The third annual Colorado Manufacturing Awards showcase the best and brightest stars from all over the state and its many manufacturing sectors.
CompanyWeek‘s crack writers have caught up with the 30 finalists across 10 categories to shine a light on their successes, innovations, and new initiatives. While they make everything from bourbon to spacecraft, there are common threads: dynamic growth, a commitment to quality, and a focus on innovation.
We’ll showcase three or four categories per week in the run-up to the April 5 event, when winners from each category will be announced.
Advanced Mobile Propulsion Test, or AMPT, has been a leader in the niche of testing rocket engines for major manufacturers and federal agencies for the better part of a decade.
Now the company is looking to disrupt the market with a revolutionary low-cost thruster it plans to manufacture. “We have developed the prototype and had very good results,” says founder Daudi Barnes. “We see the future for our company in actually developing engines and spacecraft systems.”
The opportunity revolves around a broad sector move from big government contracts to commercial missions that demand nimbler manufacturers and less expensive technologies. “Activities in space are a hugely expanding market,” says Barnes. Emerging companies “are filling in all the niches between the big players. Some of them are potentially big niches where there’s an opportunity for small players to become big players. An example of that is SpaceX.”
He calls the industry’s evolution “the ideal manifestation of the competitive capitalist market.”
AMPT won a $250,000 grant from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade in early 2018 that will be used “to refine the additive manufacturing part of the process,” says Barnes. “It closes the loop to do R&D development in-house. . . . We’re going to be looking at dynamic design features and testing them out.”
That will make for a more manufacturable product, he adds. “We want to be able to hand off a set of machine parameters to people who could potentially do production for us.”
Barnes says AMPT’s thrusters could be in production and on spacecraft in the next one to three years if all goes to plan. “There’s a lot of potential for growth,” he notes.
Founded by CEO Keith Steiner’s father, Norm, in 1987, Air Comm offered a solution to a problem. “He found a lot of helicopters operated in extreme climates,” says Keith. “The heating and AC systems from the factory were simply not enough to get the job done.”
So Norm started making heaters and AC units for the helicopter aftermarket, but they proved popular enough that Bell and other manufacturers started offering Air Comm products as factory-available systems in the early 1990s.
The company diversified into environmental control systems for fixed-wing aircraft with the 2013 acquisition of Texas-based Keith Products. Air Comm consolidated manufacturing operations under one 53,000-square-foot roof in Westminster in 2017.
The move doubled the size of the company, says Keith, as it now employs about 100 people. It also made the company less dependent of the helicopter market, which is famously dependent on high oil prices. “It was good to add another leg to the stool,” he says.
For the last five years, the Air Comm crew has been working on new systems for Cirrus Aircraft and Pilatus Aircraft. “We’re now entering full-rate production for both of these aircraft,” says Keith, forecasting 10 percent growth for 2018. “We’re setting up a second shift. It’s keeping us very busy.”
Air Comm is bringing a significant piece of its supply chain in-house.”We’re going to be producing a line of brushless electric motors,” says Keith, citing quality, timing, and price as factors in the decision. The motors will be used in Air Comm’s products, but also available on the broader market.
Another recent move: Air Comm is expanding its in-house maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operation to offer services to outside clients.
Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Space Systems has 2020 circled on the calendar. That’s the year the company’s Dream Chaser spacecraft is slated to arrive at the International Space Station.
“Last year, we did a flight test at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base,” says Kimberly Schwandt, SNC Space Systems communications manager. “It was a beautiful sunrise in the California desert. You could not have a more majestic setting.”
More importantly, the November 2017 test flight was a success. Dropped from a helicopter at 12,000 feet, the Dream Chaser glided down to Earth in a minute and performed as planned.
That test vehicle is now back in Colorado at a new 100,000-square-foot facility in Louisville where the company will manufacture the final product. “The Dream Chaser will be built there,” says Schwandt.
But the Dream Chaser is not the only big project underway at SNC Space Systems. “We won a NextSTEP-2 contract with NASA,” says Schwandt. The competitive project involves developing “a lunar outpost as a gateway to go deeper into space.”
In 2019, the Louisville-built prototype will compete against others to win the final contract to build the structures on the Moon.
To support these big initiatives, SNC Space Systems has hired more than 100 employees since 2015; the head count in Louisville is now about 450. “We’ve added a lot of jobs,” says Schwandt. “We’re going to continue to add jobs.”
Faustson Tool is angling to become a two-time CMA winner, a reward that would be very much in keeping with the company’s lofty accomplishments.
“We’re a high-precision Colorado manufacturer that has a part on or around every planet in our system,” notes Heidi Hostetter, vice president. “And, among other things, we’re a sole source supplier for two critical parts on [Lockheed Martin’s] F-35.”
The “other things” constitute a long list. Hostetter points to NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, hemoglobin mirrors for the renal industry, the Mars Rover, and Northrop Grumman’s Guardian anti-missile system as other high-profile Faustson projects. The company’s stake in 3D metal printing also continues to set the company apart, including a founding role in the ADAPT Center at the Colorado School of Mines, with Manufacturer’s Edge, Ball Aerospace, and others.
But for Hostetter and Faustson CEO Alicia Svaldi, slowing down to appreciate how a business overcomes challenges and manifests success in the community means as much as its impressive résumé. “We have been tenacious surviving some of the most difficult trials and tribulations that any business can face,” says Hostetter. “As a result, we have definitely come to appreciate that leadership comes in your darkest hours, not your finest moments. We believe in the golden rule and we believe that our innovation efforts make leadership in technology possible, but we are also quite aware that our employees make us the company we have been and will continue to be.”
It’s no surprise that Tecomet Boulder is a finalist in this strong category: Tecomet acquired Mountainside Medical, an inaugural Colorado Manufacturing Award winner, in 2016.
The company’s regional legacy machining precision parts for the medical device industry is as formidable as its $1.2 billion top line. Tecomet is today the largest orthopedic contract manufacturer worldwide, with 17 plants spanning the United States, Europe, and Asia.
The challenge of maintaining a lofty regional perch in Colorado’s contract manufacturing ecosystem today falls on Dave Capkovitz, Tecomet’s new general manager in Boulder.
Capkovitz seems like the right person for the job. He cut his teeth in the manufacturing-rich business ecosystem throughout the Midwest, but longed for a mountain view. With Tecomet’s Boulder location providing the backdrop, Capkovitz is motivated to maintain and grow his company’s footprint in Colorado.
“Colorado is very important to Tecomet,” says Capkovitz. “The skill level and talent that Colorado’s colleges and universities are turning out is the next generation workforce that will expand future technologies in our field. Colorado is also an area where people have a strong work/personal balance in their lives. This encourages innovation and outside-of-the-box thinking that will help keep Tecomet a leader among its peers.”
It’s a worthy goal for a company that’s demonstrating what it takes to stay on top. “Tecomet Boulder has shown growth of 25 percent over the last three years,” Capkovitz says, “and is projected to grow another 89 percent over the coming five years.”
For Capkovitz, the dynamic growth is a byproduct of employee engagement and customer satisfaction. “Tecomet takes pride in being a part of the lives of our valuable employees, supporting them, their families, and their communities,” he says. “Our leadership is one of a culture that breeds inspiration, caring, and growth. We pride ourselves in making a difference with the patient, the customer, and our communities.”
Manes Machine and Engineering might be one of Colorado’s best-kept secrets. Not for long.
“Business is very good,” says President and CEO Bruce Page. “Our target market is companies like Boeing and Lockheed, but also smaller companies that are big companies in their own right, who also sell to Boeing, Lockheed, and Airbus. We have 15 to 20 companies we deal with all over the world.”
Manes is also working with arguably the most innovative aerospace OEM going. “We’re also getting a fair amount of work from SpaceX,” says Page, referencing a Manes product on the mission in late February.
As strong as the market is today for commercial and defense-related aerospace — Boeing and Airbus are coming off back-to-back record years, and Lockheed is poised to benefit from a bigger defense budget — operating in the supply chain of the world’s biggest aviation companies also has its challenges. “Boeing just came down with a new stipulation, where fewer suppliers will be able to participate,” says Page, citing requirements for lower tolerances and higher-precision parts.
Page notes that Manes has had to reengineer its business to stay competitive in a sector that’s rapidly deploying new technologies. “When we first moved here from Southern California, we were known for known for manufacturing big, structural-type parts, and that served us well,” he says. “But over the last couple of years, we’ve made a 180-degree shift in what we’re doing here. We’re selling off a lot of our bigger equipment, and moving into smaller equipment that’s more automated.”
Automation is paying off in other ways. A new generation is taking note, important for a sector struggling to attract a new workforce. “Technology is changing the game,” Page says, adding that potential employees get a “bounce in their step when they see what we’re doing here.”
Justin Park and Tyler DuBois started The Real Dill in 2012 “making pickles for fun in our home kitchen,” says Park. The artisan dills quickly caught on, and the company’s product line has expanded beyond pickles in the years since.
Case in point: The Real Dill’s Bloody Mary Mix is now its top-selling product. It originated after Park and DuBois devised another use for the salted cucumber water they used to dispose of. After the product took off, they were forced to “reverse engineer” the cucumber byproduct, in order to have enough on hand to fulfill orders for the Bloody Mary Mix.
“We joke that we started a pickle company, but now we’re really a blood mary company with a pickle problem,” says Park.
The Real Dill now boasts more than 600 accounts in 35 states. “We’ve grown every single year,” says Park. The company saw 40 percent growth in 2017 over 2016, shipping out 14,000 cases of its products. For 2018, Park projects a total of 20,000 cases. “The challenge we’re constantly facing — and having fun with — is continuing to scale up our production, while maintaining or improving the quality of the product that we’re making,” he says.
With continued growth, change has come to the company: It now automates the filling and labeling of its Bloody Mary Mix. But some things remain the same: “We take a lot of pride that we make everything 100 percent from scratch,” says Park.
Just like the cucumber water no longer going down the drain, the food waste isn’t going into dumpsters. More than 500 pounds of vegetable scraps is diverted from the landfill weekly and used by a local nonprofit to make compost. As for becoming a “zero-food-waste company,” Park says, “It was just the obvious and the right thing to do.”
Kelly Strong began selling batches of her gluten-free, vegan soup to restaurants and cafes around Colorado Springs in 2013. “We jarred our first soups by hand [in January 2014],” Strong says. “We made a few cases. We ran a few dozen labels, and I presented [the soup] to City Market and King Soopers here in Colorado and they liked it.”
By the end of 2014, Blue Moon Goodness was in every Kroger store in Colorado and some surrounding states. Safeway picked up the brand in 2018.
Blue Moon Goodness’ soups — Moroccan Vegetable, Tomato Fennel, and Vegan Green Chile — are now available in 300 stores in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah. Strong is planning to expand the company’s geographical distribution, perhaps tripling to 900 outlets by next year.
Strong says a new distributor has told her, “Nothing exciting has happened in the soup aisle in a long time.” Her response? “Party in the soup aisle! I think there’s a great opportunity for new packaging, new flavors, and something really different.” Her jarred soups — some organic — have a two-year shelf life.
