![]() ![]() ![]() Our History....Our Family   | Carl Birkkjaer was educated and trained in Denmark as a carpenter where he built home from the ground up. Carl and Bente decided to move to Canada with their son Jens in 1975. Carl asked Bente to help him start Denca as his english was poor, Bente is a trained nurse but soon found a new love in design and sales. In 1977 they opened Denca from their home, and with a new baby son, Peter, they started importing wood ceiling paneling along with knocked down cabinetry from Tvis in Denmark.Carl & Bente quickly discovered that the taste, styles and expectations for kitchen and bath cabinetry were quite different in Canada. In order to meet the demand in Calgary, Denca started manufacturing plastic laminate doors as they were a hot commodity in the 1980's. Bente ran Denca's showroom out of her home in Westgate, with a new baby girl, Heidi, for the first 12 months, and Carl did all the assembling and installaton. Denca's sales soon increased and Denca rented its first warehouse / showroom [ 2000 sq.ft.]. At this time all the manufacturing was done using hand tools only |  | | 
| In 1981, Denca moved into an 5500 sq ft [3 level split] warehouse, where they set up a spray booth and purchased a boring machine [which we still use today]. Denca started finishing lacquered doors in a variety of colours and degree of gloss to meet market demands. We purchased our first edge bander and dust collection system.We also manufactured counters in laminate and corian. Carl believed we had to have stock of everything so our customers could get a kitchen in 2-3 weeks. We moved into our present location in 1989, and from that time on discontinued importing parts, and started manufacturing everything here. We purchased our first Morbidelli C&C router [Carl got his big toy]. Then we have added machines one by one and approximately 1999 we rearranged the machines in our shop to become more lean in manufacturing . We have continued making our shop a better place to work , and to be more efficient , and want to do even better in the future. We totally redid our showroom [took us 1 ½ years to do], and opened it for our 25th anniversary. |
In 1999, Jens Birkkjaer joined the sales/design force and today is the Sales Manager. Peter joined in 2002-2006 as the IT manager but soon found a new love in herbology. Heidi joined in 2003 as the sales/marketing manager and is now the General Manager. Denca celebrated its 30th anniversay in 2007. Carl retired in April 2008 on his 60th birthday, Bente is still actively working at Denca in Sales/Design & Management. .
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