People who are visit the town of Kohler in Wisconsin see luxury everywhere - on its world class golf courses, at its five-diamond resort, which upscale baths that include a $10,000 tub with its own music or what they call a champagne bath.
(her talking)
But what this town is really about - is the plumbing.
Christine: "Everything that can be Kohler is Kohler."
That's Christine Loose. She's manages two resorts for the Kohler Company, which gave this town its name. The main attraction is the Kohler-owned golf courses nearby, which hosted the 2010 PGA Championships.
At the American Club, summer rates start at $350 a night. As each class of room improves, so does the plumbing.
"Our tile is Kohler, our plumbing is Kohler, our furniture is Kohler, if we make it, it's in the guest room."
The Kohler Company is a $5 billion global business with four families of companies. Its largest is selling bath and kitchen fixtures - especially if you're in the Midwest, next time you're in a bathroom, check the tub, sink or toilet - which is probably made in Wisconsin.
They also sell other furniture, as well as engines, mostly for lawn mowers or generators.
John Michael Kohler started the company in 1873. He went into bath fixtures when a hog scalder with enamel and marketed it as multipurpose hog scalder/horse trough - or bathtub.
John Michael's son, Walter Kohler, moved the factory outside of Sheboygan because he said it was too crowded.
(Birds chirping)
The family hired famed Central Park designer Frederick Olmsted to help create the village. The houses are tidy, its village lawns as immaculate as a golf course, and along its main street, hanging baskets of pink petunias provide a perfect frame to the picture.
That's why resident Roelle Murphy laughingly uses terms like Beaver-Cleaver land to describe the town.
Roelle: "When we originally moved here back in 1994 I looked at my husband and said, "oh my god, you moved me to Stepford"."
It took her about a week to realize that it wasn't Stepford: now, she calls it "a wonderful family oriented community"
All the kids who live in Kohler, including Murphy's two sons, AND the children of company president David Kohler's children, attend the one-building Kohler Memorial school near the center of town.
Murphy used to work at Kohler. Her husband still does. About one in 3 people in Kohler Village work for the company. In Sheboyan County, it's 1 in 10 - making Kohler the county's largest employer.
Factory employees are represented by the United Auto Workers. I talked to Local 833 President Dave Boucher during the union's annual retiree picnic.
Each of these retirees were able to support their families on one Kohler salary.
Today, the average factory wage at Kohler is about $22 an hour. But under a new contract approved last December, temporary hires will make about $14 an hour, and have less benefits, to do the same factory work.
The UAW has half the members it used to in the area. Boucher told me something many said at the picnic - the Kohler Company would have stopped manufacturing in Wisconsin a long time ago if it hadn't been family run and privately held.
"they would have tailed it years ago."
(Fade down picnic sound)
Current company chairman Herb Kohler, Jr., who is responsible for the company's most recent foray into golf and hospitality.
Jean Kolb is the company's "wellness director".
The story goes, Mr. Kohler had a meeting with top executives and talked about what we were going to do with the American Club. And Mr. Kohler said, I want to turn it into a five diamond resort hotel and the executives looked at each other and said, "We don't know anything about the hospitality business. We do plumbing and bathtubs."
Kolb says its golf course, the resort - and especially its Design Center, where you can have bathroom and kitchen blueprints modified for free - all reflect the company's mission of "gracious living".
It also serves to make this company town the perfect advertisement for the Kohler Co.
For Changing Gears, I'm Niala Boodhoo.