Strong credits the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Colorado Proud program for helping to make local products an in-demand commodity in the state. “It gave us a real opportunity,” she says. “I have to admit that it wasn’t just luck.”
Still, she considers herself lucky in business. “Just the fact that people like my product — that I get to make real food for real people — it’s a joy,” says Strong. “It’s a privilege making people happy.”
Founder Jim Lamancusa had his “aha!” moment during a hike in Colorado, as he watched friends prepare their instant coffee. Lamancusa recalls thinking, “I want that! I want instant tea that actually tastes good on the trail.”
But the subtle flavors within tea leaves are destroyed by high-heat dehydration, a process which works just fine for coffee beans. So Lamancusa developed new technology in order to see his dream become a reality. First, the tea leaves are cold-brewed under high pressure for eight hours. Then, the liquid is slowly dehydrated, leaving a crystallized powder.
Lamancusa says, “When the consumer then opens the tea stick and pours it in the water, it just instantly rehydrates. And it tastes exactly like a freshly brewed cup of tea, because we haven’t done any high heat or extreme-cold dehydration to it.” Pouring warm water over Cusa’s powdery crystals results in a cup of tea within three seconds.
For a company that launched in May 2017, Boulder’s Cusa Tea has undergone rapid expansion. The tea varieties (Green Tea, English Breakfast, Chai, and Oolong) can be presently found in 500 locations, including King Soopers and REI stores. “By the middle of summer we should be in about a 1,000 retail locations,” says Lamancusa.
The USDA-certified organic teas are grown, processed, and packaged in Southeast China. “It’s been helpful to be next to the tea farm, because we can constantly do R&D work over there,” says Lamancusa.
The top comment Lamancusa receives from consumers and retailers is, “Why has no one done this before?”
Lamancusa, who’s worked at startups throughout his career, observing their strengths and weaknesses, says, “If you don’t have a real innovative idea — and if you just make a me-too product — you’re probably not going to make it.”
In less than a decade, the manufacturer of fleet-vehicle efficiency technologies has expanded into three categories, moving from a hydraulic hybrid system into pure electric vehicles and vehicle analytics.
The company has sold about 250 of its hybrid systems which use hydraulic fluids compressed as part of the braking process to provide a boost to the acceleration process for vehicles like garbage trucks and beverage vehicles. “Because you need as much payload as possible it can still be a good spot to look at hybrid systems rather than electric. It’s difficult to electrify really heavy vehicles,” explains co-founder Tim Reeser.
In 2018, Lightning Systems is making a strong push into electric fleet vehicles for such companies as DHL, FedEx UPS, Comcast, and AT&T. As of March, it had sold five of its electric Ford Transits, but more sales are on the way. “We’re working on some fairly large orders,” says Reeser. “We expect to deliver 200 this year based on our current order pipeline.”
The company also has introduced an electric fuel-cell version of the Ford Transit cargo van that uses a hydrogen fuel cell to charge the vehicle’s battery, extending its 50-mile range to 200 in a zero-emission vehicle.
Lightning Systems has a strong local supply pipeline and is continuing to work with Steelhead Composites, which makes accumulators and gas tanks. Longmont’s UQM Technologies supplies the motors and some fuel cell parts and Loveland’s Casper’s Electronics makes its wiring harnesses.
Reeser says growth in this type of vehicle will be strong as more cities adopt and look at adopting rules to outlaw internal combustion engines, like London, Paris, and Amsterdam. “That regulatory drive is certainly pushing people toward the the zero-emission space,” he notes.
An acronym for Autonomous Manipulation and Perception, AMP’s Cortex robots rapidly identify and sort certain materials in a single-stream recycling line using the company’s Neuron artificial intelligence system. The robots are used on recycling centers’ container lines to sort multi-material cartons — like juice or wine boxes — and plastics.
The system is capable of scanning, identifying, and sorting 60 containers a minute. But it detects far more in that short period of time, explains Rob Writz, AMP’s director of operations. “Our vision system does perceive aluminum, paper, mixed papers, and corrugated products,” he says.
AMP has numerous robots installed at recycling centers across the U.S., including Alpine Waste and Recycling in Denver and Dem-Con Companies in Shakopee, Minnesota.
“All of our robots combined now have over seven man-years of operation,” Writz says. “They’re adding up very quickly because they operate two to three shifts everyday. Two of our units have been operating for over a year, another one for over half a year.”
The robotic systems are currently in the hands of early adopters. “Our work with them over the next few years will push out into the broader market,” says Writz, “and the later adopters who let the early adopters sort out the commercialization challenges and technology.”
The interest is strong because it’s hard to retain employees as sorters. “It is a very dangerous, dirty, and dull job,” explains Writz. “They have rapid turnover rates and are looking to stabilize their throughput on their lines that they operate many shifts per day,” he explains.
Writz anticipates more growth in 2018. “We look to grow to about 15 people, tripling the size of our company in the span of a year,” he says. The majority of the jobs will be in software and mechanical engineering.
“Our product is like putting sunglasses on a building,” explains CEO Del Bankston. “It enhances the view and does not disrupt the connection.”
Bankston emphasizes that the company’s product, a thermochromic filter applied to window or skylight glass, darkens automatically once glass hits a certain temperature and reduces or eliminates glare and UV degradation, increasing health, comfort and productivity.
That’s what he leads with, but the glass also reduces solar heat gain, increasing energy savings. “It’s able to reduce your energy costs by up to 30 percent based on geography and exposure, building use and so on,” Bankston explains. It’s also much less expensive than options like electrochromic technologies which require external energy sources to darken.
After more than a decade of research and development, the company’s Gen3 technology is protected by more than 40 patents and starting to ship. “We’ve got 14 projects that are under one phase or another of construction,” says Bankston.
RavenWindow currently has about 20 employees and can manufacture 50,000 square feet of its product. By 2019, Bankston anticipates producing up to 100,000 square feet of the product and doubling staff in the second half of the year. “We’re not concerned about sales, our phone is ringing off the hook and our website is blowing up with business,” he says.
In the future, Bankston wants to supply major window and skylight manufacturers like Pella and Velux. “The intention is to sell the filter to be non-disruptive to the industry, to be another product they offer in their portfolio to their customers,” he says.
After a 91 percent increase in 2017, 4 Noses Brewing Company’s founder, Tommy Bibliowicz, is planning to nearly double his brewery’s output again this year, forecasting minimum production of 8,000 barrels.
The rapid growth is necessary to keep up with demand. Bibliowicz partnered with Elite Brands last year to launch his previously self-distributed beers statewide. “Prior to signing with Elite, we were only in the Front Range with some presence in the mountains and Colorado Springs,” he explains.
The brewery’s portfolio has expanded as well. “There’s a long list of experimental ad hoc products that we were able to come out with in 2017,” Bibliowicz says. One such release was a Russian imperial stout called Ryeciprocal, which recently won gold in the wood- and barrel-aged dark beer category at the Craft Beer Awards.
“Some of the other ad hoc beers that we put out successfully last year are going to move from in-house only to a little more widespread availability,” Bibliowicz adds. “We’ll also have a lot of big barrel releases throughout the year as well as beers in our wild saison and sour programs, which are really coming along well.”
While brewing good beer is decidedly important, Bibliowicz says 4 Noses’ success has also been built on the excellence of his team. The company brought on a new director of brewing operations last year and had very little turnover of which to speak.
“We have a great team, and we kept it almost entirely intact throughout 2017, so I would definitely put that as a big success as well,” he says.
The craft beer industry has changed a lot since Eric Wallace co-founded Left Hand Brewing Company in 1993, but the business has weathered every storm. One of the ways they’ve done so is to instill a sense of ownership — figuratively as well as literally — in their employees.
“Back during the first craft beer shakeout in 1998, we began offering some of our employees equity in the company in order to keep that talent around,” says Wallace. In 2015, Left Hand took employee ownership a step further, creating an ESOP, or Employee Stock Ownership Plan, for its team of 115.
Maintaining “Righteous Independence” has also contributed to the brewery’s success. Wallace says Left Hand remains a “cash-flow driven company” to this day. “We’re not outside funded,” he adds. “You have to run mostly on your own cash or somebody else is going to own you.”
The model has served Left Hand well, enabling them to focus on more than the bottom line. While they were unable to increase production last year due to a voluntary recall, Wallace is aiming to boost total barrels from 69,535 in 2017 to 75,000 this year.
In the area of innovation, a partnership with Ball Corporation allowed last year’s release of Milk Stout Nitro in American-made widget cans. “Prior to this, all the widget cans used in the U.S. were made in Europe and shipped over,” Wallace says.
Left Hand has continued raising funds for charities as well, with over $900,000 in donations generated in 2017. “We’ll crack $3 million for Bike MS this year since we first started sponsoring teams in 2008,” Wallace says. “That’s pretty cool and shows that we’re community minded.”
When Jeff Aragon and Brian Horton founded their brewery in 2012, they were dissatisfied with the industry’s status quo and determined to produce beers that would challenge convention as well as the palates of adventurous beer drinkers.
“We’re still doing it six years later,” Aragon says, “and we plan to continue with our experimentation and pushing of boundaries. It’s one of the things that really differentiates us from other breweries.”
Paradox released its first coolship beer last year, making it the only brewery in the U.S. at a significant elevation (Divide is at 9,165 feet) to experiment with open spontaneous fermentation. The first in the Divide Ethos Spontaneous Series, the beer garnered rave reviews at the Big Beers, Belgians, and Barleywines festival in January.
“We’ll be using the coolship a lot more this year,” Aragon says. Paradox is planning to increase production by 15 to 20 percent over 2017’s 2,000 barrels and will be expanding distribution as well. “We just added Virginia and are getting ready to launch a couple more states,” he continues. “We’re working on some stuff that may happen overseas, too.”
The brewery’s physical footprint will also grow this year with the addition of a new 2,400-square foot building for offices and a dedicated humidity-controlled barrel room. “We’re going to double our foeder capacity as a result,” Aragon adds.
He expects to continue brisk business in Paradox’s scenic taproom as well. “The taproom was our focus last year,” he explains. “It used to be more of a place where you’d buy bottles and go, but we expanded our hours, food selection, and beer menu. That really contributed to 2017’s success for us.”
The most-read profile at CompanyWeek.com in 2016 was Park City’s Kodiak Cakes. Its legion of fans rallied to push it to #1 in CompanyWeek’s annual readers-choice list.
It’s not a surprise. Across the U.S., manufacturing today is a dynamic mix of industries and companies, early-stage and legacy businesses that combined, are reshaping and energizing the sector. Kodiak follows in a long line of noteworthy Utah food manufacturers. The difference is that today, consumers lead the change, demanding more locally-made products.
It’s the same in other industries, and Utah manufacturers are well positioned in outdoor industry products, in consumer sectors like healthcare and wellness, in technology-driven fabrication, and more.
