Private screening: The tale of an expanding fabrication business

If you were to spend a few minutes in conversation with Barbara Foster and Kristen Reinhardt, you’d think they were lifelong best friends. Although they don’t finish each other’s sentences, they sure seem to read each other’s minds. One picks up where the other leaves off, and the conversation proceeds seamlessly, alternating along the way. A main topic of discussion: How they work with customers to design decorative and functional projects for residences and businesses.

“Many customers come to us because they’re interested in a partition or a privacy screen, but they don’t know where to begin,” Reinhardt said. “We have a pattern library, and we have photos of most of our projects,” Foster said. Once they get a customer into a conversation, it doesn’t take long to learn what the customer likes and doesn’t like, and before long, they move from idea to concept to plan.

Neighbors and workout partners, they are the creative force behind Aesthetic Metals, a small company in Rockford, Ill., that specializes in all manner of indoor and outdoor products: privacy screens, sun screens, and room partitions; tables, pedestals, and other furniture; fire pits, fire rings, and fire tables; and planters, trellises, and garden sculptures (see Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3).

Founded in 2013, the business started as a project to fulfill a specific need close to home. Specifically, the Reinhardt home. “We needed a privacy screen for our own yard,” Reinhardt said. The Reinhardts purchased a plasma cutter and hired a machine operator who knew how to run it. They cut the panels, had them prepped and powder-coated at metal finisher Sub Source—a business Reinhardt and her husband own—and built the fledgling business from there.

Hold the Pickles, Hold the Lettuce

For decades fast-food joints were known for efficiency and rigid consistency—that is, no options—until Burger King’s 1974 jingle stressed that “special orders don’t upset us.” This is Aesthetic Metals’ niche.

“Many of our competitors have standard patterns and standard sizes, so the customer doesn’t have many choices,” Foster said. “One of our customers was working with a landscape designer who had a catalog of standard products,” Reinhardt said. “The customer didn’t see anything she really wanted, so the designer assured her that if she just picked one, she’d grow to love it.”

In a digitally driven world with CNC machinery, that’s appalling. Foster and Reinhardt are at the other end of the customer service spectrum, discussing ideas, offering choices, and taking great care to develop designs that thrill their customers. In fact, every order at Aesthetic Metals is a custom job, unique in pattern and color, and the proximity to Sub Source means fast turnarounds (see Figure 4 and Figure 5). The company doesn’t make products that go into inventory, it doesn’t sell through distributors or retailers, and it doesn’t put any barriers between its creative team and the customers. Reinhardt and Foster work hand-in-hand with each customer to develop and deliver one-of-a-kind fabrications. It’s not unusual for Aesthetic Metals to make an order of six identical designs in six unique sizes or a dozen unique designs in a dozen identical sizes.

“We made a series of leaves for Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Ill.,” Foster said. Intended to obscure a large air conditioning unit on the hospital’s roof, which was the main view from the surgery waiting room, the leaves were meant to give the patients’ families something pleasant to look at. It would have made little sense to replace a view of a metal box with a view of 16 identical decorations, so the leaves vary. Aesthetic didn’t repeat two designs eight times or four designs four times or anything like that. “Each of the 16 leaves has a unique design,” Reinhardt said.

Creating and optimizing the design can be a matter of balance. In some cases, Foster and Reinhardt put quite a bit of emphasis on the customer’s interests or hobbies; in others, they put quite a bit of consideration into the installation environment (see Figure 6). A successful execution is a matter of balance.

Located less than 100 miles from Chicago, Aesthetic Metals has made quite a few projects that have been installed at various locations around the Windy City. If you eat a meal in one of the many high-end restaurants, visit the museum campus, or get invited to a rooftop party, you might see one of Aesthetic’s creations. Rooftop decks are common destinations for their privacy screens, and the company’s work on such decks spawned a couple of unique orders. One was an order for a duplicate screen—a repeat order, a rarity for the company—when a Chicago resident decided to install a rooftop privacy screen identical to his neighbor’s screen. Another was an idea to add extra privacy, so Aesthetic augmented the screen with a sheet of Plexiglass®. Light gets through, but it provides 100 percent privacy.

One diehard Chicago Cubs fan in the Wrigleyville neighborhood wanted a sun screen for a pergola and incorporated a baseball in the design. Although the baseball in the sun screen is small, the result is dazzling: a large shadow that works its way across the deck as the sun travels across the sky.

This doesn’t mean that Chicago is its sole market. Reinhardt and Foster have found that exhibiting at tradeshows is a good way to get the word out, and the word has spread. They have established working relationships with a handful of architects and landscape designers, and the subsequent word-of-mouth advertising has propelled the growth of the business. Although the company is just a few years old, it has shipped products to both coasts and many locations in between.

Earning an A in Art Class

Eventually the company retired the plasma cutter and replaced it with a waterjet. The scope of materials includes steel in thicknesses from 16 gauge to 0.500 inch, aluminum in 1/16 and 1/8 in., stainless steel from 1/8 to ¼ in., and weathering steel in 10 and 12 gauge. Typical sheet sizes are 4 by 8 feet and 5 by 10 ft., although they can fabricate up to 5 by 12 ft. when necessary. Reinhardt, an art teacher by profession, found a strong complement in Foster, who has a strong aptitude for design. Reinhardt bends parts on the press brake and often runs the waterjet machine. She relies on a couple of part-time employees to roll and weld, while Foster is the main designer and project manager. Strong in art and design, and strong in soft skills, the partners think nothing of spending as much time as necessary on the design phase, especially when working with customers who aren’t too artistically inclined.

“We try to guide them gently,” Reinhardt said. In some cases, they proceed surreptitiously and surprise the customer with an extra detail or feature.

“We did a screen in a pine cone motif, and hidden throughout we placed the family’s initials,” Foster said. “The letters blended in beautifully,” Reinhardt said. They were so subtle that they weren’t even noticeable, but when Foster and Reinhardt pointed them out, the customer was thrilled about this additional, personal touch.

Although Reinhardt and Foster are knowledgeable about metals and fabricating, it’s clear that their company goals have little to do with making the most or the biggest or the hardest or the flashiest projects around. The company is based on a shared penchant for learning about each customer’s interests, developing designs that delight, and delivering projects that make the world a nicer-looking place.

“We get to make beautiful things,” Foster said, summing up Aesthetic Metals’ ethos.

Aesthetic Metals LLC, 600 18th Ave., Rockford, IL 61104, 815-316-4000, www.aestheticmetals.com