Slow is a big buzz word these days. It ranks right up there with green.

It started with food, and made sense. Fast food restaurants dominate the American landscape and have driven an almost incomprehensible number of small, family-owned eating establishments into bankruptcy with their cheap burgers. So the idea of "slow food" had a ready-made and highly visible target.

Then came "slow money." The target here was not quite as visible but it was pretty obvious that the idea was to provide investment capital in a more friendly environment than that of the big banks and finical institutions.

But really what people are thinking about when they talk about "slow" is kind of the way it used to be. When food came from farms that were nearby and money came from banks run by guys you saw at the little league baseball games in the evenings. And cabinets and furniture were made by people, not CNC robots.

Many of us are attempting to run our shops in this same manner. Even when we are using more sophisticated equipment and computers, we are trying to be as hands on as possible. In order to compete with factories that are producing "fast" cabinets, we need to slow down and focus more on the added value of the personal touch.

D.D.