farragutpress

Dalen Products 50 years

Looking toward a bright future

October 29, 2025 by Tammy Cheek

As Dalen Products has provided products from its facility at 700 Dalen Lane, off Gilbert Drive in Knoxville, for the past 50 years, it now is looking for what is ahead in the future.

“It’s been an eventful five decades,” said David Caldwell, son of founder, the late Neal Caldwell. “If you had told me in 1975, when the business was founded, that it would be here 50 years later, I might have had difficulty imagining that.”

The company observed that milestone Thursday, Oct. 23, at the company’s facility and “celebrated co-owner David Caldwell’s contribution and achievement in the company,” said Crystal Phelps, Dalen chief marketing officer.

Having worked with many clients as a certified public accountant before coming to Dalen, Bob Teska, Dalen’s chief operating officer, he observed, “I didn’t have any clients that made it to 50 years.

“This, to me, is one of the most monumental events I’ve been apart of,” he said.

Looking forward, “we are really kind of reshaping the company right now, looking to the next 50 years,” said Crystal Phelps, Dalen chief marketing officer. “We have really undergone a remodel.

Dalen Products also is in the middle of rebranding with a new identity and introducing new products, she added.

“We’ve implemented new machinery, including a new blow molder, and we also brought in a machine that actually does painting. It paints our owls,” Phelps said. She explained the

company’s main product is a scarecrow owl, which until now has been hand-painted.

To date, “we’ve sold 8.9 million of them all across North America, basically — Walmart, Costco, Lowe’s, Home Depot,” Phelps said. “They are actually plastic, but that’s kind of what we’re known for.

But, “we just brought in a new robotic machine that is going to start painting them for us,” she said. “So, we’re really excited about that because that’s really going to help us in terms of increasing our production so we can offer

a lot more products and have a lot more capacity.”

Besides the owls, the company also manufactures other garden accessories, such as lawn fabrics, “anything to deter weeds and pests,” Phelps said. “We also have a stone wall that’s a big seller at Home Depot and a few places, as well, that we manufacture.

“Weed-Ex is a fabric that we also sell,” she said. “We have a wide variety of different (lawn and garden) products.

“We manufacture about 80 percent of our fabrics here in Knoxville,” Phelps added. “And now that we’ve got these new machines, we’ll be able to increase our production to about 85 to 95 percent.”

The family-owned and operated business got its start with Neal Cardwell about 53 years ago (in 1972).

“He created a tomato planting tray and made it in his wife’s oven,” Phelps said. “He melted some plastic and created a mold. He had a purchase order for some lawn and garden stores and just grew the company from there.

“The owl (also created by Neal Caldwell) was really the first product that really took off,” Phelps said. “It was for hunting decoys, and they realized that it was working in gardens in terms of deterring pests and scaring birds away, so they started to introduce it into lawn and garden stores.”

Neal started the company itself in 1975, and David said the company’s name stemmed from the first letters of the family’s names D (David, his son), A (his wife Alice) L and E (Neal’s daughters, Laura and the late Ellen) and N for Neal.

And, son David was present during those 50 years to see the company grow.

“I was the first employee — I was the only employee for a few weeks,” he recalled. After high school and college, he returned to help run the business.

“I was here, full-time, since 1981,” David said, recalling, “I never wanted to be (head of the company). “Somebody had to run the business. I didn’t want to do it, but there was nobody else,” he said. “But I did it, and I think I did an OK job at it.”

Now, Phelps said the company is leaning more to the direct-to-consumer side to reach out to the end consumers, which is new to Dalen.

While still owned by the Caldwell family, who remain as board members, David retired from the company Oct. 1, handing the reins over to Teska.

“It’s time,” David said about retiring. “But, I feel very good about the team that’s here to lead the business into the future.

“(Teska) and his team are doing really wonderful work,” he said. “So, I think I can enjoy my retirement and not worry about the business.”

“I’m honored the Caldwell family has asked me to be a steward of the company going forward, and I’m just excited for what’s coming,” Teska said.