Wisconsin Engraving marks 100 years with new, but familiar, owner

Wisconsin Engraving Co. is marking its 100th year in business with a new owner.

Pete Kambouris, the former vice president, bought the privately held New Berlin, Wis., company from his father, Chris Kambouris, and his father's partner, Bob Held, late last year.

The previous co-owners are "stepping back" and Pete Kambouris, 46, is now president of the company celebrating a century of engraving, polishing and texturing services.

Founded in March 1922, the business started out as Badger Engraving Co. after five partners put in $1,200 each. The original owners offered embossing plates and gold stamping dies for book and catalog covers, curved plates for printing on paper and wood boxes, and engraved rolls for the candy and cookie industry.

"All those crates you see at flea markets stamped Mrs. Smith's Apples 1925 — we made the hot stamps for those or the printing plates," Kambouris said in a phone interview.

These days, the company's services are used by the mold making and tool and die industries for mostly medical and consumer goods and some automotive parts. Rubbermaid and John Deere are among the customers.

For consumer goods, think of plastic containers with "BPA free" or "dishwasher safe" engraved on the bottom.

Kambouris sees electric vehicles as a new opportunity, and the automotive market is a place where Wisconsin Engraving can expand.

The company already does business with the semiconductor industry.

"We do some texturing for them for functional reasons," Kambouris said. "This goes back almost a decade. Everyone asked what kind of work can come from Silicon Valley. It turned out to be a good industry for us."

Also in the last decade, laser entered the landscape. The company invested in a five-axis laser but continues to do chemical etching, which involves programming and machining — the traditional means to texture a tool for injection molding.

Lasers eliminate seam lines and enable complicated geometrics but the jobs can take longer and cost more because of the expensive machine time involved.

While some shops offer only laser service, Kambouris said chemical etching still makes sense for a lot of engraving projects, especially when it comes to affordability.

"My competitors only have laser so that's what they push," he added. "Sometimes it's faster and cheaper, but not always. If I have a Ferrari, it doesn't make me a racecar driver."

When the pandemic hit, Wisconsin Engraving was busy. The management was concerned a shutdown was looming as state officials talked about what businesses were essential or not.

"We were able to carry on," Kambouris said. "Through our bigger medical customers I started getting letters [stating] that because we work for their suppliers that makes us essential."

Some of the new work was returning from overseas.

"A lot of people stopped offshoring because they were scared to travel and ships were stuck in the Suez Canal," Kambouris said. "Instead of sending it overseas, big corporations said, 'Let's try to keep it here this time,' so we did see an influx of business."

The engraving business owners have ridden out many economic storms, finding silver linings along the way, during the last century.

Seven years after Badger Engraving opened its doors, the Great Depression brought new challenges for U.S. businesses, but demand for engraving work and some complicated machining projects didn't let up.

"Engraving is a really broad term," Kambouris said. "We serviced everyone back then. We could handle the projects needing more detail, too, and we got a reputation for having more capabilities."

The company's location in the north end of Milwaukee also helped. Since about 1900, the city and surrounding region had gained a reputation as a skilled manufacturing center. The Menomonee River Valley was its engine, providing easy transport of supplies and products.

"Milwaukee in general was able to weather many economic storms because of the amount of manufacturing we have in this area. We were affectionately known as the 'machine shop of the world,'" Kambouris said, rattling names of companies like Johnson Controls, Bradley Corp., Allis Chalmers, Harley-Davidson and numerous breweries. "We survived, I believe, because we were supporting all these industries."

During World War II, the federal government gave Badger a building to increase its workforce to 90 employees. They were charged with engraving the degree marks for gun turrets on U.S. Army tanks in support of the Arsenal of Defense across Lake Michigan in the Detroit area.

The Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant, which was owned by the government and run by Chrysler, received its first contract to build 1,000 M3 tanks in 1940 and then M4 Sherman tanks, which have a turret-mounted 75-millimeter gun.

The plant set an all-time monthly production record by delivering 896 M4s in December 1942.

"Detroit did the big stuff and other things were done over here," Kambouris said.

As the war ended, the government suspended tank production. Badger Engraving almost dissolved. One of the co-owners eventually bought out his partners and changed name to Wisconsin Engraving.

Held's father then got involved with the business. He and his partner later sold it to Held and Chris Kambouris.

The new owners did a lot of metal stamping and tool and die jobs until the late 1960s, when plastic became more prevalent.

"We were already adding decoration to metal," Kambouris said. "When injection molding started showing up, we did work there and then picked up the texturing component of the company in 1970."

Texturing demand grew for everything from molds for picture frames to tackle boxes. Manufacturers could improve the product's cosmetic value, eliminate molding blemishes, maintain gloss level and conceal heat check, flow and sink marks.

Textures that replicated organic materials, such as wood grains, leather and animal skin, were popular at first.

"Then textures like pebbles and sand became standard to hide flaws in molding and add a level of quality to an otherwise boring blase plastic part," Kambouris said.

Even with the new texturing capability, automotive work was still mostly handled by Michigan competitors because of their proximity to automakers.

Kambouris uses the term competitors loosely because when needed, they are collaborators.

"We all get along for the most part and help each other when can," he said, pointing to a global organization called Surface Etching Cooperation (SEC), which has a global network of sister companies in Europe, Asia, South America and North America.

In North America, the SEC website shows Custom Etch Inc. in New Castle, Pa.; Melco Engraving Inc. in Rochester Hills, Mich.; New World Etching North America in Fraser, Mich.; and Kruth do Brasil in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil.

The group also has four company members in Europe and 15 in Asia.

Kambouris said his father and Held "ran a very tight ship" so he is taking over a business that is financially stable.

"That's why it was so easy for me to tackle buying both partners out," he added. "My financial partners agreed there are no worries. You've been with the company forever. We know you, your dad and Bob. We know the company is healthy. They made it easy."

Wisconsin Engraving will celebrate the latest retirements and its 100th anniversaries later this year.

Kambouris also is looking into having a book printed featuring many of the photos taken by a former employee, the late Herbert Rustler, an amateur photographer who immigrated to the U.S. after WWII.

"We got lucky that this gentleman made thousands upon thousands of slides. Some are funny. I see my brother and myself as 1- and 2-year-old kids at a company picnic. I'm going over them with his son [who is] a foreman who just retired," Kambouris said. "I literally grew up around most of these people."