Alicia Cunningham, the South Jordan-based editor of CompanyWeek Utah, offers her year-in-review favorites here. Bart Taylor, publisher and founder of CompanyWeek, favors companies and leaders who’ve laid a maker and manufacturing foundation.
Collectively, our Year in Review lists offer a glimpse of more to come from Utah’s powerful manufacturing sector.
https://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.png00Bart Taylorhttps://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.pngBart Taylor2020-05-21 22:26:502020-05-21 22:26:50Year in Review: Best of Utah Manufacturing
Employees: 3,000 total at locations in Utah, Connecticut, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Minneapolis, and Ontario, Canada
Plant Director Darren Ericson is helping guide the country’s second-largest manufacturer of laundry detergent to growth with a turnkey private label operation.
Founded as Huish Detergents, the Sun plant in Salt Lake opened in 1985. The corporate offices moved to Connecticut following a 2007 merger with Unilever’s North American laundry detergent division, but the facility remains the hub of the company’s manufacturing for the western U.S.
Melding national consumer brands with Huish’s private-label focus, the merger represented “a unique opportunity,” says Ericson, a 20-year company veteran who’s helmed the Utah operation since 2009. “Huish was a major player in the retail-brand business.”
That’s something of an understatement. The company commanded 95 percent of the private label market, a statistic that still holds true today. The client roster reads like a who’s who of retail, including Costco, Target, Walmart, and Kroger.
But the private label detergent business has changed in recent time. “It’s been an interesting evolution,” says Ericson. “The emerging trend is a lot of our customers want to offer top-tier national brand equivalents.” The proof is in the detergent: Sun has won accolades from Consumer Reports for its private label products.
That change has helped drive strategy in recent years, and the push towards premium has been matched by Sun Products’ approach. “We’re not just your vendor, but we’re truly your partner,” Ericson explains. The company offers its private-label clients a marketing team, point-of-sale support, and other services.
But the business is not dominated by private labels. The company’s national brands, including All, Sun, Snuggle, Surf, and Wisk, have the second-highest market share in the U.S. and represent roughly half of the company’s sales, he adds.
In all, Sun Products makes 3,200 SKUs in Salt Lake and ships all over the West. A sister plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, covers the East.
Ericson says the Utah facility does all of its plastics, packaging, and printing in-house and is also home to a R&D lab. “One thing that makes Sun very unique in our industry is our vertical integration,” he explains. “We have complete control of our supply chain. We view it as a competitive advantage.”
Challenges: A shift in corporate culture started taking root in 2013. “We’re working on a ‘high-performance environment’ concept, which is all about empowering our workers,” says Ericson. “It’s a different way of managing that takes a different perspective: It’s no longer command and control, it’s more mentoring, coaching, and encouraging to be more empowered in their daily work. They feel they belong to something more, rather than [just being] one of 700 or 800 people at a factory.”
The challenge is ongoing. “It’s a journey,” he adds. “It’s about continuous improvement.”
Opportunities: Ericson notes that the overall market has been flat in recent years as Sun’s market share has risen. Powdered detergents have been on the wane as a new market takes off.
“The new and emerging technology is single-dose detergent.” Sun makes both single-dose detergents for both laundry machines and dishwashers and is “experiencing double-digit growth across the segment,” says Ericson, noting that the new manufacturing capability required “significant capital investment.”
Needs: Talent. “We are always on the lookout for good people,” Ericson says.
Another continuous need: “We will continue to make significant capital investments,” he adds. “We don’t see that slowing down. We have a lot of equipment and a lot of automation, and we continue to invest in our infrastructure.”
https://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.png00Bart Taylorhttps://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.pngBart Taylor2020-05-21 22:25:042020-05-21 22:25:04The Sun Products Corporation
CompanyWeek hosted the first-ever Colorado Apparel Manufacturing Summit at the Fashion Design Center Denver on the night of Oct. 9, and the crowd was standing room only.
There was a genuine hunger for a conversation about the state of the apparel business in Colorado — and it sounds like it’s just getting started.
The elephant in the room, everyone agreed, was offshoring, and its impact on Colorado’s apparel industry. In a panel discussion led by some of Colorado’s brightest apparel stars, concerns were raised about controlling quality and intellectual property, stalled innovation and a limited workforce.
On the flip side Colorado’s apparel manufacturing sector is coming back, driven by the region’s desirable lifestyle and brand attributes. But where does fashion and technical clothing fit into the economic-development puzzle? As CompanyWeek founder and publisher Bart Taylor put it, “Colorado can’t figure out where to put you.”
“Do they even know we’re here?” interjected panelist Jon Thomas of Janska Clothing.
Founded by Thomas’ wife and fellow panelist, Jan Erickson, Janska employes 20 sewers at its factory in Colorado Springs and is “totally committed to manufacturing in the United States,” said Erickson.
Panelist Dan English, CEO of Pagosa Springs-based Voormi, said his manufacturing partners are on the coasts, but he keeps his sourcing local in the form of Rocky Mountain Merino wool.
“We decided to do something different,” said English. “We focused on the textile industry because of a lack of innovation since 1972” — when W.L Gore & Associates developed polytetrafluoroethylene-based fabric better known as Gore-Tex.
English said Voormi is rethinking technical clothing in a manner more akin to the tech sector than apparel, but compared the end results to a totally different product: “We are the microbrew of apparel.”
While Voormi might not manufacture in-state, English said it was a goal, but it was up to the industry to build — and rebuild — the necessary infrastructure. “It’s up to us as business leaders to find ways to drive manufacturing back here. When it comes back, he added, “It’s not going to look the same.”
What will it look like? A more nimble and vertically integrated industry that puts out innovative runs of products in small batches and pushes quality without worrying about retail price. “We maximize price and we don’t allow retailers to discount,” English noted.
Another panelist, Joe Silva, president of Denver-based Garb, echoed English’s sentiment when he spoke of the issues associated with manufacturing offshore. “I would love nothing more than to do that [manufacture in Colorado],” he said.
Garb makes kid’s golf and tennis clothing at facilities all over the world, including China, India, Pakistan, and Mexico. With all of those locations, “The supply chain is a very difficult thing to manage,” he said. “If you can cut that cycle time, it’s magic. We can’t do that working in India, China, and all of the other countries, but there’s nothing that exists [in Colorado] that can handle 1 million pieces, 10 colors, and 12 different sizes. I call it my Rubik’s Cube — it’s very, very complicated.”
Panelist Dave Boger, co-founder of Denver’s Jiberish, said the snowboard-centric fashion brand started making sweatshirts and T-shirts at one of Colorado’s largest cut-and-sew facility in 2005, but as volume increased, the partnership proved to be a mismatch. In 2008, Jiberish moved production offshore.
“It’s a big challenge to do it in Colorado,” he said. Existing facilities don’t have high capacities to handle sudden bumps in demand, and the workforce is lacking in terms of both scope and skill.
Innovation, whether it’s process- or product-related, is critical, said Voormi’s English and Topo Designs‘ Mark Hansen, another event panelist. “I don’t think there’s any other way,” said Hansen.
Topo strives not only to manufacture in Colorado, but to source raw materials domestically, he added. The end result? Higher quality and prices, and lower margins.
“That’s probably not sustainable,” Hansen observed. “It’s interesting that people will go into Whole Foods and buy a $10 juice and say, ‘That’s good juice,’ but the same people will go across the street and buy a $3 T-shirt.”
Panelist C.J. Riggins, VP of merchandising and development at Boulder’s Kidrobot, previously worked in sourcing for Pearl Izumi in Louisville. She said innovation is critical in some sectors, but not as much so in others.
“The zipper was developed in 1919 and hasn’t changed,” she noted. At Pearl Izumi, “We were trying to force innovation,” but the key ultimately is skilled workers who can handle cut-and-sew fundamentals and produce quality garments.
However, as is the case in the southeastern U.S., China’s most skilled sewers are getting older, and their kids don’t want to work in the factories.
Garb’s Silva seconded Riggins’ notion. “In my opinion, it is a low-tech, artisan craft that is as labor-intense as you could ever imagine.”
He followed up with a story from early in the Garb days when he was wandering the Garment District in Manhattan and met a bespectacled old Jewish man, chomping on the stereotypical cigar who gave him some sage advice: “Inventory — it’s like produce. After a while, it starts to smell.”
The moral, Silva argued, was that while losses due to unsold surplus can be easily measured, apparel manufacturers cannot track opportunities lost to lead times of 120 days when working with overseas factories because “demand might pass you by” when the product is in transit.
“It requires immense planning, forecasting, and scheduling to make that model work,” he said. If Garb could work with a Colorado facility and cut that down to 20 days, it would “cancel out” a price bump of 20 percent or more. “It would reduce the headaches and the risks,” said Silva. “My banks would be thrilled — they’d kiss me on the lips.”
Janska’s Thomas illustrated the industry’s risk with some hard data: U.S. apparel manufacturers with $1 million to $4 million in sales have an average profit margin of negative 7 percent. Scary stuff.
Jiberish’s Broger said the discombobulated supply chain will help drive investment into the industry, noting, “People with money will get behind consumer products because it’s not efficient right now.”
Attendee Jack Makovsky, VP at stalwart supplier Ralph’s Power Sewing Machine Co. in Denver, said the local apparel industry hit hard times in the 1980s after the government actually incentivized offshoring. “In the late 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, we had quite a booming industry in this area,” he said. “We need to get this thing reversed.”
Moderator Carol Engel-Enright of Colorado State University’s Design & Merchandising program pointed out that three new cut-and-sew facilities opened in Denver in 2014, but “now that we have cut-and-sew happening, we don’t have skilled operators.”
Steve Weil of Rockmount Ranch Wear was in attendance. “The issue is: How complicated are your products?” he said. “My shirts have 25 operations — they’re complicated.”
Rockmount makes its shirts in the Southeast, but embroiders them offshore. When he “The bottom line is who wants to grow up in the United States and work in a shop for $10 to $12 an hour?” he added. “It’s really tough.”
Janska’s Erickson said immigration — and immigration reform — was critical to building Colorado’s apparel workforce. “We need some of those people from other countries to come and help us.
“In every rural town in Colorado, you have the 4-H champion seamstress, you have the sewing club, you have women who want to work from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.,” she said. “You have the workforce in rural Colorado — I guarantee it.”
Riggins said that research from her Pearl Izumi days showed the company’s margins would drop by nearly 15 percent if the company manufactured in the U.S., but that wasn’t a deal-killer. “We still could have been a $150 million company, I have no doubt,” she said.
Garb’s Silva did a back-of-the napkin calculation and said that he could conceivably pay skilled sewers $20 an hour and make the numbers work — if there was a local manufacturer that could handle thousands of SKUs.
Phillips County’s Worley jumped out of her seat. “Do you know what $20 an hour can do in a rural community?”
Another attendee, Rachael Cox from the African Community Center of Denver, chimed in with another means of bolstering the local workforce: refugees who are resettled in Denver. “It’s gorgeous and it’s making my heart jump out of its skin,” she said of the possibility.
