How to rip up 3 million square feet of carpet

EVERETT — It all started with a daunting job: remove 3 million square feet of carpet at the Boeing Co.’s Everett plant.

One more time: 3 million square feet of carpet. That’s enough to cover the floors of 15 Wal-Mart supercenters.

And that was the task thrown before Roger Wiggins and a business partner, who had gotten a contract to install new carpet at Boeing in the early 1990s. But first, the old stuff had to be removed.

It seemed impossible to just rip up that much carpet by hand, even if several people tackled the job.

Enter the Terminator. Invented to tackle big carpet and flooring removal jobs such as the one at Boeing, this contraption spawned a company that now racks up multimillions of dollars in annual sales.

Now, Innovatech Products and Equipment is developing new machines and expanding sales both here and overseas. Last year, the company moved from Woodinville into a much larger manufacturing space in southwest Everett.

“There are two or three others who make this type of equipment, but we’re the standard,” said Gregory Dahl, Innovatech’s president. “Sales are growing. We’re doing very well.”

From its Everett facility, Innovatech sells about 100 Terminators a year. Starting out with raw steel, the company welds the basic frame for the small, Zambonilike vehicle and puts it all together there. The electric version, weighing as much as a car, can plow up carpet or other flooring material for six to eight hours on one charge. Innova­tech also makes a propane-powered Terminator, and is about to unveil an improved version of that.

“This machine will rip up all kinds of flooring in industrial and retail settings,” Dahl said.

Costing $35,000 to $40,000 when fully outfitted, the Terminator has helped to rip up flooring in notable places such as the Space Needle. When the original parquet floor used by the NBA’s Boston Celtics for 54 years was retired at the end of 1999, workers used the Terminator to pry it up.

“Especially among demolition contractors, everyone has one,” said Joel Trepus, a vice president at Bellevue-based Trepus Corp., which does demolition work up and down the West Coast and owns three propane-powered Terminators. “Ours are working every day.”

In addition to the Terminator, Innovatech makes concrete grinding and polishing machines used to finish and maintain the shiny but durable concrete floors in many big-box stores and other buildings. They’re sold under the Predator brand name; Dahl said he can’t explain why the company’s product names coincide with titles of Arnold Schwarzenegger films.

But, like the Terminator, Innovatech designed the Predator to set the industry standard. It’s one of only two companies in the world that makes four-headed concrete polishers, Dahl said. The extra polishing heads, which grind and polish using tiny flecks of diamond, make the 900-pound machines easier to control and able to cover more ground.

“This is designed to grind Costco, not your living room,” Dahl said.

To date, most of Innovatech’s business is in the United States, but the company also has distributors in Asia and within the past two months, it added 19 new distributors in Europe.

It’s come a long way since the company was started out of the family home near Seattle, said Kris Wiggins, Innovatech’s chief financial officer and wife of co-founder Roger Wiggins. Three of the Wigginses’ children also are involved in the family-owned firm.

Now that the company is settled in after its move to Everett, Dahl said Innovatech is tackling other issues as its grows. The company recently overhauled its marketing plan and standardized its production methods in recent years. Next, Dahl said he’s working on shifting the company to continuous production instead of building machines periodically in batches.

Still, some things haven’t changed much. Dahl was named president just last year, but prior to that, he had been the company’s attorney since its beginning. Roger Wiggins still flies all over to personally train new customers on how to operate the machines.

Shawn Wiggins, the company’s chief engineer, added that developing new products is a big goal in order to keep Innovatech ahead of its competitors. But even more important is making both the new and established products consistently good.

“We pride ourselves on the quality of our equipment,” Shawn Wiggins said. “We believe people will pay a premium for a quality product, especially with a niche market like this.”

Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.