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Wrought Iron Solutions, LLC N7487 County Road
E Ripon, WI 54971
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email:
BrokeAnvil@aol.com
sales@wrought-iron-solutions.com Phone: 920-748-7117 Fax:
920-748-7118
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We are gratified to be able to announce that we have never
let a customer go from us without being satisfied. The infrequent times that
there has been a problem, we have corrected it with the end result that our
customers were delighted with both our products and with our services.
From The Ripon Commonwealth Press - No. 15, 138th
year, April 11, 2002
by Tim Lyke
"From Texas to Ripon: Family offers Wrought Iron Solutions
Items from local store in the Rosie Magazine
What do you get when you combine old-world craftsmanship
with new-world technology?
Solutions.
Wrought Iron Solutions fashioned by bending, folding, and
pounding steel into decorative and functional products for home and garden.
Ripon's new store, Wrought Iron Solutions, offers a wide
variety of pre- and custom-designed products including mobiles, candle holders,
towel bars, wine racks, light switch covers, yard signs, fireplace screens and
tool sets, business card holders, coat racks bar stools, decorative frying pans
and more.
"We do all kinds of strange things," said Mark Brown, who
with wife, Vicki, moved their 8-year-old business last August from Scurry, Texas
(Southeast of Dallas) to Ripon.
Their decision to move to the north was due to Vicki's
desire to be closer to family members, who continue to live in her hometown of
Fond du Lac.
"I'm just a guy from Texas who came to Wisconsin to be
with the woman he loves," jokes Mark, who spent 30 years working in the sheet
metal business before deciding to turn a casual craft into a vocation.
"This started out as a hobby," he said from the business'
retail shop and manufacturing headquarters at 608 Stanton Street. "I'd make a
few things for myself and close friends. Then I started to get requests from
friends of friends ... I retired from the sheet metal trade to do this full
time."
The Browns' "hobby" is gaining national recognition. The
March 2002 edition of Rosie magazine has a home-decorating pictorial
headlined "Cowboy Cool" that features among its furnishings eight items from
Wrought Iron Solutions.
Their inclusion in the magazine stemmed from the Browns'
familiarity with Joy Safer, the decorator for the photo shoot whose daughter is
an editor the talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell's magazine.
Among Wrought Iron Design's products featured in the
six-page photo spread are a light-switch cover, bookends, curtain hangers, coat
rack and lamp.
The Browns have appreciated the publicity. "We've gotten
some orders from it," Vicki said.
They sell their products via retail and wholesale,
having recently received and order for about 100 medal [sic] stands to hold
vases produced by a glassblower in Aurora, Calif.
The Browns will feature the retail portion of their
business with a grand opening this week through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
They'll serve refreshments and have drawings for gift certificates.
When the Browns decided to move closer to Fond du Lac,
they planned to move to a small town, either Ripon or Princeton.
"Ripon had the facilities we need," Mark said. He is
leasing the building from Doug Jacobson, who operated his Modern Rentals
business there before moving to 456 N. Douglas St.
"I love Ripon," Vicki said. "I like a little town better
because I'm close enough to my family so that I can see them any time I want."
Their ability to move to Ripon was a by-product of the
Internet. After Vicki designed a web page for Wrought Iron Solutions, the
Browns learned that they didn't have to be tied down to Mark's hometown of
Scurry, Texas.
"With internet sales we could move virtually anywhere,"
Mark said...
...Because the business is still new - its showroom
continues to be a work in progress - much of Wrought Iron Solution's retail
customers have been people who found the web site by chance on the Internet
after typing "wrought iron" into a search engine.
..."We make many, many custom items, pretty much anything
you can think of," said Mark and Vicki's son, Tim.
...Joel Keplin recently gave the Browns an old, 26-inch
saw blade that they turned into a silhouette portrait of two loons swimming in a
marsh.
..."The main point of our business," Mark said, "is that
we are only limited by our customers' imaginations..." "
Check out the March 2002 issue of the Rosie Magazine.
Our products are featured in it.
Rosie bought a house in Michigan for a family and
furnished it for them. A number of the furnishings were bought from us. The
photos are great.
From The Marketeer Volume 4, No. 7 May
1998 Published in Canton, Texas [Wrought Iron] Solutions Designs Western
Metal Art
"No matter what it is, Wrought Iron Solutions, can create your
metal dreams."
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