It’s not uncommon for a manufacturing company to sell multiple types of products for an array of industries. That’s part of an organization’s growth.

After 175 years, Watertown, Wis.-based Kusel Equipment Co. is a prime example of that type of evolution. 

Today, the company manufacturers both cheese-making equipment and stainless-steel drains but this was not always the case. 

The organization developed its drain line in the early 1980s after Ronald Millin, one of its plant managers, took a business trip to South Africa. While there, he noticed drains in a cheese plant application built from carbon steel and clad in stainless. 

According to David Smith, president and CEO of Kusel, after that trip, the company analyzed a sample drain that was brought back and decided to test the waters and create its own stainless-steel drains for the local dairy industry. 

“Our team looked at one of those drains and decided we can do this better and manufacture it completely from stainless steel,” Smith says. “The legend is that we hesitantly produced only 20 drains because we didn’t know if it was going to be successful. We leaped in as the first industrial stainless-steel drain on the market and since then haven’t looked back.”

Early Beginnings: Dairy and Cheese

The story goes that when the original owner, Daniel Kusel Sr., immigrated from Grabow, Germany to Watertown in 1849, he had $3,000 of gold in his pocket and the skills he learned for the tin-smithing trade, according to Smith. With those funds, he started a hardware store on Main Street, where in the basement he would repair and fabricate tin-smith products for the Wisconsin dairy industry.

In 1938, Kusel split the two facets of his business into two separate entities. Kusel Hardware remained and a standalone manufacturing facility, named Kusel Dairy Equipment, was born. After 136 years, Kusel Hardware ultimately closed in 1985 as the longest running hardware store in Wisconsin.

Initially, Kusel Dairy Equipment produced only dairy equipment for the Wisconsin and regional cheese industry, but evolved to manufacture products for the food processing industry as well. It formally changed its name to Kusel Equipment Co. in 1975 to reflect that growth. 

Robert Elfline purchased Kusel Equipment in 1973 and hired his brother-in-law Gary Smith to run operations and serve as president of the organization. Gary and his wife Jan owned a portion of the business as well, but bought out Elfline in 1977 and expanded its operations, moving the manufacturing company to its current location in 1978, where both its floor drain product lines and cheese-making equipment are built. 

The Smith family still owns and operates the company today, which is now run by Gary’s son Dave, who started working for his father in 1998, taking over the helm after his father passed away in 2014. 

Drain Expansion

The first drain product developed is very similar to the Model KE Series floor drain — its flagship product — and one of Kusel’s most popular drains sold on the market today. Initially, Kusel sold its drains to its contacts in the dairy industry, but the organization rapidly expanded to serve many other sectors as well. Today, the company manufactures an array of drains for the food processing, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Its products also fit well within many commercial kitchen applications. 

Currently, Kusel has 10 dedicated product lines, but that number is misleading, according to Smith, because the company often reconfigures or builds new products to meet a customer’s specific need. 

“We are a solutions provider with time-tested, proven designs that we can configure and customize off of, and we do a lot of late-model configuring of our product,” he explains. “Within our KE series drains, we have more than 2 million SKUs of KE drains, which can be modified to include different depths, outlets, covers or baskets, for example.” 

Off-the-shelf Kusel products include the KEM floor drains, KE floor drains, trench drains, standard floor cleanouts, closing cover floor cleanouts, P-traps, hub drains, floor sinks, floor troughs and a cleanout tee. 

“Whether it’s the end-user or specifier, ‘custom’ may be a dirty word because they think long lead time, expensive,” says Gene Curtis, director of marketing and sales at Kusel. “In our world, custom just means not one of our pre-configured products. It doesn’t need to be expensive or have a long lead time, it means it’s different from what we have available today with an established part number. 

“It all depends on if we can take our standard product and make the modification to it, but if have to, we start from scratch,” he says.

The Kusel Product Line

Kusel’s product lines are almost all continuously welded products, designed with sanitation in mind. They come in standard industrial blast or polished finishes and are made of 304 and 316L stainless steel.

“That goes back to our experience from food processing in the dairy world, so everything is geared around 3-A standards [American standards related to the design and production of equipment that comes in contact with food],” Curtis explains. “No food particles can get caught, so no bacteria grows. We focus on delivering the level of sanitation expected in a food processing facility.”

For easier maintenance, the drains can come with a variety of stainless-steel basket strainers and items to catch any debris that does get into the drain. In addition, the drains can be specified with an array of stainless-steel accessories made by Kusel, including cleanouts, P-traps, wall cleanout tees, floor sinks and floor troughs. The majority of its products also are NSF-listed with the appropriate American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ standards, and come with a lifetime warranty.

To help specifiers find the right product to fit their needs, Kusel developed a drain product configurator about two years ago, which can be accessed on the organization’s website (www.kuselequipment.com). With the product configurator, one can select from an array of sizes and options based on the application needs, including not only the material, finish and basket type, but the top type, body depth, outlet, cover and ring as well. 

“The product configurator is one of our biggest tools that we have out there for the customer,” Curtis notes. “It allows the engineer to design the drain needed, and then provides a customized specification sheet exactly to the details they’ve selected. It really helps them know what they’re going to get as they go through the specification process.”

If customers can’t find a product to fit their needs, one can always work with Kusel to customize a solution. For example, KE drains have been designed with a 24-inch body, and Kusel has added some trench drains with zero pitch to serve as a catch basin for overflow. 

“We love to have conversations with customers to determine what best fits their needs,” Smith adds. “We want to understand the ‘why’ and know that we provided the best solution possible.”

The Glue Keeping Kusel Together

Many of the employees at Kusel are lifers, working at the organization for their entire careers. For example, Ronald Millin, the plant manager who went to Africa and came back suggesting the company develop its own floor drains, worked for Kusel for more than 60 years, working part-time for the last years of his life.

“Ronnie started very young and continued past typical retirement, but we have many people who have worked for us for 50-plus years,” Smith says. “We’ve always done our best to treat our employees as family. We realize they have families that they’re supporting, so it’s important for us to be able to have that and honor God as we do it.”

The vast majority of the manufacturer’s production workers are skilled TIG welders, fabricators, press brake operators and metal finishers. Kusel also employs engineers and general laborers to contend with material handling and shipping.

That dedication can be attributed to the culture at Kusel, according to Curtis: “It’s what I consider our secret sauce. We have a great mix of specialty products in a great industry, and for 175 years we have fostered a culture here that allows people to come in and feel a part of the team quickly and share ideas. Having that voice and being able to feel heard — it’s what we do here internally that makes it a wonderful place to be.”

Yet that culture extends beyond its current operations and into the marketplace. 

“We’re very trusted because we underpromise and overdeliver. We have conversations with engineers, plumbers or whomever in the market has a need,” Smith adds. “We want to hear what their issue is and help come up with a solution that is good for everybody. The engineers who have specified our products love that the product is as they specify it.”

175-Year Milestone

After 175 years in business — and as one of the oldest companies in Wisconsin — Kusel prides itself on its ability to consistently deliver heavy-duty products and quality customer service. 

“It’s wonderful to see our drainage products, which have been installed now for almost 40 years, still have many decades of life in them,” Smith notes. “It’s similar on the cheese-making equipment side. We get calls from people who are making cheese every day with our products that were created  back in the late ’50s and early ’60s.”

 In celebration of its 175-year milestone this year, Kusel hosted an employee appreciation event in June for former and current employees. Kusel is also sponsoring the community’s Fourth of July parade and other events to get the word out about its company locally.

Congratulations, Kusel — here’s to 175 more years!