Trinity Engineering is a one-stop design and manufacturing shop.
You have to like engineers. They’re linear to a fault. They get right to the point—straight from A to B, B to C and so on down the alphabet. This offers a regularity and a reliability that’s most comforting in a time when there are folks out there who want to fly airplanes into buildings. It reminds you, comfortingly, of a train station in Switzerland where, dependably, when the sweep hand hits 12, the train begins its journey. From point A to point B.
“The purpose of Trinity Engineering,” opens founder Bruce Omholt, “is to provide our clients with a single source of design engineering and fabrication—a source that works with a cross section of materials and manufacturing processes, a source that will take the responsibility of providing a completed end product. I started the company in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1980, but moved here [Rohnert Park] just a year later. Our services have been used in contract furniture, interior lighting and manufacturing. Over the last 20 years, we’ve focused on custom fixtures for the retail merchandising market.”
A $4 million-per-year company, Trinity currently employs 28 skilled engineers, designers, cabinetmakers, painters, glass workers and metal workers. “The business is strong right now and, even going into the normally slow holiday season, we were busy enough—our bid load was high enough—that we were hiring people!”
One area of expertise for Trinity is the cosmetics industry. “We do a lot of work for Estée Lauder, Clinique, Origins and the British company Jo Malone,” says Brian Viger, director of marketing and sales (go with the French pronunciation, “vee-szhay”). “We create their display cases and marketing setups. Our primary competitors in this business are Design Workshops [in Oakland], a company that’s similar in size to our own, and a Miami company that’s twice our size.”
Viger grew up outside of Detroit, Michigan, but after graduating with a degree in fine art (“I was interested in sculpture and three-dimensional art”) from Michigan State, he drove to San Francisco (“the City had been a common hitchhike destination for my college friends and me”) and hooked up with a small arts and crafts company called Magic Glass for most of the 1980s. “The King Tut exhibition was in San Francisco then, and pyramids were all the rage—power, extra energy and all that—so we manufactured small glass pyramids for a time,” he says with a rueful laugh. “We also did glass showcase displays for I. Magnin department stores [the company, which has since been bought by Macy’s, boasted a flagship store on Union Square].”
During that period, Magic Glass hooked up with Trinity for a joint project. “When I met Bruce Omholt—we were doing a kiosk for a shopping mall in Connecticut—I was very impressed with what he was doing and how he was doing it,” says Viger. “My two children were young then, and I began to think, ‘It would be nice to live in Sonoma County, and better to raise my kids there. So I told Bruce, ‘Here I am!’”
That was 1989. Viger’s son, Art, is now studying at San Francisco State, while daughter Joules is considering college at Humboldt State.
Customer service is key
The essence of Omholt’s business model was to work across many manufacturing disciplines. “I’ve always had crafts skills,” says Omholt, matter-of-factly. “I love to work with wood, cut glass, weld. I love to make things. When you combine that with good customer service, well, you really have something. Our attitude at Trinity has always been, ‘never leave a complaint unsolved.’ That’s why we’ve been so successful: You do good work, and then you follow up to make absolutely certain the customer is satisfied.”
Though now largely retired from the day-to-day work of Trinity, Omholt is still busy making things. “I’ve been working on a closed circuit rebreather for scuba divers for years,” he says, his enthusiasm and energy bristling. “It’s called the Nautilus Rebreather, and it’s going to be on the market pretty soon. I’ve been working on it in my little corner lab at Trinity, with my youngest son Cassidy. It’s going to allow divers a much, much longer time underwater—up to seven hours at a time! It’ll be manufactured in Mexico; we’ve already set that up. It’s going to be great for recreational divers.”
Also tucked away in some hidden corner at Trinity is the invention that provided Omholt the seed money to get the company going. “Back in the day, I invented an ergonomic, recumbent motorcycle. It sits just 17 inches off the ground. I leased my prototype to Yamaha—it was going to develop it—for a fixed period of time. Yamaha never did anything, and I got the prototype back. It’s there at the shop, in mothballs. I take it out for a spin every once in a while, just for the hell of it.”
Born in Salem, Oregon, Omholt was raised in both Willits and Santa Rosa. “I got my engineering degree from Heald College in San Francisco, then went to work for the Ford Motor Company back in Michigan. I was there 11 years in manufacturing and management positions, then spent three years as chief engineer in Cleveland and three years in design with American Seating in Grand Rapids.
“I was ready to have my own company, where I could bring in people with multiple skills—people who weren’t just cutters or welders, but who were capable of seeing projects as whole units. I think that’s been a big part of our success over the years. We’ve had people who could put their imaginations to work in a unified manner. Whenever we had a slow period, we’d train our people in disciplines they weren’t already familiar with.
“One of my first jobs was a furniture contract, and when I moved to the Bay Area, I fell into a job bailing out a lighting project for a retail business. Serendipity, blind luck, sure. But that got us into cosmetics and high-end retail fixtures, and the work just kept on coming. As I say, it was our ability to do the whole job—the wood, the glass, the laminates—that got us those first jobs. The fact that we did them well and followed through on the slightest problem, that kept us getting those jobs.”
Seeing the green light
“Going green” is a strong impetus at Trinity Engineering, particularly under President Michael Johnston, who was originally hired to facilitate the company’s conversion to a new CAD [computer-aided drafting/design] system. “We’ve reached one goal, in that 90 percent of our waste stream is now recycled,” says Johnston. “And we’ve found great value in ‘daylighting,’ putting in enough skylights that we’ve cut down our electrical use substantially. Where we do require lighting, we’ve gone to energy-efficient bulbs and tubes. All of our electrical panels have surge protectors to prevent the damage done by spikes.”
