Home Made: Chilcote preserves photo memories

CLEVELAND--Chances are you have a keepsake photo album or pictures mounted in a display. Those manufactured items are Home Made.

Our lives have so many memorable moments, those trips to Cedar Point, wathcing the kids play sports, high school graduations.

Many of those memories saved in pictures, which fill shelves, mantles, and photo albums in millions of homes. The mountings of all those pictures is a Home Made Cleveland success story.

For 100 years, The Chilcote Company has been framing and displaying America's pictures.

"Anybody who's had a kid in soccer, or softball or basketball and you have a team picture or an individual picture in a Memory Mate, we're the largest manufacturer of those in probably, the world," proudly explains David Chilcote, company president.

100 years ago David Chilcote's grandfather, August A. Chilcote, started a little business to make cardboard mountings for the hottest thing going in those days, photographs of everyday folks.

Before long, he built the factory that still stands on Superior Avenue today. And nearly 400 Chilcote employees turn out hundreds of paper and foil products that are used by professinal photogrpahers and businesses all over the country.

"We keep competitive with the market, we try to stay one step ahead of things. The quality of our work is A-1 or it doesn't go out the door," says a Chilcote employee who was trained in the trade by his father. "It's a good place to work. The people are good, it's fabulous."

Running the factory floor is Yolanda Feliciano. "My job is to make sure the machines are running, the staff is here, and that we're producing quality products at a quick turn around as well," says Feliciano, who moved to Cleveland from the East Coast 13 years ago to work at Chilcote.

"We're always looking for good, positive, productive, and team oriented employees," says Feliciano, who said Cleveland's professional sports teams are what originally attracted her to the area.

Workers at Chilcote do tend to stay for a long time, and no wonder, they own the company. About half the stock is owned by employees, an arrangement David Chilcote says keeps everybody working together.

"There's a pretty good work ethic around here," says Chilcote, "we don't have much bureaucracy. There's not a lot of big cars in the parking lot."

Feliciano is one of those employee-owners, and agrees with David Chilcote. She says, "we've been around a hundred years, and we will be around another hundred."

So the next time you see a team picture or a wedding album, or a memento shot at Cedar Point, take a look at the handsome mounting all around those smiling people.

Chances are good that it's all Home Made.