Cincinnati, OH, January 31--Jay Stoehr calls it "the bomb shelter." But National Basketball Association players and insiders might know it better as the birthplace of their playing courts, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
For more than 100 years, the Stoehr family has been a leader in the development and manufacturing of solid wood sports surfaces, including 19 of 30 NBA teams' courts.
The business began in the late 1800s as Cincinnati Floor Co., which then was around the corner from its current headquarters at 4777 Eastern Ave. The business continues today as Robbins Inc., in an old, but sturdy, brick building that Stoehr likens to a bomb shelter.
The Stoehrs acquired Robbins, one of the 100 largest private companies in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, in 1977 and changed the focus from simply installing and assembling floors to complete floor manufacturing.
All research and development for Robbins is done at the Cincinnati headquarters, but the floors - manufactured under the "Robbins Sports Surfaces" label - are made at plants in White Lake, Wis. and Ishpeming, Mich.
"They've always been an innovator and a leader," said Chuck Maricle, president of Cincinnati Floor Co., which was sold in 1988 and is now located on Broerman Avenue in St. Bernard. Maricle, whose company sells and installs Robbins' floors, began working for Cincinnati Floor 20 years ago and eventually became part owner when cousins James and Robert Stoehr diverted their business interests.
Before scientific testing, Maricle said, floor makers typically would tell people to "jump up and down" on a floor to test its shock absorption.
But by the late 1980s, the Stoehrs had developed a process of testing sports floors for shock absorption that revolutionized the industry.
"Now we can show, with hard data, the shock absorption value" of a floor, Maricle said. "We have a benchmark to shoot for and data to evaluate performance, rather than being all subjective."
At Robbins, that data is generated by the "artificial athlete" - an octopus-looking piece of machinery that presses its arms on floors to test them.
But Stoehr said he still likes to give customers a basketball "and turn them loose so they can decide what feels best."
Robbins, with about 200 employees, is among the five major sports flooring manufacturers in the United States, said Dan Heney, technical director of the Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association in Northbrook, Ill.
Together, the five manufacturers produce more than 27 million square feet of sports floors per year - about 52 percent of the sports-flooring market.
As members of the association, Robbins and other manufacturers are subject to unannounced inspections of the maple wood they use for their floors. Their products have to meet MFMA standards.
Heney said competition is growing in China, Europe and Canada - makers of both wood and synthetic floors - but none focus on wood sports floors like Robbins and other MFMA members.
The company's latest innovation is a profiling machine that allows Robbins to engineer features into its floors.
The competition can't match the features that are engineered into the floors, such as strength and longevity, Stoehr said.
"The industry standard has been three-fourths inch thick, but we can make half-inch thick floors with the same amount of wear life, using less natural resources and less manpower," he said.
The profiling machine can mill at plus or minus a thousandth of an inch - a tolerance that normally is seen only in metalworking.
The end result is a floor that is thinner and less stiff, and, therefore, absorbs shock better.
"We're very proud of the fact that we drive the industry," Stoehr said. "But we drive our competition nuts by bringing out new and better types of systems."
