Entrepreneurs: Jim Baker and Tucker Trotter
Company:
Dimensional Innovations
3421 Merriam Lane
Merriam, KS 66203
(913) 384-3488
www.dimin.com
Type of Business: Designers and Specialty Fabricators
Year Founded: 1995
Number of Employees: 70
Keys to Success: "Leads come to us just by always doing a really good job on every project-by doing really high quality work and always doing what we say we will, even if it costs us money."-Tucker Trotter

Are you looking for someone to craft a dinosaur to stand tall and teach students about the species? Perhaps you need a giant book cover to adorn a parking lot. Or, maybe you want to create the appearance of an underwater adventure in the Caribbean.

All of these things and a myriad more are possible when Dimensional Innovations becomes party to the project.

The Merriam-based design and fabrication company is the brainchild of Jim Baker. With partner Tucker Trotter, the company is becoming a known entity in its creative approach to bringing buildings to life. The company has worked on the FedEx Forum in Memphis, home to the NBA's Grizzlies, the Caribbean Cinemas rain forest and underwater theme movie theaters in Puerto Rico, the Denver Zoo and, locally, the Kansas City Library, Children's Mercy Hospital, the Liberty Memorial World War I Museum, Science City and the Max bus shelters. Soon to be complete is a food court in PowerPlay in Shawnee, which sports the appearance of a village with facades reminiscent of old town street scenes.

Dimensional Innovation's slogan is "Translate, Create."

"We translate people's ideas into reality," Trotter said. "When we can design a project and also build it, that's the project we want."

Perhaps the most viewed of their work locally is the giant bookbindings on the street side of the Kansas City Central Library parking garage. The bindings of 22 books measuring 25 feet by 9 feet are a colorful example of the company's work. The three-story bookbindings, constructed in 2004, were a collaboration of Dimensional Innovations with Jonathan Kemper, president of the library's board. They illustrate a community bookshelf with actual books spines depicted.

Kemper had an idea and Dimensional Innovations was able to take that idea and create the design. "We set a budget, we set a vision, and we went to work making that vision come to life," Trotter said.

That's the way the company likes to work. But initially, most of their work was on the fabrication end, where they were an element of a project, taking someone else's design and fabricating their part.

From Skydiving to Fabrication
Dimensional Innovations was born in 1995 after Baker saw the demise of his photo lab business in the dawning of the digital photography age. He could see that as digital photography took off, the need for his film and lab business would diminish and disappear. He partnered with a customer to start Dimensional Innovations, eventually buying out his partner. In 2000, Trotter came on board and is now an equal partner.

But even photography was not Baker's first career. He joined a skydiving team after graduating from college. Six years later he decided that it was time to get the proverbial "real job" and apprenticed under a photographer, leading to his photo studio and photo lab. Since creating Dimensional Innovations, Baker has uncovered a natural inclination toward engineering, which is the backbone of the company.

"I just absolutely love it. What Tucker and I have been able to do is amazing. We are not burdened with a certain way of doing things. We started in plastic, then we expanded into metal and wood," he said.

Early Theater Work
While most companies that do work similar to Dimensional Innovations are on the West Coast or in Florida near theme parks, the company is here because much of its early work was with AMC Theaters, which is headquartered in Kansas City.

For the first seven years, only about 5 percent of their work was in Kansas City, despite working extensively with a Kansas City-based corporation. Baker said 90 percent of the work was on projects in other U.S. cities and 5 percent was abroad. Recently Trotter and Baker decided to do more work locally and now a sizeable chunk of the work is here.

Work on movie theater complexes continues to be a stalwart of Dimensional Innovations, but with more than just AMC now. Baker and Trotter said the company has worked on nearly half of the cinemas built in the United States in the last dozen years. Locally you can see their work on the facades and interiors of the Dickinson Palazzo, AMC Barry Woods and the Dickinson Northglenn 14. They also have worked on theaters all over the world, and are particularly proud of the rainforest and Caribbean underwater experience they created for cinemas in Puerto Rico.

Design and Build
In the cavernous quarters of Dimensional Innovations in Merriam, a staff of industrial designers, graphic designers, interior architects, engineers and craftsmen fabricators work in a completely digital production process-from design and engineering to full production of parts, graphics and special effects.

