A company doesnt get to be 119 years old without being able to change with the times. Spokane-based Coeur dAlenes Co. certainly has done that.


Launched in 1884 as a supply house to miners in Idahos Silver Valley, the longtime steel distributor and fabricatorwhich for a time also built bridges and massive satellite disheshas adapted to the ebbs and flows of the industries it serves, changing its offerings, its location, and even its name to remain viable.


Its adapting again. This month, the company will begin doing business as CdA Metals, a move thats more significant than just a name change. The new dbaCoeur dAlenes Co. will remain the name of the corporate entityreflects a strategy the company has adopted over the past few years: to broaden its offerings and customer base in recognition that its traditional markets are declining.


Coeur dAlenes Cos.s fabrication business has diminished greatly as its biggest fabrication customersmainly mines and aluminum smeltershave cut back or ceased operations.


The market is in a constant state of change, says company Vice President Joel Simpson. The economic infrastructure of our customer base is very fluid, and in our business it must be monitored every day.


With fabrication now a minor piece of its overall business, the scrappy company has relied more heavily on its steel service center, which does business as Stock Steel. That operation processescuts and bendssteel, and, more recently, aluminum, and distributes it to customers throughout much of Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon. It also has launched a new concept called a convenience store, at which commercial and even residential customers can buy small quantities of pre-cut metal products, including decorative wrought iron and cast metals for fences and other uses.


Next week, the company opens its fourth such store, in Pasco, Wash. It currently operates convenience stores, which already use the CdA Metals name, next to its main facility at 3900 E. Broadway here, and in Dalton Gardens, Idaho, just north of Coeur dAlene, and Wenatchee, Wash.


Like the other three convenience stores, the new Pasco store will occupy about 4,000 square feet of floor space. Initially, it will employ two or three people, but likely later will grow to six employees, based on the growth of the Tri-Cities market, says Simpson. The other three stores typically employ three to four people each, he says.


There has been another big change at Coeur dAlenes Co. Late last year, the company quietly went private after nearly 10 years of being publicly traded. The Spokane concern had gone public back in 1993 by merging with the corporate shell of a former public mining company. It kept the Coeur dAlenes Co. name and its stock became available on the over-the-counter market.


At one time, the company had a couple of thousand shareholders, but that number dwindled to 755 by the end of last year, at which point it conducted a reverse stock split in which smaller shareholders that ended up with just a fraction of a share were cashed out. The company now has about 130 shareholders, about two thirds of whom are employees, says CEO Jimmie T.G. Jim Coulson.


Coulson says that being publicly traded hadnt met the companys goal of providing a way for shareholders to have a ready vehicle to sell their shares or buy more, because market demand for the stock lagged. Also, the regulatory requirements of being publicly traded were expensive and time consuming, he says.


The company currently employs 62 permanent workers and another four temporary employees. It at one time employed more than 240 people, but its work force shrank as fabrication work from the regions aluminum industry declined and the Northwest Alloys Inc. magnesium smelter at Addy, Wash., closed. By early last year, it employed about 55 people.


Now that Coeur dAlenes Co. is privately held, it doesnt release revenue or profit numbers. It says, however, that its revenues this fiscal year, which ends in September, are expected to be about 15 percent higher than last year, essentially bringing the company back to where it was before the aluminum industry and Northwest Alloys curtailments.


In its final 10-K report as a publicly traded company, Coeur dAlenes listed fiscal 2002 sales of about $11 million, down 15 percent from fiscal 2001. It posted net income of $148,000.


Our company was profitable last year and will be this year as well, says Marilyn Schroeder, vice president and chief financial officer.


The companys 84,000-square-foot steel service center in East Spokane stocks, modifies, and sells metal products ranging from steel beams, sheets, rods, and pipes to aluminum products, stainless steel, and alloys.


Nearly all of the inventory the plant handles arrives via rail. A spur line that runs through the end of the plant, and the company operates a small switching locomotive to move rail cars in and out of the bustling facility.


Though the company does little full-fledged fabrication these daysenough to keep just three of its workers busyit does modify in some way about 60 percent of the product it handles. That work can range from cutting metal to the dimensions ordered by a customer, to bending it to specification, to cutting intricate shapes using its massive plasma cutter, which operates on a 21-foot-by-50-foot water table.


Last month, Coeur dAlenes Co. installed a new 400-ton press brake capable of bending to precise specifications steel plate up to one-half inch thick and 14 feet long. The $110,000 machine is faster and more accurate than an older, mammoth, 750-ton press brake, nicknamed Orange Crunch, that the company still operates. It also has a 20-foot sheer, called Orange Slice, for cutting metal, as well as smaller press brakes, sheers, and an assortment of saws, forming devices, welders, and threading and grooving equipment.


Larry Coulson, the companys vice president and general manager and Jim Coulsons son, says Coeur dAlenes Co.s goal is to fill every order within a day. On days when the company reaches that goal, every employee gets incentive pay. One month this spring, only nine out of about 3,000 orders failed to meet deadline, he says.


The company operates its own fleet of 10 trucks to deliver products to customers, which mostly are manufacturers, machine shops, fabricators, sawmills, mines, construction companies, and agricultural concerns.


Its new convenience-store outlets carry common cuts of metals that customers can come in and buy on the spur of the moment, as well as a huge assortment of decorative wrought iron and cast products for fences, gates, and other ornamental uses. Counting those varied decorative pieces, the stores carry roughly 10,000 different items, says Simpson.


The company launched the concept in an attempt to broaden its customer base to non-industrial clients. About half of the business the stores get we wouldnt get otherwise, says Jim Coulson.


The company also continues to look at Missoula, Mont., and the Boise area as possible locations for future additional stores, Coulson says.


Long history


Coeur dAlenes Co. originally sold metal and supplies to mining prospectors in Murray, Idaho, under the name J.R. Marks & Co., and later became Holley, Mason, Marks & Co.


It moved back and forth between Spokane and North Idaho and had other names over the years, including Coeur dAlene Hardware Co., before becoming Coeur dAlenes Co. in 1960.


Later that decade, it settled for good in Spokane when it merged with Spokane-based Union Iron Works, a company that among other things built steel bridges and big satellite dishes for NASA.


Overexpansion in the heavy-equipment business and big cost overruns on bridge construction projects forced the company into Chapter 11 reorganization in the late 1960s, but it emerged from U.S. Bankruptcy Court protection three years later.


The company at one time operated plants in Seattle, Boise, Salt Lake City, and Great Falls, Mont., but those operations all have been sold off, leaving just the Spokane plant and the four convenience stores.