Stuart Elfland
Title: President Metropolitan Cabinets & Countertops
Age: 59
Experience: 29 years
With multifamily construction booming, Stuart Efland is eager to produce kitchen and bathroom cabinets for all the apartments, condos, college dorms, assisted living facilities and other projects his Norwood factory can handle.
And with a precision-automated cabinet manufacturing and granite fabrication factory operating at full tilt at the company’s 85,000-square-foot headquarters in Norwood, it seems like he’s getting his wish.
The company was founded by Elfland and his father, Mike, in 1984, as a cabinet distributor, and has evolved into a designer and manufacturer of kitchen and bath cabinetry for both single-family homes and the multifamily market.
Efland, who is committed to U.S.-manufactured products, relies on computerized design and production systems to quickly produce the large numbers of cabinets needed for multifamily projects.
Q: How does your company’s computerized design and production help you compete for multifamily projects?
A: There are many advantages to the design software we incorporate, most notably the ability to automatically bring the project from design to shop-floor machining. This function ensures accuracy, as well as efficiency, as once the design is entered the software figures out the parts need to be cut, identifies the machine or machines responsible for milling each component and optimizes the material.
Q: What are some multifamily projects you’re working on?
A: National Development’s [Market Street] project in Lynnfield is a very large [retail] project that’s going to include residences. I offered to build on speculation a complete, full-size replica of the kitchen their interior designer designed. They sent the appliances, and I made the counter and cabinets. Eight [representatives] came to see it and then when they saw it, they didn’t like the way the grain was [vertically], so I took a door off the cabinet and put [the grain] another way [horizontally], and everybody said, “We love it.”
Q: What other projects are you working on?
A: We have a project going with Cresset Development in South Boston. They just ordered 200 kitchens from us for a project on D Street. … We have big projects with The Mount Vernon Co., and we also do Equity Residential in New York City. The way I got Equity is that I’ve always done business with the Rappaport [group] when they owned Charles River Park, and then they sold it to Equity. I actually got the Rappaports on a cold call. I sold them a vanity and it went well, and then I started selling them kitchens. … I can deliver a kitchen in three days.
Q: What’s the most challenging type of multifamily project you work on?
A: There’s two facets of multi-housing. There’s rehab and new. It’s an extremely different market because, like Chestnut Hill Realty [property management], is a big account. … They have to work in an occupied building, and so everything has to be beyond time-sensitive, because when they go in and tear out a kitchen they can’t have the hallways and everything disrupted because people are living there. …
Q: What’s the biggest project you’ve done?
A: Right now we’re doing the [laminate] countertops for Charlesview Apartments on Western Avenue for Harvard University, 500 kitchens. They went with Chinese product on the cabinets. I bid the cabinets and countertops. I lost the cabinet order, but got the countertop order. And I wanted to call them and say, “Do you really think that’s the best thing for Harvard [buying Chinese rather than American-made products?]” … This particular project consists of market-rate apartments. We have however worked on dormitories and faculty housing with Babson, Bentley, Boston University and Boston College.
Q: What are your thoughts about the future of your company?
A: I’m very optimistic. We are one of the strongest local manufacturers committed to the multifamily industry. The clients that have survived are the ones that were well-financed. … You have to go to work every day saying, “It’s going to be a good day.”
Stuart Elfland’s Five Favorite Golf Courses
- Blue Hill Country Club, Canton
- Pine Brook Country Club, Weston
- Charles River Country Club, Newton
- Willowbend Country Club, Mashpee
- Macomet Golf Course, Nantucket
