A Look at Some of Our Major Milestones!

- Goldleaf Plastics is founded in 1983 by father-daughter team Rudolph "Rudy" Felling and Sandy (Felling) Berling.

- Some of the earliest products fabricated are sneeze-guards, lid holders and other items for the Fuddruckers restaurant chain.

- In the early years, Goldleaf Plastics operates out of a 5,000 sq. ft. facility in Waite Park, MN (with numerous additions added in subsequent years).

- Most early activity focuses on customers primarily in the St. Cloud/central Minnesota area.

"One of the biggest products we ever fabricated was a billboard for a local bingo parlor. A plastic display bubble on the billboard featured real bouncing balls powered by a motor hidden at the bottom. Not only was it huge, but we were actually able to drive past it virtually every day for three months on our way to and from work."

- Bakery cases, beverage caddies and a full line of other food service display products grow into a major product brand for Goldleaf Plastics.

- In addition to focusing on custom fabrication and an expanding line of standard food service products, Goldleaf Plastics introduces a broad range of gaming items.

- With Rudy Felling's retirement, Sandy and her husband, Dan, become the owners of the company in 1991.

- Goldleaf Plastics increasingly branches out serving customers throughout the entire mid-West and even nationwide.

"One of the earliest large-quantity orders we produced was 30,000 acrylic sign holders for a company that supplies products to the financial services industry. The completion of an order of this magnitude was an incredible milestone for Goldleaf Plastics. But even more importantly, it completely changed our thinking and perspective about what opportunities and growth might be possible!"

-The list of customers and industries served by Goldleaf Plastics continually grows to encompass retail merchandising, Point-of-Purchase, visual display, manufacturing (OEM), museums, galleries, trade shows, ATV/Marine/Recreational, medical, financial services, tanning and numerous others.

"We've done so many creative and interesting projects over the years, but one of the most distinctive, stylish displays was an elaborate display system consisting of a frosted acrylic table and numerous matching pedestals for a major department store. You can imagine the thrill of seeing one of our Goldleaf Plastics' creations on display on State Street in Chicago!"

- In 2006, Goldleaf Plastics moves into a brand new, 80,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art, environmentally-friendly facility in St. Cloud, MN.

"Moving into our all-new facility was a major step forward! With all of the additions and make-do fixes over the years in our old location, that facility had become something of a maze that really limited how we could do things. When we built the new facility in 2006, we had over 20 years of real-world experience and planning to draw on. The new plant floor is open, efficient and flexible. We can configure our production lines to fit each project that comes in. The efficiencies and cost-savings have been phenomenal!"

- In August of 2011, Goldleaf Plastics enters into an alliance with Rapala USA - creating and manufacturing an exclusive line of fishing accessory products.

-Today, with over 90 employees, Goldleaf Plastics is an industry leader in sheet-plastic fabrication - recognized for our design, engineering and manufacturing expertise.


"TALK ABOUT CHALLENGES ALONG THE WAY . . .

Some years back, in the midst of a major UPS strike, we had identified a back-up carrier for direct shipping custom display shelves to hundreds of different store locations for a major retailer. At the eleventh hour, our customer informed us that they would absolutely not accept shipments from the back-up carrier, so using the regular U.S. postal service was our only option.

It seems crazy looking back on it, but given our very tight timeframe, other logistical complexities and limited availability of metering equipment, we actually had to purchase over $15,000.00 IN STAMPS. Can you imagine! Who even knew the post office had a vault where they kept that many stamps.

To add insult to injury, multiple packages of different sizes had to go to each store, so we had to weigh and sort all of the packages by weight, and in turn purchase differing quantities of different stamp denominations. And trust us, this was all well before the days of peel and stick!

We could go on forever with the other complexities and Murphy's Law scenarios that came into play, but suffice it to say that for the better part of two days we completely re-directed a number of internal resources and turned the break room into a temporary post office.

In retrospect, our advice to any business owner: Keep your sense of humor (and make sure you have ready access to a postage meter)!"


 "YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP . . .
Although we've learned a lot along the way and acquired some unbeatable expertise in drape forming, we were pretty green in the early years. In fact, it really started with an unexpected opportunity in the tanning industry.

We didn't have any experience whatsoever with the tanning industry or even the foggiest idea how we were going to produce tanning bed acrylics, but that didn't stop us from making a pitch.  We prepared like crazy and talked about all the right things like UV stability and other technical issues.

To make a long story short, they were impressed by our presentation and decided to give us a shot at it. Much to our surprise, we got a nice sizable order.

We didn't even have the equipment in house to manufacture the job, so we actually had to order a custom-designed, large-format oven. That was a major purchase for a small shop like ours at the time. Much to our horror, it didn't come when it was supposed to. It had shipped from the manufacturer as scheduled, but for about three days nobody could locate the truck or find out what was going on. Believe it or not, we actually had to contact the sheriff to help track it down.

As it turned out, the truck driver was off on a boondoggle somewhere down in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area - some 70 miles from where we're located. When he finally just showed up at our plant in St. Cloud, we could visibly see that the whole top of the oven was torn off. As it turned out, the driver had driven under a low bridge and severely damaged the load. (The exact details of what happened were a bit sketchy, but we suspected that some type of liquid refreshments had been part of the mix.)

Because the sheriff had been involved, we were technically supposed to go through proper channels to get legal possession of the oven, but instead we just quickly unloaded the thing and worked on getting it set up. With all of our other concerns, a potential dust-up with the authorities seemed pretty small potatoes.

Luckily, the motor and guts of the machine were not damaged and it was in working condition. We were able to remove what was left of the top and actually run the oven.

Through some combination of luck, tenacity, ingenuity (and very likely divine intervention), we were actually able to produce and ship that first order of tanning bed acrylics on time!"




(The memories featured on this page are the collective thoughts of Sandy & Dan Berling as they reflect on nearly 30 years of history and growth for Goldleaf Plastics.)