Though the two-hour discussion felt like it was just getting started Taylor closed the night’s conversation. “Can we count on everybody to stay involved in this process?”
Judging from the sound of the applause of the 150-plus attendees, the answer was a resounding “yes.”
The latest in a series of Industry Reports from CompanyWeek.
Industry Report: Developers are rethinking economic incentives as competition intensifies and industry’s ask evolves.
US manufacturers have begun to flex their newly re-shored muscle. In response, cities, states and regional economic developers are focused on how to attract and retain energized primary job creators.
Take Tesla’s $5 billion gigabattery factory, for example. When the company announced plans to build a new plant, economic developers throughout the country kicked into action. Elon Musk’s vision could bring an estimated 6,500 jobs and unparalleled bragging rights to the winning city and state.
Odds-on favorites this spring were the states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. All offered traditional tax based incentives as well as low labor costs and less government red tape. Last week, however, the LA Times reported that Stockton, Calif. (population 296,000) is a leading contender. California taxes are higher, but the proposed Stockton site is near another Tesla plant and major suppliers. It also offers industrial-zoned property, a port that handles ocean-going vessels, major freeway access and nearby rail and airport facilities – plus an existing auto manufacturing-trained workforce.
Tesla is hardly the only company on the move. Last year Colorado saw national firms like Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Visa open new operations, and is now the 4th fastest job-growth state in the country. Utah has attracted Microsoft, Twitter, Cabelas, Exelis, Salomon and more, and Wyoming continues to build on its core energy sector.
The Mountain West may be less populous, with a smaller workforce and industrial supply chain components than its East and West coast counterparts. But it also boasts powerful regional selling points. Highways are – in most cases – designed to handle increased population and traffic. Its urban infrastructure is “younger” and in better shape than that of many Rust Belt states. Personal property taxes in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are also lower than elsewhere. And Rocky Mountain R&D-focused university labs offer attractive partnering opportunities for corporate innovators.
Some communities are well-organized with incentive packages for new hires and business growth.
Metro Denver EDC Economic Development Manager Laura Brandt, sees mixed results, however, from reliance strictly on job performance-based tax incentives, enterprise zones, entitlement fast-tracking and short term loan programs.
“While I think companies like to tell their board and stockholders that they negotiated a great incentive package, some companies don’t follow through,” she says, noting that over 5 or 10 years corporate management changes or slower-than-projected hiring may push tax base audit forms and paperwork to a low priority.
Metro Denver EDC and its local economic partners (a 9-county consortium) help companies identify and qualify them for the appropriate local incentives, once top locations are identified.
Programs vary by community but generally include the following:
· Personal Property Tax Credits – Cities, counties, and special districts may negotiate a personal property tax rebate of up to 100% for 10 years.
· Local Tax Rebates – Cities may consider waiving or rebating local sales/use taxes for construction materials, personal property, and manufacturing equipment.
· Waiver of Permit Fees – In addition to expediting the building permit process, cities may choose to waive all or part of various permit fees.
· Employee Relocation Assistance – Local economic development organizations may offer packages of discounted products and services to assist employees relocating to the metro area.
· Training Assistance – Cities may offer additional training assistance for qualified projects.
· Recruitment Services – The Colorado Workforce Development Centers offer free recruitment assistance including listing jobs, advertising jobs, hosting job fairs, and screening candidates. Employers make the hiring decisions.
One size rarely fits all. “Intangibles,” can be equally important, says Boulder Economic Council Executive Director Clif Harald.
High tech, biomedical, aerospace and other knowledge-based industries like Boulder County’s Oracle, Ball and IBM don’t limit their expansion searches to the cheapest market. Some sectors — outdoor sports, apparel and natural foods companies – actually prefer mountain and foothills communities where they find the quality of life necessary to attract talent, organic products and like-minded suppliers.
“Whatever we were doing in the `80s and `90s didn’t work,” Bob Jensen, former CEO, Wyoming Business Council
Boulder County is home to strong supply chain clusters, a highly educated workforce and to University of Colorado research and development laboratories, but Harald believes that manufacturers are attracted to the attributes of the region — “not to any ‘special sauce’ in Boulder.”
“It’s everything we have to offer along the Front Range,” he says.
His view, much like that of Companyweek.com Publisher Bart Taylor, is that collaborative regional strategies – along with traditional tax incentives, enterprise zones and entitlement fast-tracking — are vital to attracting new industry.
So how are Colorado and neighboring states incorporating collaborative strategies so far? Here’s a brief recap.
Wyoming
A few years ago, the Wyoming Governor’s office rounded up 15 key business leaders to form a statewide Business Council.
Bob Jensen, then-CEO of the Wyoming Business Council, says his state decided to rethink its outdated economic development strategies.
“Whatever we were doing in the `80s and `90s didn’t work,” Jensen says. “It wasn’t effective. We’ve always had a low tax base, but that in itself isn’t an incentive to get businesses to come here or grow here.”
Area Development.com – a go-to website for site and plant location consultants and companies, reports the Council adopted a proactive “economic gardening” approach. When companies express interest in the Equality State, Council members work directly to find grants, address infrastructure issues and arrange creative financing. The result: In its first three years, the program drew more than 3,000 new jobs to the state.
Colorado
Fort Collins in Larimer County had been home to a Woodward, Inc. engine manufacturing facility since 1955. The area’s climate and outdoor recreation made it a recruiting plus. The community also offered attractive intangibles: a highly acclaimed K-12 system, a research university, verdant well-maintained parks and rich recreational, sports and cultural activities. In short, a great place to raise a family. Those factors all contributed to management’s decision in 2006 to move Woodward’s corporate headquarters to Fort Collins.
Fast forward to 2013. The company had grown to a $2 billion operation. It needed room to expand. In spite of compelling offers from other states – including at least one that exceeded the local community’s $23 million incentive package — Woodward accepted the Fort Collins City Council’s offer. Community partnership and quality of life won out.
No checks were written, no money changed hands explains an observer of the process, former CEO of the Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp. and former member of the board of the Northern Colorado Development Corp Rocky Scott.
In the end, the city negotiated the company’s tax base, allowing Woodward to donate land and improvements for a city park as well as for public road improvements.
Top talent loves Colorado, Scott says.
“Corporate (tax) incentives are a secondary factor. They alone are not enough to make key talent – the driving force behind a successful business – move their families or to remain in a less than satisfactory environment.”
Utah
The Utah Governor’s office operates in much the same way, and it’s already paying off. Business Marketing Director Michael O’Malley and EDC Utah chief Jeff Edwards often collaborate on industry-attracting incentives.
The state’s EDTIF tax credit is a post-performance, refundable tax credit for up to 30 percent of new state revenues (sales, corporate and withholding taxes paid to the state). A new company, for example, might qualify for a 10-year agreement to bring 250 new jobs. Those positions must pay 125 percent of the average county wage plus benefits. Each year, the operation’s tax burden is offset, based on actual new jobs created. A key provision: each benefiting community must contribute something to the deal.
But tax incentives alone – though important – don’t get the job done by themselves.
“From our experience they’re not the most critical,” O’Malley says.
Like Rocky Scott, he sees pristine quality of life and proximity to recreational amenities as a top draw for owners and employees. Utah is the first state in the country to create an Office of Outdoor Recreation in support of outdoor products industries. As a result, Enve Composites, a growing carbon fiber road and mountain rim and wheel systems maker, has opted to stay in Ogden City. The city’s existing aerospace advanced composite industry resources created an additional win-win R&D opportunity.
The region also benefits from a well-nurtured logistical environment. Named the 4th most diverse economy in the nation, Utah promotes a “robust set of industry verticals” — from Information Technology to Life Sciences, from Outdoor Recreation to Aerospace/Defense.
“Likes attract,” O’Malley says. “It’s a weaving process. A small state can get things done quickly, collaboratively. It’s easier to get key players in the same room talking.”
Product focus and a purposeful culture drive Walker Manufacturing, one of northern Colorado’s enduring companies
“We build machines we’d like to own ourselves”, say Bob Walker, President of Walker Manufacturing. Bob and his brother Dean lead one of northern Colorado’s most successful companies.
The sentiment dates back to the company’s formative years, on the Walker farm in southwest Kansas near Dodge City.
“Farmers would develop an implement, make one, and the next thing you know they’re making stuff. My dad, Max Walker, saw that. By 1960 he’d quit farming.”
Max Walker’s design and production talents evolved from a fully functional mini-Caterpillar he built for his sons, to a gas-powered golf cart, the first full-production machine of the fledgling Walker manufacturing company. In the ensuing years, the product line changed, as did the Walker family’s locale, following opportunity – and financing.
“The squeeze was on. There was always the challenge of managing seasonal operating lines with the bank, of meeting financing and cash flow demands.” It was a recurring theme in the company’s early years.
The Walkers eventually landed in Colorado to do contract manufacturing for a company in Greeley, with Bob, who in 1975 and six years out of college left Cessna Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas to join his dad and brother at the ‘new’ Walker Manufacturing. Based in Ft. Collins, the now full-on family business built tractor cab-coolers, making over 70,000 units until the contract ended in 1983.
By the late 70’s, though, the company already had begun to diversify, landing on an idea for a much-improved riding lawn-mower.
“The notion of ‘contract landscaping’ was just taking hold. We went shopping and bought a couple riding mowers in the spring of ‘77, and after using the mowers knew we could build a better machine. In ’77 and ‘78 we built prototype each year, and in ‘79 built another and took that one to the 3i SHOW (an agri-business expo) in Kansas. Based on interest there we built 25 machines on speculation. It took us a year to build and a two years to sell ‘em.”
The company garnered national interest in the early ‘80’s. A product announcement in the landscape trade press generated calls from Florida.
“My dad sold our first big order his first trip there – a contractor maintaining big retirement villages bought 48 units. In 1982 we built 125; in 1984, 450 machines. By then we were out of the cab-cooler business.”
Walker’s dealer network and business also expanded geographically. In 1984 the company entered Australia and New Zealand in 1988. In 1986 Europe. And while the ‘great recession’ hit the company hard in the late 2000’s, Bob Walker forecasts the company will rebound to sell 6000 units in 2014 through its network of 46 worldwide distributors.
Today Walker Manufacturing employs nearly 160 employees in a sprawling, 216,000 square-foot manufacturing facility just east of Ft. Collins. The company builds machines at the “high-end” of the market, resisting over the years the promise of economy mowers or ancillary products to focus instead on its commercial-grade, signature brand. The Walker Mower Model B is the latest in a single, long line of machines, each improved from the last but retaining the mower’s unique visual and functional attributes.
The company is equally focused on corporate culture. “Strong companies are made up of strong people”, Walker says, “and employees benefit from strong families.” The company maintains the Walker Family Resource Center for employees.
Walker also hands me a list of the companies operating principles – labeled ‘What We Believe’ – as we sit down to talk, a list that’s posted on-site and online. The Walkers espouse a purposeful culture.
