A designer tub from MTI Baths. Photos provided.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
AUG. 5, 2022 | It’s a beautiful Gwinnett success story. It started in 1988 with a new way to make acrylic bathtubs, with water jets for relaxing baths. It took off with a new owner, going from a handful of employees to 280 workers today.
MTI Baths in Sugar Hill has prospered. The tub maker recently was acquired by the Engineered Stone Group of Spain, which announced an expansion by 50 percent in Sugar Hill. They’ll soon have 225,000 square feet of space.
A self-made J.C .Henry of Duluth took over a bankrupt company in 1988. He was something of a tinkerer, adopting new ideas, still in use today, at making the tubs. Soon he brought on board an accountant, Kathy Adams, an Atlanta native, who became the chief financial officer.
Kathy had graduated from the University of Georgia in a little over two years while her husband, Walt, studied law. She taught for a year, found she didn’t like it, and returned to school at Georgia State in accounting. She passed the CPA exam on her first try.
Adams
After two years with the firm, in 1990 Kathy developed the idea of using the company’s 401K program for the employees to buy the company. Its workers became its owners, a thriving company with dedicated employees. Meanwhile, Katherine, always the creative one, devised new products to make, and new ways to market.
The company offered quick shipment for custom tubs, often within a week, unusual in the industry. MTI Baths also stressed quality, design, innovation and customer service. New products flourished.
Kathy lives in Decatur with her husband Walt, a retired lawyer for the Department of Labor. Kathy retired recently at the sale of her company. Their son, Russell, continues as president under the new owners.
Early on, the company expanded from tubs to shower bases, then into sinks and other bath related products. Today about 40 percent of its business is in acrylic tubs, and a similar amount in engineered stone tubs of natural granite and marble, bonded with resin.
MTI baths, once it started significant production, got a lot of attention winning “best in show” ideas at trade shows. Later Kathy began marketing directly. The company bought a six bedroom house near Sugar Hill, the Woodward Mill House, and would invite several representatives from two different companies at a time to spend two days with the company. It became their “hospitality house.”
It worked this way. On Mondays, two different retail groups would arrive at the Atlanta Airport, be picked up and transported to their quarters at the house. They were treated to dinner that night at a Buford restaurant. They returned to the Woodward Mill House, which had fixtures of products that MTI Baths made, for them to use just as they would in their homes. On Tuesday, they were given a plant tour to understand the MTI Baths manufacturing process.
Tuesday night they got a big helping of Southern hospitality and locally cooked meals at the Woodward Mill House. Wednesday mornings they were returned to the airport, where MTI Baths picked up two more groups to show off the company the last half of the week, before returning them to the airport on Friday.
Russell Adams grins when he says simply: “It was our biggest marketing tool. We took what we had been spending at trade shows and put it into the Woodward Mill House. That investment paid off handsomely.”
Doesn’t the MTI Baths story and Kathy Adams’ role in growing the company make you think of that Gwinnett slogan, “Success Lives Here?”
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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