Born in Vancouver, B.C., Johnston is something of a sailor-philosopher, constantly referring to “the journey.” “Going green is another journey,” he says. “As with sailing, it’s always important to look at your wake, to see what you’re leaving behind. We do a lot of woodworking, so we ensure the wood we buy is up to the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). That’s an international organization that sees to it forests are managed in a sustainable manner. There’s a chain of custody from the forest to the mill, from the mill to us, from us to the consumer. I see that as a Sonoma County value—that notion of creating systems that can continue, be renewed and thus flourish. This is an area I’ve been interested in since college. I was president of the Land Trust when I worked in the Bay Area, and I’m active here in the Salmon Creek Advisory Group to preserve our watersheds.”
Johnston takes the “green” thing seriously. “We built our home, out in Occidental, with the same idea in mind,” he says with passion. “We use photovoltaic cells for electricity. Our utility bill was $23 last year, and this year we’ll get money credited back!”
He’s equally enthusiastic about his work. “I was initially hired for my computer skills. I went to college at Long Beach State University, where I studied marine biology. I love the ocean and sailing, but the lab work killed me. After school, I started out as a wooden boat builder, as president of Port Costa Boatworks in Alameda, then ran Bay Paneling and Millwork in Emeryville, which is an architectural millwork firm. When my children were two and four, I was a stay-at-home dad for a couple of years. That was quite rewarding.”
One of the reasons he was hired at Trinity was his experience with AutoCAD. “When I came here, they were still hand-drawing designs and using blueprints. When you can do your design work with the computer—especially three-dimensional work—it improves the work quality. You no longer have to redraw for corrections. The software is very accurate, and it’s a snap to duplicate. It just makes our jobs so much easier. It lets us be far more creative; we’re able to try alternative designs. On the practical side, it lowers our costs, markedly shortens the design cycle and makes us more price competitive.”
It’s all made here
Trinity Engineering’s Rohnert Park location is just west of KRCB (and the old Crusher’s Stadium baseball park). The physical plant comprises 18,000 square feet on an industrial lot owned by Omholt, with room to grow. “We pride ourselves in being capable of engineering and building, from scratch, pretty much anything you can think of,” says Johnston. “We have people capable of solving any design issue well before they begin fabrication. We can handle virtually any material, including wood, metal, glass, acrylic, fiberglass, foam, extrusions, laminates, veneers and solid surfacing materials. And Underwriters Laboratory has certified us as reliable and safe for all sorts of electrical work, including neon.”
“Our shop is open and flexible enough to stage projects ranging from complete storefronts to department store perimeter systems. We have extensive outside resources in our own and related industries, and are adept at identifying the best suppliers for any project. We are, I think, exceptionally good at those unique, high-end custom projects, where a wide range of specialties might be required. Our craftsmen are experienced and inventive. They can put together anything a designer can come up with!”
Trinity boasts a 3,000-square-foot finishing department that features an enclosed paint booth. “We use HVLP [high volume, low pressure] paint sprayers to reduce emissions and eliminate pollution. We’re fortunate to have 2,000 square feet for packing and shipping, and an equal space in our loft for storage. Plus, the industrial park we’re in has plenty of additional storage space available on an as-needed basis for warehousing finished goods.
Making it happen
The rapidly expanding lineup of Wine Country businesses contracting with Trinity for tasting rooms, conference centers and such speaks clearly to the proposition that Johnston and company are doing the job well. I remember attending a special sit-down tasting last year, put on by the growers and winemakers of the St. Helena viticultural appellation at the Trinity-built Rudd Center on the campus of the Culinary Institute of America. I was quite impressed, both by the artistic sensibilities—the expansive tasting area has a sweeping grandeur to it—but also by the first-rate, professional tasting table presentation (including adequate room for writing notes and an entirely functional spitting sink and rinsing nozzle). I haven’t seen it done better.
Trinity is also responsible for the new Private Reserve Tasting Room at Beaulieu Vineyard (in Rutherford, equally tastefully done), Diageo Estate’s corporate hospitality suites (Napa), the Grove Street tasting room (Healdsburg), Domain Carneros’ tasting bar (elegant in a bright, bubbly, modernistic fashion), the wine library for Vineyard 29 (St. Helena) and the sizzlingly brisk new tasting room at Lake Sonoma Winery (west of Healdsburg).
Healdsburg designer Carol Disrud created the complex Lake Sonoma design—with its flowing, graceful curves of rolled steel—and is very pleased with how Trinity took her firm’s creation from vision to reality. “I’ve been working with Trinity since 1987, when I was working in San Francisco for Gensler [the large, international architecture and interior design firm],” she says. A North Dakota native who spent six years in Europe working with a Swedish firm after college, Disrud opened her own design firm, Disrud & Associates, in Healdsburg in 1993.
“It’s always a positive experience working with Trinity, in part because they do everything—wood, glass, powder coating, rolled steel—and in part because they’re so responsive to my needs. We also worked with Trinity on the Clutch store here in town and the new cave wine library over at Vineyard 29. My firm uses AutoCAD, which they know well. We work closely with their chief estimator/project manager Neil St. Andrew. He always shows up onsite to make sure the design is executed down to the last detail. But the big thing is that they can, literally, do it all. It’s one-stop shopping at its best.”
It’s one thing to be able to create something on paper, and something else entirely to be able to execute the design in the real world. Many an inventive soul has been stopped short applying theory to practice. But Johnston and his crew are as adept in the field as they are in the shop. As the gimpy old actor Walter Brennan once proclaimed, “It ain’t brag if you can do it!”