For how big the company feels when visiting, Walker Manufacturing’s regional presence seems understated. By contrast the Walker legacy, on the community and its customers, will likely be deeply felt.
Challenges: Walker’s concerned about uncertainty surrounding Obamacare. “The net effect of some of the increases we’re looking at could materially impact our business. Operating with relatively small margins, as we do, it creates a challenge for how you price your product.”
Opportunities: “We think there’s room to improve our market share”, Walker says. “Two of our key product differentiators – the steering lever system and front-mount mower deck – have proven their value.”
Needs: Cost-certainly around employee health-care.
Denver’s iconic sports and outdoor brand prefers a low profile that belies its global reach and tech-driven growth ambitions
Perhaps no global brand is as iconic and influential in its market yet keeps as low a profile as Denver’s Eagle Claw. Those who fish have spent a lifetime using its products. But for this enduring company, conceived on a stretch of the Colorado River in the early 1920s, success comes with one condition, that it’s done quietly.
That’s the way the McGill family, founders and owners of Eagle Claw and other Wright & McGill Co. brands, prefer it.
It also suits the president of the company, Donn Schaible. It’s clear he’s at home when describing the 90-plus year company’s demeanor. “We’re still a privately-held company that doesn’t seek the spotlight,” he says. “Lee McGill’s a private individual, and our company’s the same way.”
To equate modesty with complacency, though, would be a mistake. Eagle Claw’s a global powerhouse — the only hook manufacturer in the Western Hemisphere — and Schaible’s ambition to keep the company on top is unmistakable.
“We direct all our efforts toward driving sales,” he says, obviously proud of the company’s products like the ultra-sharp, high-end Trokar hook brand and the fact they’re made in the U.S. and not Asia, manufacturing home of global competitors Mustad (Norway) and Gamakatsu (Japan). “100 percent of our products are made right here, and we’re the number one importer of ‘terminal’ tackle in the U.S., made to our specifications.”
The company guards its IP and manufacturing processes fiercely, in keeping with its reserved nature but as a practical matter as well. A tour of the sprawling manufacturing facility is out of the question.
Think making hooks, rod and reels, and other equipment is easy? Think again. “Much of our equipment is highly proprietary,” Schaible says. “What we do here is very unique.” Technology’s an important driver here, as is the company’s commitment to advancing the industry. “Innovation is very important. Our people want us to be seen as the drivers of innovation in our markets”.
As with most companies, market conditions have impacted business, but in a surprising way. “When the economy is tough, sales tend to increase,” says Schaible. “People tend to stay closer to home, to do more camping and fishing.” Schaible keeps close watch of long-term trends. The sale of angler licenses in the U.S. has been flat for the past decade or so, but natural resource management and the availability of ‘fishable waters’ leaves him more concerned.
“There’s pressure from very well-organized groups working to diminish the amount of water available for sports fishing,” he says. “We’re very supportive of groups like Keep America Fishing and others working to protect habitat and access to public waters.”
That said, Schaible, Eagle Claw, Lazer Sharp, and the people and brands of Wright & McGill Co. look from the outside to be doing very nicely.
So is the company growing? Schaible smiles, and simply responds, “Yes.”
Challenges: As with other manufacturers, workforce is a challenge, Schaible says. “We manufacturer here, so we pay higher wages than our competitors who don’t. It’s also difficult here in Denver to find talent, even though it’s finally getting some attention. We have to stop demeaning the industry, even at a high-school level. Manufacturing is different than it used to be. But trying to find employees with the right skill set has been a challenge.”
And Schaible chafed when discussing the “raft” of regulation the company manages. “It’s a constant battle to keep up with amount of regulation this company faces,” he says. “It’s ludicrous.”
Opportunities: Technology is disrupting manufacturing operations in a positive way. “Trokar’s a good example. No one else is playing in that market, or have the machines to be able to make that work.”
Schaible is also bullish on the long-term prospects for the industry. “Over 90 percent of us have a favorable impression of fishing, despite the efforts of some who unfairly berate the industry.”
Needs: Eagle Claw actively seeks to improve its supply chain. “We continually evaluate our suppliers from a cost, quality and availability standpoint. Quality is key but it must also be cost competitive and the suppliers must have a track record of delivering on time.”
Spotlight: 2018 Colorado Mfg. Awards Finalists
/in General/by Bart TaylorThe third annual Colorado Manufacturing Awards showcase the best and brightest stars from all over the state and its many manufacturing sectors.
CompanyWeek‘s crack writers have caught up with the 30 finalists across 10 categories to shine a light on their successes, innovations, and new initiatives. While they make everything from bourbon to spacecraft, there are common threads: dynamic growth, a commitment to quality, and a focus on innovation.
We’ll showcase three or four categories per week in the run-up to the April 5 event, when winners from each category will be announced.
Outstanding Aerospace Manufacturer
By Eric Peterson
AMPT
www.ampt.pro
Durango
Advanced Mobile Propulsion Test, or AMPT, has been a leader in the niche of testing rocket engines for major manufacturers and federal agencies for the better part of a decade.
Now the company is looking to disrupt the market with a revolutionary low-cost thruster it plans to manufacture. “We have developed the prototype and had very good results,” says founder Daudi Barnes. “We see the future for our company in actually developing engines and spacecraft systems.”
The opportunity revolves around a broad sector move from big government contracts to commercial missions that demand nimbler manufacturers and less expensive technologies. “Activities in space are a hugely expanding market,” says Barnes. Emerging companies “are filling in all the niches between the big players. Some of them are potentially big niches where there’s an opportunity for small players to become big players. An example of that is SpaceX.”
He calls the industry’s evolution “the ideal manifestation of the competitive capitalist market.”
AMPT won a $250,000 grant from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade in early 2018 that will be used “to refine the additive manufacturing part of the process,” says Barnes. “It closes the loop to do R&D development in-house. . . . We’re going to be looking at dynamic design features and testing them out.”
That will make for a more manufacturable product, he adds. “We want to be able to hand off a set of machine parameters to people who could potentially do production for us.”
Barnes says AMPT’s thrusters could be in production and on spacecraft in the next one to three years if all goes to plan. “There’s a lot of potential for growth,” he notes.
CompanyWeek profile: www.companyweek.com/company-profile/advanced-mobile-propulsion-test
Air Comm Corporation
www.aircommcorp.com
Westminster
Founded by CEO Keith Steiner’s father, Norm, in 1987, Air Comm offered a solution to a problem. “He found a lot of helicopters operated in extreme climates,” says Keith. “The heating and AC systems from the factory were simply not enough to get the job done.”
So Norm started making heaters and AC units for the helicopter aftermarket, but they proved popular enough that Bell and other manufacturers started offering Air Comm products as factory-available systems in the early 1990s.
The company diversified into environmental control systems for fixed-wing aircraft with the 2013 acquisition of Texas-based Keith Products. Air Comm consolidated manufacturing operations under one 53,000-square-foot roof in Westminster in 2017.
The move doubled the size of the company, says Keith, as it now employs about 100 people. It also made the company less dependent of the helicopter market, which is famously dependent on high oil prices. “It was good to add another leg to the stool,” he says.
For the last five years, the Air Comm crew has been working on new systems for Cirrus Aircraft and Pilatus Aircraft. “We’re now entering full-rate production for both of these aircraft,” says Keith, forecasting 10 percent growth for 2018. “We’re setting up a second shift. It’s keeping us very busy.”
Air Comm is bringing a significant piece of its supply chain in-house.”We’re going to be producing a line of brushless electric motors,” says Keith, citing quality, timing, and price as factors in the decision. The motors will be used in Air Comm’s products, but also available on the broader market.
Another recent move: Air Comm is expanding its in-house maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operation to offer services to outside clients.
Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Space Systems
www.sncorp.com/space-systems
Louisville
Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Space Systems has 2020 circled on the calendar. That’s the year the company’s Dream Chaser spacecraft is slated to arrive at the International Space Station.
“Last year, we did a flight test at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base,” says Kimberly Schwandt, SNC Space Systems communications manager. “It was a beautiful sunrise in the California desert. You could not have a more majestic setting.”
More importantly, the November 2017 test flight was a success. Dropped from a helicopter at 12,000 feet, the Dream Chaser glided down to Earth in a minute and performed as planned.
That test vehicle is now back in Colorado at a new 100,000-square-foot facility in Louisville where the company will manufacture the final product. “The Dream Chaser will be built there,” says Schwandt.
But the Dream Chaser is not the only big project underway at SNC Space Systems. “We won a NextSTEP-2 contract with NASA,” says Schwandt. The competitive project involves developing “a lunar outpost as a gateway to go deeper into space.”
In 2019, the Louisville-built prototype will compete against others to win the final contract to build the structures on the Moon.
To support these big initiatives, SNC Space Systems has hired more than 100 employees since 2015; the head count in Louisville is now about 450. “We’ve added a lot of jobs,” says Schwandt. “We’re going to continue to add jobs.”
CompanyWeek profile: www.companyweek.com/company-profile/sierra-nevada-corporations-space-systems
Outstanding Contract Manufacturer
By Bart Taylor
Faustson Tool
www.faustson.com
Arvada
Faustson Tool is angling to become a two-time CMA winner, a reward that would be very much in keeping with the company’s lofty accomplishments.
“We’re a high-precision Colorado manufacturer that has a part on or around every planet in our system,” notes Heidi Hostetter, vice president. “And, among other things, we’re a sole source supplier for two critical parts on [Lockheed Martin’s] F-35.”
The “other things” constitute a long list. Hostetter points to NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, hemoglobin mirrors for the renal industry, the Mars Rover, and Northrop Grumman’s Guardian anti-missile system as other high-profile Faustson projects. The company’s stake in 3D metal printing also continues to set the company apart, including a founding role in the ADAPT Center at the Colorado School of Mines, with Manufacturer’s Edge, Ball Aerospace, and others.
But for Hostetter and Faustson CEO Alicia Svaldi, slowing down to appreciate how a business overcomes challenges and manifests success in the community means as much as its impressive résumé. “We have been tenacious surviving some of the most difficult trials and tribulations that any business can face,” says Hostetter. “As a result, we have definitely come to appreciate that leadership comes in your darkest hours, not your finest moments. We believe in the golden rule and we believe that our innovation efforts make leadership in technology possible, but we are also quite aware that our employees make us the company we have been and will continue to be.”
CompanyWeek profile: www.companyweek.com/company-profile/faustson-tool
Tecomet Boulder
www.tecomet.com
Boulder
It’s no surprise that Tecomet Boulder is a finalist in this strong category: Tecomet acquired Mountainside Medical, an inaugural Colorado Manufacturing Award winner, in 2016.
The company’s regional legacy machining precision parts for the medical device industry is as formidable as its $1.2 billion top line. Tecomet is today the largest orthopedic contract manufacturer worldwide, with 17 plants spanning the United States, Europe, and Asia.
The challenge of maintaining a lofty regional perch in Colorado’s contract manufacturing ecosystem today falls on Dave Capkovitz, Tecomet’s new general manager in Boulder.
