I am posting it in here.)Once upon a time before some of you youngsters were even born, I took a job at a small factory here in my home town that made all sorts of vinyl coated fabrics for just about everything, from window blinds, to furniture covering, automotive, and wallcoverings. Later on, all we did was wallcovering, and the other products were made by other plants owned by the company. Owned by Monsanto when I started there, the plant was eventually bought by a Canadian company called Canadian General-Tower. Here's what we did, and how we did it:
http://www.omnova.com/products/wallcove ... uring.aspx
When I started working at the plant I only planned to stay there for a couple of years, until I had a car and some money saved up. Then I was going to go off on a road trip and see the continent of North America. But about 3 months after I bought the car they laid me off for 6 months. It was a nasty mini recession at the time, and I found no new job at all. So once I was called back I decided to stay on. And I did, for 14 more years. For most of my time there, I worked in the inspection department. If the place still existed, I would still be working there, and starting to look forward to retirement in a few years.
BUT one day we arrived at work to find most of the machines shut down, and others in the process of being shut down once the work at hand was finished. We learned at the end of the day that we were out of a job, effective immediately. The entire business of wallcovering manufacturing had been sold to a large competitor from the USA, namely Gencorp, of Akron Ohio.
Gencorp has since changed the focus of their company, and spun off Omnova in 1999. It would appear that Omnova has kept up with the times, none of our equipment looked anywhere near so grand as what you see in the photo. If you read the blurb on the page carefully you'll see that they boast of having one of the largest libraries of embossing rolls. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those were ours, because they got all of our proprietary printing and embossing rolls as well as the superior and unmatched at the time ink technology that we had developed all on our own, at our small facility.
For many years I couldn't decide who I resented more, C.G.T. for selling us out, or Gencorp/Omnova, for waving ever increasing amounts of money under the noses of the owners until they couldn't resist any longer. However these days I guess I should take pride that the only way Gencorp could get rid of us was to buy the company and shut it down. We were a genuine thorn in their side, for despite an aging plant and old machinery, we had superior quality, unbeatable ink technology, and a 2 week turn around time, when the very best they could manage was 3 weeks. I have it first hand from one of the girls at the order desk that many of our customers shed as many tears as we did about the shutdown. They most emphatically did not want to do business with Gencorp, because they needed the product NOW, and it would be "forever" before Gencorp could supply it, and even longer before they could incorporate our quality into their product lines.
