February 18, 2003/ It's hard to imagine that it all started in a basement with some mold and a few sticky fingers, but Marshall Walters, president and CEO of Architectural Polymers, will certainly testify to the New Ringgold's company's humble beginnings.

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His best friend, a man named Rick Fasching, helped him, and the two longtime buddies sold their creations to local bars. Walters says, "The molds where of various hand gestures that stood for peace signs, thumbs up, 'I'm number one,' and 'You missed it by this much.' We sold them for around $10 each."

At the time, Marshall and Fasching were working in precast concrete at J&R Slaw in Bowmanstown. Walters started working for Slaw when he was 14, and what began as a summer job taking out the garbage became much bigger once Marshall graduated from college. "I was making form work, and I came up with the idea to make this into something bigger," he says.

Indeed, in its 10 years of business, Architectural Polymers has seen growth as well as change. Marshall and his partner got their feet in the door rather quickly, scoring their first big job at a time when they had no real place to work.

"We took the job without an office, without a place to work out of, and we signed the contract in the upstairs of Platz's Restaurant" near Lehighton, Walters says. With that first job came others, if sometimes few and far between.

Walters and Fasching rented a place in the Carbon County community of Ashfield in an area called The Grange. In 1994 Fasching left the business to pursue other endeavors. By Walters' own admission, things were tougher at the time for Architectural Polymers.

"Those were the days when it was common to have 16-hour work days. We'd start at 8 in the morning and not close until 10 at night. I was also bartending on the weekends, he says.

The long work hours and the time lapse in receiving payment for a job well done were factors that influenced Fasching's departure.

Walters stayed in the building in Ashfield until October 1997. Then he bought another location on Route 309, just outside of South Tamaqua. Perhaps because of Architectural Polymers' simple beginnings, Walters chose to keep the building's appear, ance as low key as possible. The business consists of him and five other hard- working employees. During the summer months, that number will see a slight increase.

For now, there is no immediate need to increase that number, since Walters feels the forms are quite simple to produce.

"They are reusable," says Walters. "We basically make one form and they will pour concrete in it 20 times."

The applications that the company creates are very good for highway sound wall, for example. The forms or panels Architectural Polymers make are sold to precast concrete producers as far away as Minnesota, Oregon, Virginia and the Carolinas. Those concrete producers cast over the provided forms day after day. It's a lot of work to build highway sound wall, when one takes into account the fact that 150,000 square feet of panels takes up only one mile of highway.

"Our biggest competitors are in Colorado and California, way out west," says Walters, who has found that traveling to various trade shows to market his product is very profitable. The last Expo was in Utah, and Walters says that those days are probably the most tiring. He is building his clientbase while getting ideas for new projects, but finds that convincing potential clients to switch from a competitor to Architectural Polymers is the hardest part of his job.

Since Architectural Polymers has become one of the largest of its kind on the East Coast, there has been more of a demand for the products the company creates. These aren't limited to industrial and commercial form liners, though that is the company's highest selling product. Other products include versa-brix, architectural stains, flexible molds, and mold rubbers.

The versa-brix system the company manufactures is very cost effective and efficient for those who don't want to have to deal with scaffolding and time-consuming brick laying.

"What we're doing is making a precast concrete modular unit with brick in them, which looks like a little brick wall," Walter says, "The industry is going thinner and lighter."

Thin brick is placed in a form liner, which is then covered by concrete.

Walters, who was an art major at Penn State University, considers himself to be working in his field, though he was groomed for a position as a museum curator. What Walters and his employees strive to do is create something that the customer wants simply by looking at a picture.

Architectural Polymers' suppliers allow them to sell their casting materials on their own label. All products are sold directly to the customer, bought on the Internet from the Web site's store, or bought from the company's catalog, which distributes nation- wide. Through the catalog, the company has sold its products to places like Canada, Russia, and the Caribbean. Occasionally, it gets buyers who are hobbyists who want to buy silicone rubbers.

The profit Polymers receives is standard, about 10 percent to 15 percent of the company's growth sales or profit margin. Even though the economy is seeing increased losses since 2001, Polymers has seen progress in the past year. One of its latest projects was manufacturing the form for the new Philadelphia Ballpark, which is scheduled to open in 2004.

Because the company is privately owned, there are no stocks traded and no plans to sell to a bigger investor. "What would I do if I sold my company? I'd be 36 and retired," Walters says, proud of the fact that the company is his "baby." One day there may be a reason to make some changes, but the only real decision that has been made is to move to another location.

Walters is in the process of acquiring three acres of land in Palmerton on Little Gap Road. The land should be his by March, and Architectural Polymers will have a new home to work out of by next year. Under the Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ) plan, Walters doesn't need to pay any property or state sales tax for the next 13 years. He says, "Incidentally, we're buying a lot of land so there will be other lots we'll be willing to sublet."

In buying a bigger building, the goal of Architectural Polymers is to double its work force. Walters admits that there has to be some growth so that the company isn't so dependent on the Mid- Atlantic region, and he doesn't have to travel to California to find business.

As for future projects, Walters says, "The Lehigh Valley can look forward to seeing our textures on the new Route 222."

To find out more about Architectural Polymers, click onto the company's Web site at www.architecturalpolymers.com.

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