LA JUNTA, Colo.—In 1909, brothers Herman, Henry, Oscar and Alfred Berg sought to get out of their economic rut.
The men, who knew about sheet metal, started a company in Minneapolis called Berg Brothers Sheet Metal in the basement of a hardware store.
There, the brothers made a variety of light metal products: stove pipes, gutters, down spouts and steel ceilings, among them.
Today, the company, now called DeBourgh Manufacturing and operated by descendants of the Berg brothers, stands as a revolutionary manufacturer of one particular metal item: storage lockers. More than 15,000 schools feature DeBourgh lockers.
A host of non-school sites also use them.
This year, DeBourgh—renamed decades ago after the Berg family’s original European name—celebrates its 100th anniversary. Family members say the company is as strong as its heavy metal lockers.
The company is also singing the praises of La Junta, where the firm relocated in 1990 after the downturn in the U.S. steel industry crippled its Minnesota operations.
“We made the move, and it all turned out good,” said DeBourgh chief executive Rob Berg, among the third-generation of Berg family members who now run the company.
Bob Berg, the son of co-founder Herman Berg and now retired as a top executive, talks with pride about the company’s impact.
“I think it would be hard to find a school that doesn’t have DeBourgh lockers somewhere in it,” Bob Berg said. “There isn’t an athlete who has not used one of our lockers at one point or another because if they don’t have them in their schools then one of their opponents has them.”
DeBourgh’s locker business began in 1931 when the University of Minnesota contacted the founding Berg brothers about building a new locker designed for easy maintenance, ventilation and security.
“We’ve come a long way since then,” Bob Berg said.
By the 1940s, as more University of Minnesota athletes fanned out across the state, taking jobs as school administrators and coaches, they wanted the lockers for their new schools.
The lockers became an industry leader by the 1960s.
“In the late ’60s through the early ’80s we were called the Cadillac of the market,” Rob Berg said. “There are still lockers being used that we made in the 1930s at YMCAs and different places.”
Two of the company’s first large orders came from Greeley and Alamosa, Bob Berg said.
Rob Berg noted the key role his father played in boosting locker sales.
“In the ’50s, he started branching out and created distribution that was looking at selling a certain type of locker, which was a heavy duty locker that was well ventilated,” Rob Berg said.
“Before that, you would just get a sheet metal locker. He pretty much differentiated us from everyone else to set us into a nice unique portion of the marketplace.”
DeBourgh, for most of its lifespan, also manufactured other metal products, first at its Minneapolis site and later at a large plant the company opened in the suburb of Bloomington, Minn.
The company made kitchen cabinets, radiator enclosures and slot-machine cabinets. It built the first gasoline tank that allowed aerobatic airplanes to fly upside-down.
During World War II, the plant was contracted to manufacture struts for gliders, parts for the B-24 bombers and rocking rollers for Bailey Bridges.
Elsewhere, the company supplied parts for earth-moving equipment such as road graders, soil compactors and dredging machines.
In the 1970s, the company developed the Town and Country pedestrian bridges placed in parks, golf courses and other recreational areas across the country.
The bridges were welded in the factory and shipped whole by flatbed trailers.
“There are several towns along the Front Range that have our bridges,” including La Veta and Colorado Springs, said Janet Berg, chief administration officer and Bob Berg’s daughter.
Then came the downturn of the U.S. steel industry in the early 1980s.
DeBourgh was hit hard, and the company liquidated its fabrication division in 1989.
The Town and Country Bridge division was sold in 1990.
“We had to drop everything but the lockers in order for us to survive,” Rob Berg said.
The company began a yearlong search for a new business site for the locker division.
Another family member, Rob’s older brother Steve, who was CEO at the time, investigated 13 sites in seven states before settling on a former brass manufacturing building at La Junta’s industrial park.
Eighty-four tractor trailer loads were used to move the machinery and raw materials from Minnesota to La Junta in 1990.
“About a dozen employees also came with us,” Janet Berg said.
At first, the move proved a struggle, but then the “All American Lockers” turned their best profits ever within two years, family members say.
The company also manufactures a variety of other lockers.
Rob Berg credits La Junta’s work force for the company’s revitalization.
“The efficiencies that we had with this work force had almost immediately started increasing our ability of meeting the demands of the marketplace,” Rob Berg said.
The company currently employs about 130 people. And a fourth generation of the Berg family now works for the company, said Bob Berg, who still visits the plant almost every day.
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