The shop at Cullman Cabinet is seen in October 2022.

Few manufacturing decisions affecting the direction of a major business are ever open and shut — and that’s the case even if your business is building doors and drawers.

In fact, Cullman Cabinet & Supply goes a few steps further. When this Cullman company makes foundational decisions it’s a family affair: Established in 1947 by Robert Edge, the factory today has four generations working on its board of directors and on the floor of its 164,250-square-foot-facility.

“Every decision we’ve ever made … has been a family decision,” said Danny McAfee, a retired former vice-president who, like the company’s past president James Edge, continues to be a presence at the company to consult and add their decades of experience to current operations. “We get together and look and the pros and cons.”

That look included what McAfee noted was the company’s biggest, and most risky, business decision.

Led by James Edge, the company began supplying other cabinet companies with doors in the 1980s. In 1985, Cullman Cabinet stopped cabinet production to concentrate on supplying the industry with cabinet doors and post-formed countertops.

“We struggled with that decision for a few years before we finally decided to pull the plug,” said McAfee. “We wondered if 1986 would be a good year, but it turned out to be a record year — and so was every year after that.”

Continuing its tradition of full family involvement, other monumental decisions followed.

“It was the same way with the countertops going green,” McAfee said, alluding to how the company reworked its production lines to use environmentally friendly water-based adhesives. “That was a struggle because we knew that it would be a difficult decision — it was like you had to learn everything all over again. Just forget everything you knew about making countertops and learn all over again because the process was so different. That was a tough decision, but we always address decisions as a family and decide, based on our experience, what we feel like the future is.”

Today, that future includes the insights not only of the whole family, but the current company president, Robert Edge.

“As far as what we see in the future, we feel like that the products that we make will always be around,” Edge said. “There’s some things that do stay the same, but other out-of-date fads change. In fact, with cabinet doors, the style of doors made now are different than they were made 20 years ago. In 2008, everything went plain. So, the doors that we make now are very simple. Prior to that everybody wanted their cabinets a little like furniture — they were heavily molded and carvings on their cabinets and everything.

“So, those things change — but they’re always going to need cabinet doors, and we’re just going to always be the preferred product for a cabinet door. You’re going to always need countertops. The products that we make are things in the building industry that we feel will always be needed. So the future of the company is very strong.”

Also boosting the company’s environmental processes, Cullman Cabinet sources its materials from within the United States.

“All of our materials are domestic,” Edge said.

Yet, while the hardwoods and other raw materials have evolved little in 75 years, Edge noted that the company’s largest changes are those that are here to stay.

“Automation in the machinery” has been key to the current success of the company, he said — allowing the company to ship 10,000 manufacture pieces each day and employ a local workforce in excess of 130 skilled employees, including his own family.

“Pretty much after I came home from college I started full time, and then been here ever since,” Edge said. “I’ve actually been out on the floor for 45 years.”

And after he and his children? A fifth generation, he said, is just waiting in the wings.

Founded: October 1947

Number of employees: 135

Number of founder family generations working in the company today: 4

Number of manufactured pieces shipped daily: 10,000-plus

Name of the company’s retail division: “The Added Touch,’ including lighting, furniture, artwork, gifts and interior designing services with the anchor story at the main plant.