Kadouri has been manufacturing in Israel for ninety-four years, under three generations of one family. In that time it has changed what it makes five times — each time because the market it served stopped existing. What carried across every change was never the product. It was the plant, and the family that kept finding it new work.
Shlomo Kadouri was born Salim Chalaschi. He left Iraq as the violence against its Jews rose, reached Tel Aviv in 1932, and opened a sign shop on Levinsky Street the same year.
On tin, on fabric, on glass. Raised letters. — the card, 1932.
Engineered panel, porcelain, Corian, solid timber. — the plant, today.
Ninety-four years apart, the same sentence: here is what we can work in. Everything else about this company has changed at least five times.
Each bar is a business the company actually ran. The overlaps are the story.
The moments that forced each change. None of them was chosen.
He was born Salim Chalaschi in Baghdad — a Torah student and a painter, who left Iraq as the violence against its Jews rose. He reached Tel Aviv in 1932, took the name Shlomo Kadouri, and opened a sign shop on Levinsky Street the same year.
He became one of Israel's respected painters, working largely from memory: the Jewish quarter of Baghdad, painted decades after he had left it. The company that carries his name began as a painter's trade.
Shlomo's three sons join: Itzhak, Avraham and Hezi — Itzhak as chief executive, Avraham on the technical side, Hezi on operations and site inspection. Under the second generation Kadouri becomes the largest signage manufacturer in Israel.
Writing boards and pinboards for schools and offices, later as Israeli agent for PolyVision. The only line that has never closed — every transformation that follows is built on the plant it keeps running.
A modular kiosk range: nine variants plus a service counter, sold to IBM, El Al, Orange, Pelephone, the banks and the Israel Police. It runs twelve years, until the tablet arrives and the custom enclosure market collapses.
In 2000 the partnership that had run the company for twenty years comes to an end. It cannot be repaired by redistributing responsibilities, because it was never really about the responsibilities.
In the same years the signage industry loses its floor. Vinyl plotters and wide-format printers become affordable, and the capital cost that defined who could call themselves a signage manufacturer stops mattering. Hundreds of entrants arrive. Margins collapse.
The company loses the chief executive who had held its direction since the 1970s. The third generation takes control of a business already on a losing path.
Ariel Amiri, a grandson of Shlomo Kadouri, joins in business development and marketing.
Ariel assumes the company's liabilities and takes over its shares. Two businesses close — eighty-one years of signage, twelve of kiosks. Writing boards stay open, and the freed capacity is redirected into retail point-of-sale.
B2B carpentry begins: carcasses and cabinetry for other manufacturers. The same machinery, the same panel expertise, a different customer.
Retail POS closes. Carpentry becomes the main business, alongside the writing boards running continuously since 1988.
Taken from the engineering library. Every name was drawn, specified and built.
Wayfinding totems, display cases, reception counters and complete branded service environments — modelled in-house.
Kadouri represented Spandex, the European modular sign system, and carried the range as part of its catalogue. The schemes below are Kadouri's, designed in Hebrew on that system.
A pattern the company repeated: represent the leading international system, then build the local design and manufacturing around it. Thirty years later it does the same for PolyVision.
The build sequence for unit 201-100-100, drawn stage by stage with its part list. The note on stage four reads: place glass and rubber before attaching the screen.
Production drawings for a curved aluminium panel — developed profile, cut geometry, tolerances.
Installations, an exhibition stand, and terminals in the places they ended up. Shot on a Sony Mavica and a Nikon Coolpix — which is why they are 640 × 480 and why the colour runs warm.
The presentation renders that went to clients. Period CGI, and it looks it — which is the point.
Kadouri manufactures writing surfaces and carpentry. The carpentry reaches the market three ways — and the reason it can is the same reason the company is still here after ninety-four years: one plant, flexible enough to serve whoever needs it.
Cabinetry and fit-out supplied directly into construction and renovation.
Bathroom and laundry cabinetry with custom porcelain and Corian basins, through retail and online partners.
B2B production for carpenters — carcasses for workshops that need capacity.
Manufacturing since 1932
מייצרים מ־1932
Shlomo Kadouri, 1932. Itzhak, Avraham and Hezi from the late 1970s. Ariel Amiri since 2013. Ninety-four years, one family, four different businesses — and the same factory.
Draft heritage page. Photographs, product renders and drawings recovered from the company archive; the drawing title blocks confirm them as Kadouri Group work. Customer names come from the CAD project library and should be confirmed before publication.
Spandex's own printed component guides, also held in the archive, are that company's copyright and are not reproduced here.