KANKAKEE, Ill. — Brothers Michael and Patrick Ryan build and assemble cabinets for a living – not everyday cabinets of wood, but heavy duty steel components guaranteed for a quantitative lifetime of 55 years by the local Stor-Loc company they co-founded in 1991.

“Our primary business is the heavy duty larger door system that goes into cabinets and shelving, workbenches and tool boxes,” noted Michael Ryan, who serves as company president. “We are distributors to corporations and manufacturers – that’s how we started. And when the country went into the recession of 2009-2010, we needed new markets.”

Stor-Loc was fortunate to get into the agriculture market, Ryan said – “which has been very good for our company and is about 40 percent of our business today,” he added. “We developed a lot of new products for the farm shop. It’s worked really well for us as well as for our customers.”

Stor-Loc manufactures a modular door system of steel that was originally designed in Switzerland in the late 1970s. This tooling is still used today, and is American-made.

“It’s 100 percent made in the USA out of 100 percent USA components, which is very important to the farmer as well as to us,” he said. “It’s only made in the United States, it’s guaranteed for 55 years and it really is the best product available in the world because it adheres to the old heavy duty manufacturing principle of years ago.”

When this industry began in America in the 1940s, all cabinets were formed and welded, a practice to which Stor-Loc still adheres. “We still do that today,” Ryan noted. “We’re the ‘last of the Mohicans’ – we’re the last company that does it that way. That’s why it’s so heavy duty. That’s why we can guarantee it for a quantitative lifetime, which is 55 years.

“Most engineers today are taught to try to take reduced costs to make it (again) later. This is known as value engineering. That’s how they do it. We don’t do that. We make it heavier duty.”

Products expected to be practically or stylistically obsolete within a certain time period – such as 20 years, for example – can be designed to last for that time period, as building them with higher-grade components is more expensive to both the manufacturer and purchaser. Value engineering reduces the cost because a company typically uses the least expensive components to conform to the product’s lifetime expectancy.

Stor-Loc is a division of Ryan Metal Products of Kankakee. The company provides a wide range of products. Among them are drawers, cabinets, workstations, computer numerical control and tool storage systems. Accessories include slotted partitions, steel dividers, liners, plastic bins, anti-static bins, plastic trays and standard drawer layouts. The Stor-Lock Modular Drawer System also offers full-length handles and a safety Interloc System.

 Michael and Patrick Ryan learned the industry after working about eight years for the market leader. The brothers then started their own business and were able to acquire the Stor-Loc product in 1991.

“We started from scratch,” Ryan said. “We had the tooling, but we didn’t have the equipment. We were able to accumulate that over the years.

“(Our product) is 100 percent made right here in Kankakee, Illinois. We do our own fabrication, welding and painting. Everything’s assembled here. It’s truly a 100 percent USA-made product.”

Farmers are among the company’s many customers pleased with the fact Stor-Loc products are American-made.

They also like the 55-year product guarantee because “it kind of reverses the risk,” Ryan noted. “I mean that they don’t have any risk when they buy a Stor-Loc product. Farmers like to keep their word, and as long as you keep your word to them, they’re very happy. They tell their friends and they buy again. They keep coming back.

“We listen to them and they give us ideas on how to develop the product they want and what they need. We’ve listened to them and we’ve developed our product accordingly. We’ve come out with a lot of new designs the last three to four years.”

When the brothers began their company, their business box demonstrator was a six-foot model. Today that same box is 14 feet in size. The bigger box is a toolbox or workbench and answers their farm customers’ quest for a place to centralize their items.

“Your efficiency goes way down when you’re walking around looking for things,” Ryan explained. “We cut that down quite a bit. One of the main benefits of our product is that you can retrieve the item stored twice as fast. You’re reducing your walking, you’re reducing your search time, you save a lot of space.”

To reach Stor-Loc, call 915-936-0700 or, toll free, 800-786-7562 or 800-315-8769 or visit www.storloc.com