[Off screen] Very casual. We're just having a conversation with you. I read the questions
you were going to ask me a long time ago. I’m Mike Otterman. I am president and CEO of Lodge Cast Iron.
My name is Kevin Rush. My name is Kevin Rush. I am the Enameling Operations Manager. I'm Kelly Peterson, and I'm the Senior Manager of Product Marketing at Lodge. USA Enamel is easily the biggest thing that Lodge has ever done. We've worked
really, really hard to get here. We're the first ones making color enamel
cookware in the United States, The world was hit with a pandemic, and it slowed everything down. It’s been tough. It's a very large undertaking. And we're going to make
it happen no matter what. Lodge is 127 years old. We are makers of the world's
best cast iron cookware, and we've been doing it
right here in the small town of South Pittsburg, Tennessee since
we were founded by Joseph Lodge in 1896. When Lodge decided to begin
seasoning in 2002, it turned the business around. After making cast iron cookware
for as long as we have, there was always something else that we had our mind set on. And that was color. [Off screen] Remember several weeks back, we talked about how for different sizes, we’ll have different amounts of rings so that they weren’t all exactly, precisely the same. So that you could see some variation from size to size. The USA Enamel project was one that the leaders of this company had been thinking about for many, many years before I got here. The idea and concept goes back to
when I first started at Lodge over and it was Jeanne Sholze, and Bob Kellermann's dream, along with Henry Lodge, to start enameling in the United States. I'm Larry Raydo. I'm the Commercialization Manager here at Lodge Cast Iron. Being part of an original cast iron enameled product line is like the greatest thing going on. [Off screen] Why can't we make this really good? I think one of the really interesting things about designing cookware is that you're really trying to combine both beauty and function. So in thinking about how we would approach USA Enamel and just where to begin with the design of this project, we really tried to think what we wanted to evoke with this new line. Kelly told me, okay, warning, I'm going to buy a lot of books. No kidding, like 50 books. What we knew is we wanted it to feel very Americana and we're very proud of the fact that this is going to be the first line of enamel made in the United States in full color. Being Lodge, we’re going to stand out in the market. We're going to make sure that ours looks just a little different than everybody else's. We knew we wanted to have a little bit of like a little retro style to it, but also upscale and we wanted to try to cast the design in such a way that was really, really different. We thought that there was a nice time period, mid-century, that we felt like Americana was really at its height, that products were exciting, that they really seemed special because they were special and the first of their kind. I remember seeing Kelly bring forward a whole bunch of sketches. I mean, there’s something really satisfying about how this one comes to a point. And I remember thinking that it really doesn't look like anything else I’ve seen. We looked at different categories, everything from classic cars and guitars. It took a lot of sketches to get this idea to where it is now, and it took a lot of collaboration. One great resource and partner we had in this was our CAD designer, Chris Dorion, in Chicago, and he really just helped to take these sketches and turn them into something really beautiful and bring them into a physical product that we're looking at today. We began to prep the land and purchase the equipment. This building was an empty building that we converted from a warehouse to a plant. And we started the construction process in 2020. We had a lot of help with different contractors during that process and in about 4 to 6 months, this building was full of equipments ready to run different processes. We have no windows in the plant. Can I say that? No, we cannot say that. See, it’s no windows! And it is hot as hell in summer! So, Kelly begins this. Puts the plan. We're ready to go. And the pandemic hits. Everything slowed down
because of the pandemic. We didn't know what was coming in the future. COVID delays just kind of kept making it harder and harder to do this. Chris, the CAD designer, he's in Chicago. He can't get to us. Kelly's in Chattanooga. I'm in South Pittsburg. And by the way, we can’t even get in the same room together. And here she is. And here she is. She’s trying to figure out how they’re going to design this product. We couldn't get our people trained. And really the project slowed to a grinding halt. Then the demand for our seasoned
product went through the roof. And we are a small company and a lot of us wear a lot of hats. And so many of those folks who are working on this project were just trying to keep our proverbial head
above water and get product out the door, as well as bring on this brand new state
of the art facility and staff it and train it. [Off screen] How did you feel when we made the decision to delay the launch? Why are you asking me that? When we delayed the project, obviously, we weren't excited about it, but we knew it was the right thing to do. By the time we made the decision, I was ready for it. We needed the time and we all realized that it was necessary if we were going to get where we really needed to go. I think this was a lesson in patience. We've gotten so good at producing things that are seasoned over the years. It takes a lot of effort to really be innovative and it doesn't come easily. The process of the enameling being done in the United States is really unique. We've never sprayed enamel here. So, there were a lot of learnings to see how it would apply to our iron and to learn about the chemistry between our iron and the application of the enamel. We had made the design first believing that our process would work to the design, then we found out that our process is not adapted quickly enough to do the design that we made. We had to change a lot in the process system to adapt. And to do that, there is a lot of different aspects
you have to take into consideration. There is the draft angels, there is drawing issues, there's flowability of the iron through the design of the cookware. Making sure that your details are going to show up but also aren't going to be problematic to being enameled. So the design really has to go hand-in-hand with the enamel application and make sure those two things are working well together. We want everybody to know when they see that piece of cookware, they know, that's Lodge. That's just not something that came from another plant somewhere. The emblems, the medallions that are on it were a bit of a challenge. The actual design on the sidewall, if you take a look at the nice swoop that's on the sidewall, it took a lot of effort to make sure that we could actually cast that in place and still be able to mock it on the inside so that it’s cohesive all the way through the whole product. Because we wanted to get outside the box and we wanted to really be creative with this, you'll notice that our knob is a little different, and we also have little accents on the handles that really set us apart. That accent. If I had realized how much of a pain
