
“Everyone says we want to get to be a $100 million organization,” he said. “We want to grow, but do so by providing the best service. By adding that many sales personnel, we want to accelerate the time to being a $100 million company.”
Aside from hiring more sales staff, InPro is also looking for new niche markets to sell to. Although the company is strong in the health care market, Bane said it is looking for additional places to gain more market share. One of those is in assisted living, an area expected to see significant additional development as the baby boom generation ages.
“There will be phases and the care levels will change,” Bane said. “The idea is that aesthetic will drive a lot of this – the sense that this is a nice place to live that doesn’t look like a nursing home.”
Because many of InPro’s products are used in hospitals, nursing homes and other health care facilities, the company may be able to tweak or modify their design to have more of a residential feel to them, Bane said.
Although veterinary clinics provide health care to animals instead of humans, many of InPro’s products are marketable to them, because they have similar needs. Some examples of those include corner guards, kick panels for doors and other wall guards that InPro currently makes.
“They have corners, doors and walls that leashes and claws can scratch up and damage,” Bane said. “It’s just animal health care instead of human.”
InPro is also examining the growing market of ambulatory care and day surgery centers, as well as kidney dialysis centers.
“We’re getting better at penetrating the markets we’re in and leveraging our markets,” Bane said.
InPro Corp.
Headquarters: S80 W 18766 Apollo Dr., Muskego
Employees: 305
Web site: www.inprocorp.com
Annual revenues:
about $50 million