Capkovitz seems like the right person for the job. He cut his teeth in the manufacturing-rich business ecosystem throughout the Midwest, but longed for a mountain view. With Tecomet’s Boulder location providing the backdrop, Capkovitz is motivated to maintain and grow his company’s footprint in Colorado.
“Colorado is very important to Tecomet,” says Capkovitz. “The skill level and talent that Colorado’s colleges and universities are turning out is the next generation workforce that will expand future technologies in our field. Colorado is also an area where people have a strong work/personal balance in their lives. This encourages innovation and outside-of-the-box thinking that will help keep Tecomet a leader among its peers.”
It’s a worthy goal for a company that’s demonstrating what it takes to stay on top. “Tecomet Boulder has shown growth of 25 percent over the last three years,” Capkovitz says, “and is projected to grow another 89 percent over the coming five years.”
For Capkovitz, the dynamic growth is a byproduct of employee engagement and customer satisfaction. “Tecomet takes pride in being a part of the lives of our valuable employees, supporting them, their families, and their communities,” he says. “Our leadership is one of a culture that breeds inspiration, caring, and growth. We pride ourselves in making a difference with the patient, the customer, and our communities.”
CompanyWeek profile (Mountainside Medical): www.companyweek.com/company-profile/mountainside-medical
Manes Machine and Engineering
www.manesmachine.com
Fort Collins
Manes Machine and Engineering might be one of Colorado’s best-kept secrets. Not for long.
“Business is very good,” says President and CEO Bruce Page. “Our target market is companies like Boeing and Lockheed, but also smaller companies that are big companies in their own right, who also sell to Boeing, Lockheed, and Airbus. We have 15 to 20 companies we deal with all over the world.”
Manes is also working with arguably the most innovative aerospace OEM going. “We’re also getting a fair amount of work from SpaceX,” says Page, referencing a Manes product on the mission in late February.
As strong as the market is today for commercial and defense-related aerospace — Boeing and Airbus are coming off back-to-back record years, and Lockheed is poised to benefit from a bigger defense budget — operating in the supply chain of the world’s biggest aviation companies also has its challenges. “Boeing just came down with a new stipulation, where fewer suppliers will be able to participate,” says Page, citing requirements for lower tolerances and higher-precision parts.
Page notes that Manes has had to reengineer its business to stay competitive in a sector that’s rapidly deploying new technologies. “When we first moved here from Southern California, we were known for known for manufacturing big, structural-type parts, and that served us well,” he says. “But over the last couple of years, we’ve made a 180-degree shift in what we’re doing here. We’re selling off a lot of our bigger equipment, and moving into smaller equipment that’s more automated.”
Automation is paying off in other ways. A new generation is taking note, important for a sector struggling to attract a new workforce. “Technology is changing the game,” Page says, adding that potential employees get a “bounce in their step when they see what we’re doing here.”
Outstanding Small Food Brand
By Gregory Daurer
The Real Dill
www.therealdill.com
Denver
Justin Park and Tyler DuBois started The Real Dill in 2012 “making pickles for fun in our home kitchen,” says Park. The artisan dills quickly caught on, and the company’s product line has expanded beyond pickles in the years since.
Case in point: The Real Dill’s Bloody Mary Mix is now its top-selling product. It originated after Park and DuBois devised another use for the salted cucumber water they used to dispose of. After the product took off, they were forced to “reverse engineer” the cucumber byproduct, in order to have enough on hand to fulfill orders for the Bloody Mary Mix.
“We joke that we started a pickle company, but now we’re really a blood mary company with a pickle problem,” says Park.
The Real Dill now boasts more than 600 accounts in 35 states. “We’ve grown every single year,” says Park. The company saw 40 percent growth in 2017 over 2016, shipping out 14,000 cases of its products. For 2018, Park projects a total of 20,000 cases. “The challenge we’re constantly facing — and having fun with — is continuing to scale up our production, while maintaining or improving the quality of the product that we’re making,” he says.
With continued growth, change has come to the company: It now automates the filling and labeling of its Bloody Mary Mix. But some things remain the same: “We take a lot of pride that we make everything 100 percent from scratch,” says Park.
Just like the cucumber water no longer going down the drain, the food waste isn’t going into dumpsters. More than 500 pounds of vegetable scraps is diverted from the landfill weekly and used by a local nonprofit to make compost. As for becoming a “zero-food-waste company,” Park says, “It was just the obvious and the right thing to do.”
CompanyWeek profile: www.companyweek.com/company-profile/the-real-dill
Blue Moon Goodness
www.bluemoongoodness.com
Woodland Park
Kelly Strong began selling batches of her gluten-free, vegan soup to restaurants and cafes around Colorado Springs in 2013. “We jarred our first soups by hand [in January 2014],” Strong says. “We made a few cases. We ran a few dozen labels, and I presented [the soup] to City Market and King Soopers here in Colorado and they liked it.”
By the end of 2014, Blue Moon Goodness was in every Kroger store in Colorado and some surrounding states. Safeway picked up the brand in 2018.
Blue Moon Goodness’ soups — Moroccan Vegetable, Tomato Fennel, and Vegan Green Chile — are now available in 300 stores in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah. Strong is planning to expand the company’s geographical distribution, perhaps tripling to 900 outlets by next year.
Strong says a new distributor has told her, “Nothing exciting has happened in the soup aisle in a long time.” Her response? “Party in the soup aisle! I think there’s a great opportunity for new packaging, new flavors, and something really different.” Her jarred soups — some organic — have a two-year shelf life.
Strong credits the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Colorado Proud program for helping to make local products an in-demand commodity in the state. “It gave us a real opportunity,” she says. “I have to admit that it wasn’t just luck.”
Still, she considers herself lucky in business. “Just the fact that people like my product — that I get to make real food for real people — it’s a joy,” says Strong. “It’s a privilege making people happy.”
Cusa Tea
www.cusatea.com
Boulder
Founder Jim Lamancusa had his “aha!” moment during a hike in Colorado, as he watched friends prepare their instant coffee. Lamancusa recalls thinking, “I want that! I want instant tea that actually tastes good on the trail.”
But the subtle flavors within tea leaves are destroyed by high-heat dehydration, a process which works just fine for coffee beans. So Lamancusa developed new technology in order to see his dream become a reality. First, the tea leaves are cold-brewed under high pressure for eight hours. Then, the liquid is slowly dehydrated, leaving a crystallized powder.
Lamancusa says, “When the consumer then opens the tea stick and pours it in the water, it just instantly rehydrates. And it tastes exactly like a freshly brewed cup of tea, because we haven’t done any high heat or extreme-cold dehydration to it.” Pouring warm water over Cusa’s powdery crystals results in a cup of tea within three seconds.
For a company that launched in May 2017, Boulder’s Cusa Tea has undergone rapid expansion. The tea varieties (Green Tea, English Breakfast, Chai, and Oolong) can be presently found in 500 locations, including King Soopers and REI stores. “By the middle of summer we should be in about a 1,000 retail locations,” says Lamancusa.
The USDA-certified organic teas are grown, processed, and packaged in Southeast China. “It’s been helpful to be next to the tea farm, because we can constantly do R&D work over there,” says Lamancusa.
The top comment Lamancusa receives from consumers and retailers is, “Why has no one done this before?”
Lamancusa, who’s worked at startups throughout his career, observing their strengths and weaknesses, says, “If you don’t have a real innovative idea — and if you just make a me-too product — you’re probably not going to make it.”
Outstanding Energy & Environmental Manufacturer
By Chris Meehan
Lightning Systems
www.lightningsystems.com
Loveland
In less than a decade, the manufacturer of fleet-vehicle efficiency technologies has expanded into three categories, moving from a hydraulic hybrid system into pure electric vehicles and vehicle analytics.
The company has sold about 250 of its hybrid systems which use hydraulic fluids compressed as part of the braking process to provide a boost to the acceleration process for vehicles like garbage trucks and beverage vehicles. “Because you need as much payload as possible it can still be a good spot to look at hybrid systems rather than electric. It’s difficult to electrify really heavy vehicles,” explains co-founder Tim Reeser.
In 2018, Lightning Systems is making a strong push into electric fleet vehicles for such companies as DHL, FedEx UPS, Comcast, and AT&T. As of March, it had sold five of its electric Ford Transits, but more sales are on the way. “We’re working on some fairly large orders,” says Reeser. “We expect to deliver 200 this year based on our current order pipeline.”
The company also has introduced an electric fuel-cell version of the Ford Transit cargo van that uses a hydrogen fuel cell to charge the vehicle’s battery, extending its 50-mile range to 200 in a zero-emission vehicle.
Lightning Systems has a strong local supply pipeline and is continuing to work with Steelhead Composites, which makes accumulators and gas tanks. Longmont’s UQM Technologies supplies the motors and some fuel cell parts and Loveland’s Casper’s Electronics makes its wiring harnesses.
Reeser says growth in this type of vehicle will be strong as more cities adopt and look at adopting rules to outlaw internal combustion engines, like London, Paris, and Amsterdam. “That regulatory drive is certainly pushing people toward the the zero-emission space,” he notes.
CompanyWeek profile: www.companyweek.com/company-profile/lightning-hybrids
AMP Robotics
www.amprobotics.com
Denver
An acronym for Autonomous Manipulation and Perception, AMP’s Cortex robots rapidly identify and sort certain materials in a single-stream recycling line using the company’s Neuron artificial intelligence system. The robots are used on recycling centers’ container lines to sort multi-material cartons — like juice or wine boxes — and plastics.
The system is capable of scanning, identifying, and sorting 60 containers a minute. But it detects far more in that short period of time, explains Rob Writz, AMP’s director of operations. “Our vision system does perceive aluminum, paper, mixed papers, and corrugated products,” he says.
AMP has numerous robots installed at recycling centers across the U.S., including Alpine Waste and Recycling in Denver and Dem-Con Companies in Shakopee, Minnesota.
“All of our robots combined now have over seven man-years of operation,” Writz says. “They’re adding up very quickly because they operate two to three shifts everyday. Two of our units have been operating for over a year, another one for over half a year.”
The robotic systems are currently in the hands of early adopters. “Our work with them over the next few years will push out into the broader market,” says Writz, “and the later adopters who let the early adopters sort out the commercialization challenges and technology.”
The interest is strong because it’s hard to retain employees as sorters. “It is a very dangerous, dirty, and dull job,” explains Writz. “They have rapid turnover rates and are looking to stabilize their throughput on their lines that they operate many shifts per day,” he explains.
Writz anticipates more growth in 2018. “We look to grow to about 15 people, tripling the size of our company in the span of a year,” he says. The majority of the jobs will be in software and mechanical engineering.
RavenWindow
www.ravenwindow.com
Denver
“Our product is like putting sunglasses on a building,” explains CEO Del Bankston. “It enhances the view and does not disrupt the connection.”
Bankston emphasizes that the company’s product, a thermochromic filter applied to window or skylight glass, darkens automatically once glass hits a certain temperature and reduces or eliminates glare and UV degradation, increasing health, comfort and productivity.