Project development teams manage each project to keep it within budget and on time. Meeting the intended budget is important to the teams, Trotter said. Through 3-D modeling, many errors and redundancies typical in fabrication are eliminated, thereby reducing costs.

"The engineering department thinks everything through digitally. That is a trend in the construction world and we are on the front of it. It eliminates a lot of waste because we determine yields and eliminate waste before we cut," he said.

Large pieces are cut at the direction of a computer center where engineers work at terminals overlooking a giant router, which operates in an enclosed room. In other areas, the staff uses huge saws while working in wood, plastic and metal. A paint laboratory allows the artists to create realistic looking pieces using faux painting. There also is a sign shop where fabricators work from graphics workstations.

There are giant letters being formed from metal to adorn movie complexes or signs, such as for the Cerner Corporation headquarters. A craftsman works with actual tree branches to form displays for Pro Bass Shops, while in another area large columns that look exactly like marble are made from much lighter weight and more cost effective products.

For the restoration of the historic Commerce Bank building downtown, Dimensional Innovations worked from 1930s photographs and drawings to create faux marble columns to match the existing marble. To the untrained eye, the airbrushed finish is an exact match.

Projects can be completely created in the company's facility in Merriam and shipped in pieces to each location for installation. Most of the time, an assembly team loads the parts onto a semi-trailer here, drives the truck to the location here or across the country, and unloads and assembles it. Using that process, Trotter said, Dimensional Innovations is able to maintain control through to the project's conclusion.

It's About the Staff
The secret to the company's success, Trotter said, is the exceptional staff. Trotter and Baker are using the management book Good to Great by Jim Collins as their guide in building their staff. The book explains how important it is to find the right people to manage and run the business-to have the "right people on the bus."

"We are always looking for the right people to put on the bus. I have hired someone when I didn't have a position, but felt they were the right person for our team," Baker said.

As the company has diversified its work, it has moved from using only fabricators to working with artists as well. Combining those groups of people was a challenge because they come from totally different work environments and mindsets. The fabricators like to come in at 5:30 a.m. and be done at 2 p.m., while artists are more inclined to come in at 10 a.m. and work until 6 p.m., Baker said. At Dimensional Innovation, the two groups work well together.

"We worked with people to just embrace each other's skill set," Trotter said. "Today you wouldn't be able to tell who was who except for the skills they are using."

Trotter came to the company out of college after receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in industrial design, and the company continues to look at young talent to flesh out its staff. The company's summer internship program with the Kansas City Art Institute and with the fine arts program at the University of Kansas brings bright young minds from which the company continues to learn, and hire. Students hear about the internships and contact the company, Trotter said, so they don't have to go searching.

The Hedgehog
Having the right people is not enough, Baker said; you also have to have the right mission. Again following a guideline from Good to Great, Trotter and Baker have been working to develop the company using the "hedgehog concept"—focusing on innate strengths. The book advises companies to take action based on being the best at what they do best. For Dimensional Innovations, that is "design build," said Trotter.

While its origins are in fabrication, in the last several months the company has focused on growing the design side of the business. "We care about being fabricators, but we are also interested in the design," Trotter said. "We started this year building our design business. We want to control our growth."

Before the Good to Great influence, the company was trying to see how much it could do, taking all jobs, he said.
"Now we are making sure we are doing the right jobs for us," Trotter said. "We are working smarter."

The plan appears to be working, as the company has its biggest backlog of projects in its history. They have even had to turn down business they would like to take.

"Work comes to us now," said Trotter. "Leads come to us just by always doing a really good job on every project-by doing really high quality work and always doing what we say we will, even if it costs us money."

Dimensional Innovations is not the type of company that other companies need all the time, so the goal is to put information before architects and engineers so they will think of Dimensional Innovations when they are working on a project.

"An architectural firm may need us every three years, and our challenge is to have them think of us where there is a good fit," Trotter said.

Kansas City Is Home
As its work has grown, there might be a temptation to move to the coasts where other similar companies are located. But Baker said they have no intention of relocating the company because its work can be done here.

"I have traveled all over the country and there is no place I would rather live. The quality of life here is fantastic," Baker said.