About Us

Melrose has been providing industry with ways to identify products for over 65 years!

Melrose Nameplate was founded by the Jackson brothers in 1939 as an industrial metal nameplate manufacturing company located in Oakland, California. (Originally in a 1000 sq ft storefront in the historic Melrose District, subsequently in 14000 sq ft West Oakland warehouse, and today in a 33000 sq ft Hayward California facility). During those early years, Melrose’s customers included the numerous manufacturing industries located in Oakland prior to WWII including metals, automobiles, and shipbuilding. During WWII, the East Bay Area was home to a massive Naval shipbuilding industry from which Melrose benefited greatly. Soon after the war, the shipbuilding and automobile industries virtually evaporated.

Between the end of the war and 1990, Melrose’s business passed through several owners, declining and then remained stagnant for nearly 45 years. In 1990, Melrose was purchased by Chris Somers and Kathy Brenner. Chris’ background was in engineering with the Buick Division of General Motors, and as a management consult with McKinsey and Company. Kathy’s background was in marketing with Pepsi, Dole Foods and Mother’s Cookies.

Since 1990, Melrose has grown by 500 percent. We have come a very long way since our humble roots in Oakland. We attribute our success to staff’s ability to embrace three key factors for success: 1) An ability to creatively apply our industry’s flexible manufacturing processes to customer problems, 2) a unshakeable belief in continuous improvement 3) Timely adoption of new technologies (e.g., computer aided design, networked PC based management systems, process control, internet, digital printing).

Illustrative of our staff’s ability to solve problems through the creative use of technology are two products Melrose manufactured after our competitors had failed.

• Example 1: PCMCIA cards for lap top computers. At the time, directly printing on the stainless steel housing of the PC card was the only way to achieve the marking thickness required in the application. Melrose successfully took over that business from our competitors that could not meet Intel and Intel’s customer’s stringent quality requirements. They key to our success was our experience working with metal and the investment in a class 100 clean room for printing.
• Example 2: The original “Intel Inside” logo. This label was applied to every PC systems that utilized the Intel Pentium 1 microprocessor. Other label company’s had been unable to achieve the color opacity for the Intel blue, and at the same time maintain the close “print to cut” alignment required by the design. Melrose’s staff creatively combined the opacity of screen printing with a special optical registration die-cutting system to give Intel what they needed.

Our willingness and ability to take on challenges and give sound product advice has made us popular with customers in nearly every industry including network communications, test and measurement equipment, coin-operated arcade games, exercise equipment, semiconductor process equipment, automotive, computers, audio recording and amplification, and promotional advertising.

As a consequence, our product line has expanded beyond metal nameplates to include more complex engineered products including graphic overlays, membrane switches, labels, and promotional products.

We have gotten bigger, but we still think of ourselves as providing "storefront service" to all our customers. Every employee is customer focused. We believe that the result is extraordinary service to all our customers. We guarantee complete satisfaction.

If you’re already familiar with our company, welcome back. If you are just getting acquainted with Melrose, take a look at this website, or just give our staff a call, call me or drop me an e-mail. We can demonstrate for you what has turned us from that old line WWII nameplate company into the vibrant company now located in our new home in Hayward California (midway between Silicon Valley and Oakland).

Sincerely,
Chris Somers-President
Melrose Nameplate & Label Co. Inc
510-732-3100x203
csomers@melrose-nl.com.