Huntwood Industries Inc.'s employment has slipped further this winter, but the big Spokane cabinetmaker believes that its growing commercial project sales department is about to bear fruit.

That department seeks sales of the company's products for sizable construction and remodeling projects such as those at hotels, schools, hospitals, and professional offices, says Brandon Hunt, Huntwood's manager of sales administration.

"It is a hard and slower than usual winter, but we have a lot of good sales coming up and a few projects landed for the spring and summer that will cause us to increase employment again," Hunt says. "I can easily see us going back up to and over the 620 overall count" of employees provided to the Journal of Business in November.

Since November, the Liberty Lake-based cabinet manufacturer is down about 50 to 60 positions, due mostly to "normal attrition," Hunt says.

The company now has around 550 to 560 employees, including people who work out of the Spokane area such as "floating" sales employees who handle sales in more than one place, Hunt says. This month, it reported having 443 full-time-equivalent employees in the Spokane area, down from 677 in February 2008.

"Our company is doing very well," Hunt says. "Our project sales department is really starting to take off, and we are landing a lot of good commercial project sales. Some of these projects are local, and some are all over the United States."

Huntwood plans to hire 50 to 75 people in the spring when it begins production to supply a few more of the commercial projects, he says.

Such commercial projects made up less than 5 percent of Huntwood's sales in 2008, but are expected to comprise about 20 percent this year, he says.

"It's quite encouraging," he says of the increase in commercial-project sales.