By Karl D. Forth – OWENSBORO, Ky. — With thousands of customers across North America, Phillip Crabtree has elected to close the retail cabinet division of Phill’s Custom Cabinets in Owensboro to focus on the web-driven portion of the business, Cabinotch, according to http://phillscabinets.com
Earlier this year, Columbia Forest Products sold its Cabinotch Division to Cabaxis Inc, an affiliate of Phillip Crabtree, the originator and creator of the cabinet box system.
The Cabinotch cabinet box system, which involves a patented interlocking joint, helps shops reduce costs and improve productivity. Cabinotch provides a custom-sized “cabinet chassis,” including the face frame, sides, backs, bottoms, tops and shelves that cabinet shops can finish and assemble themselves.
Components can be ordered online or via a completed custom design utilizing partner design software, and are shipped within 5-7 working days of order placement. Box parts are customizable to within 1000th of an inch.
Phill’s Custom Cabinets was started in 1975 by Phill and Paula Crabtree. Phill was born a sharecropper’s son Kentucky, and was one of ten children. In 1973, Phill and Paula bought a rental house that needed kitchen cabinets, which Crabtree built. That led to Phill’s Custom Cabinets, and its 45 years of success in Owensboro. The cabinet shop created opportunities for not only the Crabtrees but for hundreds of woodworkers.
The couple’s youngest child, Phillip II, joined the operation in 2000. The company has been flourishing since its inception and has received multiple patents and two international awards for innovation and advancements in woodworking. The company started to look differently at its processes and investigated other automated equipment available to improve their business. The Cabinotch online business built by Crabtree allows other cabinet shop owners, handymen or women, to benefit from the technology. See http://cabinotch.us/