Grace Manufacturing Has Grate Idea

Grace Manufacturing Inc. of Russellville appears to be on a roll with its Microplane kitchen graters.r

Brothers Richard and Jeff Grace got the idea in 1990 for a sharp carpenter’s tool called a rasp. At first, they sold only a few hundred a year as woodworking tools. Most of the company’s revenue came from other products, such as parts for the high-tech printer industry.r

In 1994, a homemaker in Canada used a Microplane rasp to zest oranges for a cake. It worked so well, the Microplane soon appeared in a catalog for Lee Valley Tools, her husband’s chain of hardware stores, as a kitchen implement.r

In 1998, a New York Times reporter wrote an article about the Microplane as a kitchen implement, and sales boomed. Martha Stewart began buying them by the caseload for gifts.r

In 1998, Grace Manufacturing brought in about $200,000 in revenue from the sale of Microplane tools. This year, that figure will be closer to $4 million, said Chris Grace, Richard’s son and the current CEO of the company. Now, 95 percent of the company’s Microplanes are sold as kitchen products, and the other 5 percent are used for woodworking.r

Grace said he expects to sell about 1.2 million Microplane graters and zesters this year. The company now has 130 employees.r

“The two best sellers we have are the same ones we came up with for the woodworking industry,” he said.r

Those products are the 12-inch grater/zester with a black handle and the same grater/zester without a handle, which Grace said “was designed to fit in a hacksaw frame.”r