That’s what he leads with, but the glass also reduces solar heat gain, increasing energy savings. “It’s able to reduce your energy costs by up to 30 percent based on geography and exposure, building use and so on,” Bankston explains. It’s also much less expensive than options like electrochromic technologies which require external energy sources to darken.
After more than a decade of research and development, the company’s Gen3 technology is protected by more than 40 patents and starting to ship. “We’ve got 14 projects that are under one phase or another of construction,” says Bankston.
RavenWindow currently has about 20 employees and can manufacture 50,000 square feet of its product. By 2019, Bankston anticipates producing up to 100,000 square feet of the product and doubling staff in the second half of the year. “We’re not concerned about sales, our phone is ringing off the hook and our website is blowing up with business,” he says.
In the future, Bankston wants to supply major window and skylight manufacturers like Pella and Velux. “The intention is to sell the filter to be non-disruptive to the industry, to be another product they offer in their portfolio to their customers,” he says.
CompanyWeek profile: www.companyweek.com/company-profile/ravenbrick
Outstanding Craft Brewery
By Angela Rose
4 Noses Brewing Company
www.4nosesbrewing.com
Broomfield
After a 91 percent increase in 2017, 4 Noses Brewing Company’s founder, Tommy Bibliowicz, is planning to nearly double his brewery’s output again this year, forecasting minimum production of 8,000 barrels.
The rapid growth is necessary to keep up with demand. Bibliowicz partnered with Elite Brands last year to launch his previously self-distributed beers statewide. “Prior to signing with Elite, we were only in the Front Range with some presence in the mountains and Colorado Springs,” he explains.
The brewery’s portfolio has expanded as well. “There’s a long list of experimental ad hoc products that we were able to come out with in 2017,” Bibliowicz says. One such release was a Russian imperial stout called Ryeciprocal, which recently won gold in the wood- and barrel-aged dark beer category at the Craft Beer Awards.
“Some of the other ad hoc beers that we put out successfully last year are going to move from in-house only to a little more widespread availability,” Bibliowicz adds. “We’ll also have a lot of big barrel releases throughout the year as well as beers in our wild saison and sour programs, which are really coming along well.”
While brewing good beer is decidedly important, Bibliowicz says 4 Noses’ success has also been built on the excellence of his team. The company brought on a new director of brewing operations last year and had very little turnover of which to speak.
“We have a great team, and we kept it almost entirely intact throughout 2017, so I would definitely put that as a big success as well,” he says.
CompanyWeek Profile: www.companyweek.com/company-profile/4-noses-brewing-co
Left Hand Brewing Company
www.lefthandbrewing.com
Longmont
The craft beer industry has changed a lot since Eric Wallace co-founded Left Hand Brewing Company in 1993, but the business has weathered every storm. One of the ways they’ve done so is to instill a sense of ownership — figuratively as well as literally — in their employees.
“Back during the first craft beer shakeout in 1998, we began offering some of our employees equity in the company in order to keep that talent around,” says Wallace. In 2015, Left Hand took employee ownership a step further, creating an ESOP, or Employee Stock Ownership Plan, for its team of 115.
Maintaining “Righteous Independence” has also contributed to the brewery’s success. Wallace says Left Hand remains a “cash-flow driven company” to this day. “We’re not outside funded,” he adds. “You have to run mostly on your own cash or somebody else is going to own you.”
The model has served Left Hand well, enabling them to focus on more than the bottom line. While they were unable to increase production last year due to a voluntary recall, Wallace is aiming to boost total barrels from 69,535 in 2017 to 75,000 this year.
In the area of innovation, a partnership with Ball Corporation allowed last year’s release of Milk Stout Nitro in American-made widget cans. “Prior to this, all the widget cans used in the U.S. were made in Europe and shipped over,” Wallace says.
Left Hand has continued raising funds for charities as well, with over $900,000 in donations generated in 2017. “We’ll crack $3 million for Bike MS this year since we first started sponsoring teams in 2008,” Wallace says. “That’s pretty cool and shows that we’re community minded.”
CompanyWeek Profile: www.companyweek.com/company-profile/left-hand-brewing-company
Paradox Beer Company
www.paradoxbeercompany.com
Divide
When Jeff Aragon and Brian Horton founded their brewery in 2012, they were dissatisfied with the industry’s status quo and determined to produce beers that would challenge convention as well as the palates of adventurous beer drinkers.
“We’re still doing it six years later,” Aragon says, “and we plan to continue with our experimentation and pushing of boundaries. It’s one of the things that really differentiates us from other breweries.”
Paradox released its first coolship beer last year, making it the only brewery in the U.S. at a significant elevation (Divide is at 9,165 feet) to experiment with open spontaneous fermentation. The first in the Divide Ethos Spontaneous Series, the beer garnered rave reviews at the Big Beers, Belgians, and Barleywines festival in January.
“We’ll be using the coolship a lot more this year,” Aragon says. Paradox is planning to increase production by 15 to 20 percent over 2017’s 2,000 barrels and will be expanding distribution as well. “We just added Virginia and are getting ready to launch a couple more states,” he continues. “We’re working on some stuff that may happen overseas, too.”
The brewery’s physical footprint will also grow this year with the addition of a new 2,400-square foot building for offices and a dedicated humidity-controlled barrel room. “We’re going to double our foeder capacity as a result,” Aragon adds.
He expects to continue brisk business in Paradox’s scenic taproom as well. “The taproom was our focus last year,” he explains. “It used to be more of a place where you’d buy bottles and go, but we expanded our hours, food selection, and beer menu. That really contributed to 2017’s success for us.”
CompanyWeek Profile: www.companyweek.com/company-profile/paradox-beer-company
Outstanding Outdoor Industry Brand
By Chris Meehan
Alchemy Bicycle Co.
www.alchemy.bike
Denver
Founded in 2008, Alchemy is rolling out more handcrafted bikes than ever as it change
Year in Review: Best of Utah Manufacturing
/in General/by Bart TaylorThe most-read profile at CompanyWeek.com in 2016 was Park City’s Kodiak Cakes. Its legion of fans rallied to push it to #1 in CompanyWeek’s annual readers-choice list.
It’s not a surprise. Across the U.S., manufacturing today is a dynamic mix of industries and companies, early-stage and legacy businesses that combined, are reshaping and energizing the sector. Kodiak follows in a long line of noteworthy Utah food manufacturers. The difference is that today, consumers lead the change, demanding more locally-made products.
It’s the same in other industries, and Utah manufacturers are well positioned in outdoor industry products, in consumer sectors like healthcare and wellness, in technology-driven fabrication, and more.
Alicia Cunningham, the South Jordan-based editor of CompanyWeek Utah, offers her year-in-review favorites here. Bart Taylor, publisher and founder of CompanyWeek, favors companies and leaders who’ve laid a maker and manufacturing foundation.
Collectively, our Year in Review lists offer a glimpse of more to come from Utah’s powerful manufacturing sector.
1. Kodiak Cakes
2. DPS Skis
3. Allgood Provisions
4. Monnit
5. Ogio
The Sun Products Corporation
/in General/by Bart Taylorwww.sunproductscorp.com
Salt Lake City (HQ: Wilton, Connecticut)
Founded: 2008 (1975 as Huish Detergents)
Owned by Vestar Capital Partners
Employees: 3,000 total at locations in Utah, Connecticut, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Minneapolis, and Ontario, Canada
Plant Director Darren Ericson is helping guide the country’s second-largest manufacturer of laundry detergent to growth with a turnkey private label operation.
Founded as Huish Detergents, the Sun plant in Salt Lake opened in 1985. The corporate offices moved to Connecticut following a 2007 merger with Unilever’s North American laundry detergent division, but the facility remains the hub of the company’s manufacturing for the western U.S.
Melding national consumer brands with Huish’s private-label focus, the merger represented “a unique opportunity,” says Ericson, a 20-year company veteran who’s helmed the Utah operation since 2009. “Huish was a major player in the retail-brand business.”
That’s something of an understatement. The company commanded 95 percent of the private label market, a statistic that still holds true today. The client roster reads like a who’s who of retail, including Costco, Target, Walmart, and Kroger.
But the private label detergent business has changed in recent time. “It’s been an interesting evolution,” says Ericson. “The emerging trend is a lot of our customers want to offer top-tier national brand equivalents.” The proof is in the detergent: Sun has won accolades from Consumer Reports for its private label products.
That change has helped drive strategy in recent years, and the push towards premium has been matched by Sun Products’ approach. “We’re not just your vendor, but we’re truly your partner,” Ericson explains. The company offers its private-label clients a marketing team, point-of-sale support, and other services.
But the business is not dominated by private labels. The company’s national brands, including All, Sun, Snuggle, Surf, and Wisk, have the second-highest market share in the U.S. and represent roughly half of the company’s sales, he adds.
In all, Sun Products makes 3,200 SKUs in Salt Lake and ships all over the West. A sister plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, covers the East.
Ericson says the Utah facility does all of its plastics, packaging, and printing in-house and is also home to a R&D lab. “One thing that makes Sun very unique in our industry is our vertical integration,” he explains. “We have complete control of our supply chain. We view it as a competitive advantage.”
Challenges: A shift in corporate culture started taking root in 2013. “We’re working on a ‘high-performance environment’ concept, which is all about empowering our workers,” says Ericson. “It’s a different way of managing that takes a different perspective: It’s no longer command and control, it’s more mentoring, coaching, and encouraging to be more empowered in their daily work. They feel they belong to something more, rather than [just being] one of 700 or 800 people at a factory.”
The challenge is ongoing. “It’s a journey,” he adds. “It’s about continuous improvement.”
Opportunities: Ericson notes that the overall market has been flat in recent years as Sun’s market share has risen. Powdered detergents have been on the wane as a new market takes off.
“The new and emerging technology is single-dose detergent.” Sun makes both single-dose detergents for both laundry machines and dishwashers and is “experiencing double-digit growth across the segment,” says Ericson, noting that the new manufacturing capability required “significant capital investment.”
Needs: Talent. “We are always on the lookout for good people,” Ericson says.
Another continuous need: “We will continue to make significant capital investments,” he adds. “We don’t see that slowing down. We have a lot of equipment and a lot of automation, and we continue to invest in our infrastructure.”
Recap: Colorado Apparel Manufacturing Summit
/in General/by Bart TaylorCompanyWeek hosted the first-ever Colorado Apparel Manufacturing Summit at the Fashion Design Center Denver on the night of Oct. 9, and the crowd was standing room only.
There was a genuine hunger for a conversation about the state of the apparel business in Colorado — and it sounds like it’s just getting started.
The elephant in the room, everyone agreed, was offshoring, and its impact on Colorado’s apparel industry. In a panel discussion led by some of Colorado’s brightest apparel stars, concerns were raised about controlling quality and intellectual property, stalled innovation and a limited workforce.
