By Joe Morris

morris@wvgazette.com

MILTON - Blenko Glass Co. is building its future on building blocks.

The storied glass plant has begun ramping up production of glass bricks and tiles and sees this business line eventually overtaking its decorative glassware product lines.

"People know the glassware side, but they're not as familiar with the architecture side," says Brent Aikman, the glass plant's newly hired sales director for architectural business.

"There will always be a market for the tableware and decorative glassware," he said. "But to take this company to the next level, this side of the business is going to make up a bigger part of the revenue."

For the past 20 years or so, architectural business has accounted for about 25 percent of Blenko's revenue, while tableware and decorative glassware sales made up 75 percent. The goal is to reverse that ratio, with architectural sales generating 75 percent, Aikman said.

The bricks, sized similarly to ceramic construction bricks, are typically stacked in light-emitting walls or fashioned as privacy- providing windows. Blenko's "Fairground tiles," or colored-glass slabs, are popular as kitchen backsplashes, shower tiles and countertops. They're sealed together with epoxies, mortar or grout, or fixed into wooden frames and held together by their own weight.

The bricks come in four colors - amber, turquoise, light green ("Coke bottle") and light blue - as well as in a clear crystal, and retail for $15.50 apiece.

Blenko's biggest brick customer so far is the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where the new $59 million Thomas Jefferson Hall Library will feature exterior walls made of more than 9,000 amber-colored Blenko bricks. Blenko is in between shipments to the New York state academy.

Aikman said his job will be to pitch Blenko bricks to architects and landscapers across the country as well as to major homebuilding companies like Pulte Homes Inc. and Toll Brothers Inc.

Blenko's chief competition comes from Chinese manufacturers and Toledo, Ohio-based Owens Corning, Aikman said. Their assembly lines produce bricks and tiles that cost less and look factory-made perfect, while each of Blenko's are distinguished by the bubbles and swirls that betray the handmade process.

"They're all handmade, from the pouring and curing to the shipping," Aikman said. "We look at this as one of the last great bastions of American crafts."

In fact, Blenko, founded 86 years ago, is the last U.S. plant to hand-blow sheetglass.

Today, it employs 55 to 60 people, depending on how fast orders are coming in, Aikman said. In the 1960s, it had about 250 employees. The plant has the capacity for 16 glassmaking ovens, with seven now burning, Aikman said.

Restoring the plant's output is a question of updating its business approach, not production methods, he said.

"We can't change how we make glass, but we can change how we do business," Aikman said. In the past, Blenko hadn't marketed itself much to builders. Nor has it automated much of its distribution.

But now the plant is implementing a barcode system for its shipments as part of "a total revamp of the business model," Aikman said.

Targeting the architecture business, meanwhile, could push the plant to its capacity, Aikman said.

"We want to have enough business where we look down the road and have to build another facility," he said. "That would be a good problem to have."

Part of that problem would entail finding skilled glassworkers, which Aikman said Blenko hopes to address through internships with area schools.

Typical plant workers are in their mid-40s. Replacing them as they retire will take years of training, as well as a special kind of worker, says Randy Rider, 45, a glassworker has been at Blenko since 1980.

"You have to take pride in your work here," he said. "It's not unusual for new hires to quit after just a few hours on the job, he said. The payoff is, you escape much of the drudgery that comes with office work, he said. "This is somewhere you can show your skills."