Business View Magazine | January 2020

83 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2020 CLARKE PRODUCTS , INC . segment, but it was not well-populated by competitors. We moved into it with a different approach. We decided to be aggressive and bold with our designs to make products that were, heretofore, not available. And that worked out quite well for us. We got a lot of attention because our designs were unique. We pursued a quality design initiative and we referred to our products as ‘museum quality functional art.’” In addition to its bold design initiatives, Clarke Products is also an innovator in the realm of automation and robotics, which helps to increase product quality while reducing the labor needed to process its unique bathtubs and showers. Recently, the company installed a new robotic fiberglass chopping operation, becoming the first company in North America to utilize such a system. “It’s roughly three times faster than a manual operation and the quality is better because there’s less rollout, meaning rolling the fiber into the wet resin. There’s less need for that with the robotics because it puts