that thing would be in every area of its existence, we probably wouldn't have it today. As we start to enamel, we find out these little things that we have to change because we didn't know enamel yet, this is new for Lodge. So the spray system is designed to spray, it is not designed to spray enamel cookware. We had to learn how to set the process of the spray system so that it touches every surface of the product and puts a certain layer of thickness to make sure it stays on there and is not under thickness or not over thickness. The ground coat did not stick to the surface on this, on the cast iron. There could be two reasons: the temperature is too high, the material thickness is too high, or the material composition is not right. I see some frustration
with some other folks that it's not going
quite the way we thought. We're moving. We just ran into a problem, we're going to have to get figured out. We go through many, many steps of testing. We're really mindful of the different things
that the consumer is going to experience after they purchase this item. And that goes everything from making sure that things like the rim hold up, making sure that the knob goes up to temp in the oven, making sure that the finish holds up over different exposures to acidity. We use stainless steel ball bearings, and we drop them at a very heavy impact. And this is to make sure that when a consumer is using this at home, that their pot isn't going to just fall apart. There's really been no part of the creative process for USA Enamel where we have not leaned into originality. Even when it comes to the colors. We knew that it had to be red, white, and blue. Those made sense for a lot of reasons. They're great for Americana and they're also just really popular for consumers. [Off screen] These are our color chip samples that we were originally working off of. The color was a real evolution in honing it to get it right. We started in one place and we really moved to a different place as we thought more about how we wanted the consumer to feel when they looked at these items. We’ve just been really happy with the amount of excitement that the color has brought to our organization as a whole and just the new learnings that our team has picked up as we've entered this new area of manufacturing. More to come! I think as a company we were very uncertain of what exactly we had gotten ourselves into, and there's a process of just problem solving that you can't arrive at the solution without sometimes going through the effort to get there. It has been a rough road. But we’ve brought those ideas to life. These cookware are cool. These cookware function well. It's made in the United States. It's made in South Pittsburg, Tennessee. It's going to be a hit. You know, we've wanted to do this for decades, and we finally did it, and it is beautiful. there is a lot of craftsmanship
that goes into each one of these pieces. Our castings actually start in the Third Street Foundry. We’ll put it on the Disamatic, which is our molding unit, and we make molds out of sand. Anything that is a shape on the tool
creates a void inside the sand. And once we push those molds underneath the auto pour, which is where our iron is, it automatically pours in the right amount of iron for that mold. From there, then, the castings go on a long trip all the way down a conveyor that as the castings are cooling, we're going to push them all the way to the end and shake off all that sand that we had. And then we're going to go and clean the castings through the cleaning machine. And then we're going to grind it and get it prepared to go for enameling. When it arrives at the USA Enamel Facility, we make sure that the cast iron is prepared for enamel. Enamel is not easy, but it's a lot of fun. Although the process has some automation, there is always some element of each casting
that has been the hand sprayed by a very capable and qualified artist or spray technician. After the casting is sprayed, we send it through dehydration for about 12 minutes at about 275 degrees. From there, there's a lot of effort and detail put into making sure that we dress up the rim area properly and transfer each piece
so that it can be fired in the furnace. Our furnace is from Italy. It's one of six in the world. I love my furnace. as far as firing our enamel,
we have a set firing curve as it goes into the furnace one, it slowly starts warming up. And as it comes out of that furnace and you see that final color, you see that the shine out of the piece, you can really appreciate the design,
the finish, the craftsmanship that went into the piece. And it just excites you. As you install those final accents and knob into the piece, it completes it, and you just are wowed by its beauty. USA Enamel occupies a space that is uncharted territory. What's our launch messaging going to look like? What does the photography look like? What does our video work look like? The logo, the packaging. We weren't even really fine with just letting these boxes be printed and never laying eyes on them. So, we went to the plant where they print them to make sure that it is up to our standards,
so that on shelf, even when you get this thing at your house, it reflects what's inside of it. You’re going to have just a fantastic experience as you open up the box and see the craftsmanship that went into it. When it came to the way we approach photography and video for this, we really, we thought about how to make sure that we're going to create something that no one has seen before, especially in this kind of a of a consumer space. I genuinely feel so lucky to be able to work with all of these other people that you've seen on this documentary. We were just beyond thrilled to have a new product that's made in the United States and to increase manufacturing here
and to grow our employee base in our hometown of South Pittsburg is just a huge, huge moment and going to have such an impact in our community and beyond. I think the team is proud
of what they put out and they have every right to be so. They have gone through the trials and tribulations, the setbacks, the struggles, and they've come out victorious on the other side of it. I love this job. I love lodge. I love getting to come in here and play with the furnace
and the spray line. And this is my home. To see it go from, from a thought, from an idea, to a final product that you can now hold in your hand, is probably the neatest thing. This is a beautiful piece of cookware. This dutch oven is striking from every angle. It's gorgeous and I love it. And I feel like I've made it
with my family, and it's just a wonderful feeling.