On the flip side Colorado’s apparel manufacturing sector is coming back, driven by the region’s desirable lifestyle and brand attributes. But where does fashion and technical clothing fit into the economic-development puzzle? As CompanyWeek founder and publisher Bart Taylor put it, “Colorado can’t figure out where to put you.”
“Do they even know we’re here?” interjected panelist Jon Thomas of Janska Clothing.
Founded by Thomas’ wife and fellow panelist, Jan Erickson, Janska employes 20 sewers at its factory in Colorado Springs and is “totally committed to manufacturing in the United States,” said Erickson.
Panelist Dan English, CEO of Pagosa Springs-based Voormi, said his manufacturing partners are on the coasts, but he keeps his sourcing local in the form of Rocky Mountain Merino wool.
“We decided to do something different,” said English. “We focused on the textile industry because of a lack of innovation since 1972” — when W.L Gore & Associates developed polytetrafluoroethylene-based fabric better known as Gore-Tex.
English said Voormi is rethinking technical clothing in a manner more akin to the tech sector than apparel, but compared the end results to a totally different product: “We are the microbrew of apparel.”
While Voormi might not manufacture in-state, English said it was a goal, but it was up to the industry to build — and rebuild — the necessary infrastructure. “It’s up to us as business leaders to find ways to drive manufacturing back here. When it comes back, he added, “It’s not going to look the same.”
What will it look like? A more nimble and vertically integrated industry that puts out innovative runs of products in small batches and pushes quality without worrying about retail price. “We maximize price and we don’t allow retailers to discount,” English noted.
Another panelist, Joe Silva, president of Denver-based Garb, echoed English’s sentiment when he spoke of the issues associated with manufacturing offshore. “I would love nothing more than to do that [manufacture in Colorado],” he said.
Garb makes kid’s golf and tennis clothing at facilities all over the world, including China, India, Pakistan, and Mexico. With all of those locations, “The supply chain is a very difficult thing to manage,” he said. “If you can cut that cycle time, it’s magic. We can’t do that working in India, China, and all of the other countries, but there’s nothing that exists [in Colorado] that can handle 1 million pieces, 10 colors, and 12 different sizes. I call it my Rubik’s Cube — it’s very, very complicated.”
Panelist Dave Boger, co-founder of Denver’s Jiberish, said the snowboard-centric fashion brand started making sweatshirts and T-shirts at one of Colorado’s largest cut-and-sew facility in 2005, but as volume increased, the partnership proved to be a mismatch. In 2008, Jiberish moved production offshore.
“It’s a big challenge to do it in Colorado,” he said. Existing facilities don’t have high capacities to handle sudden bumps in demand, and the workforce is lacking in terms of both scope and skill.
Innovation, whether it’s process- or product-related, is critical, said Voormi’s English and Topo Designs‘ Mark Hansen, another event panelist. “I don’t think there’s any other way,” said Hansen.
Topo strives not only to manufacture in Colorado, but to source raw materials domestically, he added. The end result? Higher quality and prices, and lower margins.
“That’s probably not sustainable,” Hansen observed. “It’s interesting that people will go into Whole Foods and buy a $10 juice and say, ‘That’s good juice,’ but the same people will go across the street and buy a $3 T-shirt.”
Panelist C.J. Riggins, VP of merchandising and development at Boulder’s Kidrobot, previously worked in sourcing for Pearl Izumi in Louisville. She said innovation is critical in some sectors, but not as much so in others.
“The zipper was developed in 1919 and hasn’t changed,” she noted. At Pearl Izumi, “We were trying to force innovation,” but the key ultimately is skilled workers who can handle cut-and-sew fundamentals and produce quality garments.
However, as is the case in the southeastern U.S., China’s most skilled sewers are getting older, and their kids don’t want to work in the factories.
Garb’s Silva seconded Riggins’ notion. “In my opinion, it is a low-tech, artisan craft that is as labor-intense as you could ever imagine.”
He followed up with a story from early in the Garb days when he was wandering the Garment District in Manhattan and met a bespectacled old Jewish man, chomping on the stereotypical cigar who gave him some sage advice: “Inventory — it’s like produce. After a while, it starts to smell.”
The moral, Silva argued, was that while losses due to unsold surplus can be easily measured, apparel manufacturers cannot track opportunities lost to lead times of 120 days when working with overseas factories because “demand might pass you by” when the product is in transit.
“It requires immense planning, forecasting, and scheduling to make that model work,” he said. If Garb could work with a Colorado facility and cut that down to 20 days, it would “cancel out” a price bump of 20 percent or more. “It would reduce the headaches and the risks,” said Silva. “My banks would be thrilled — they’d kiss me on the lips.”
Janska’s Thomas illustrated the industry’s risk with some hard data: U.S. apparel manufacturers with $1 million to $4 million in sales have an average profit margin of negative 7 percent. Scary stuff.
Jiberish’s Broger said the discombobulated supply chain will help drive investment into the industry, noting, “People with money will get behind consumer products because it’s not efficient right now.”
Attendee Jack Makovsky, VP at stalwart supplier Ralph’s Power Sewing Machine Co. in Denver, said the local apparel industry hit hard times in the 1980s after the government actually incentivized offshoring. “In the late 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, we had quite a booming industry in this area,” he said. “We need to get this thing reversed.”
Moderator Carol Engel-Enright of Colorado State University’s Design & Merchandising program pointed out that three new cut-and-sew facilities opened in Denver in 2014, but “now that we have cut-and-sew happening, we don’t have skilled operators.”
Steve Weil of Rockmount Ranch Wear was in attendance. “The issue is: How complicated are your products?” he said. “My shirts have 25 operations — they’re complicated.”
Rockmount makes its shirts in the Southeast, but embroiders them offshore. When he “The bottom line is who wants to grow up in the United States and work in a shop for $10 to $12 an hour?” he added. “It’s really tough.”
Janska’s Erickson said immigration — and immigration reform — was critical to building Colorado’s apparel workforce. “We need some of those people from other countries to come and help us.
Julie Worley, executive director of the Phillips County Economic Development Corporation in Holyoke on the Eastern Plains, offered a partial solution.
“In every rural town in Colorado, you have the 4-H champion seamstress, you have the sewing club, you have women who want to work from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.,” she said. “You have the workforce in rural Colorado — I guarantee it.”
Riggins said that research from her Pearl Izumi days showed the company’s margins would drop by nearly 15 percent if the company manufactured in the U.S., but that wasn’t a deal-killer. “We still could have been a $150 million company, I have no doubt,” she said.
Garb’s Silva did a back-of-the napkin calculation and said that he could conceivably pay skilled sewers $20 an hour and make the numbers work — if there was a local manufacturer that could handle thousands of SKUs.
Phillips County’s Worley jumped out of her seat. “Do you know what $20 an hour can do in a rural community?”
Another attendee, Rachael Cox from the African Community Center of Denver, chimed in with another means of bolstering the local workforce: refugees who are resettled in Denver. “It’s gorgeous and it’s making my heart jump out of its skin,” she said of the possibility.
Though the two-hour discussion felt like it was just getting started Taylor closed the night’s conversation. “Can we count on everybody to stay involved in this process?”
Judging from the sound of the applause of the 150-plus attendees, the answer was a resounding “yes.”
[Read about the 2015 Summit.]
Industry Report: Incentives
/in General/by Bart TaylorThe latest in a series of Industry Reports from CompanyWeek.
Industry Report: Developers are rethinking economic incentives as competition intensifies and industry’s ask evolves.
US manufacturers have begun to flex their newly re-shored muscle. In response, cities, states and regional economic developers are focused on how to attract and retain energized primary job creators.
Take Tesla’s $5 billion gigabattery factory, for example. When the company announced plans to build a new plant, economic developers throughout the country kicked into action. Elon Musk’s vision could bring an estimated 6,500 jobs and unparalleled bragging rights to the winning city and state.
Odds-on favorites this spring were the states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. All offered traditional tax based incentives as well as low labor costs and less government red tape. Last week, however, the LA Times reported that Stockton, Calif. (population 296,000) is a leading contender. California taxes are higher, but the proposed Stockton site is near another Tesla plant and major suppliers. It also offers industrial-zoned property, a port that handles ocean-going vessels, major freeway access and nearby rail and airport facilities – plus an existing auto manufacturing-trained workforce.
Tesla is hardly the only company on the move. Last year Colorado saw national firms like Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Visa open new operations, and is now the 4th fastest job-growth state in the country. Utah has attracted Microsoft, Twitter, Cabelas, Exelis, Salomon and more, and Wyoming continues to build on its core energy sector.
The Mountain West may be less populous, with a smaller workforce and industrial supply chain components than its East and West coast counterparts. But it also boasts powerful regional selling points. Highways are – in most cases – designed to handle increased population and traffic. Its urban infrastructure is “younger” and in better shape than that of many Rust Belt states. Personal property taxes in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are also lower than elsewhere. And Rocky Mountain R&D-focused university labs offer attractive partnering opportunities for corporate innovators.
Some communities are well-organized with incentive packages for new hires and business growth.
Metro Denver EDC Economic Development Manager Laura Brandt, sees mixed results, however, from reliance strictly on job performance-based tax incentives, enterprise zones, entitlement fast-tracking and short term loan programs.
“While I think companies like to tell their board and stockholders that they negotiated a great incentive package, some companies don’t follow through,” she says, noting that over 5 or 10 years corporate management changes or slower-than-projected hiring may push tax base audit forms and paperwork to a low priority.
Metro Denver EDC and its local economic partners (a 9-county consortium) help companies identify and qualify them for the appropriate local incentives, once top locations are identified.
Programs vary by community but generally include the following:
· Personal Property Tax Credits – Cities, counties, and special districts may negotiate a personal property tax rebate of up to 100% for 10 years.
· Local Tax Rebates – Cities may consider waiving or rebating local sales/use taxes for construction materials, personal property, and manufacturing equipment.
· Waiver of Permit Fees – In addition to expediting the building permit process, cities may choose to waive all or part of various permit fees.
· Employee Relocation Assistance – Local economic development organizations may offer packages of discounted products and services to assist employees relocating to the metro area.
· Training Assistance – Cities may offer additional training assistance for qualified projects.
· Recruitment Services – The Colorado Workforce Development Centers offer free recruitment assistance including listing jobs, advertising jobs, hosting job fairs, and screening candidates. Employers make the hiring decisions.
One size rarely fits all. “Intangibles,” can be equally important, says Boulder Economic Council Executive Director Clif Harald.
High tech, biomedical, aerospace and other knowledge-based industries like Boulder County’s Oracle, Ball and IBM don’t limit their expansion searches to the cheapest market. Some sectors — outdoor sports, apparel and natural foods companies – actually prefer mountain and foothills communities where they find the quality of life necessary to attract talent, organic products and like-minded suppliers.
Boulder County is home to strong supply chain clusters, a highly educated workforce and to University of Colorado research and development laboratories, but Harald believes that manufacturers are attracted to the attributes of the region — “not to any ‘special sauce’ in Boulder.”
“It’s everything we have to offer along the Front Range,” he says.
His view, much like that of Companyweek.com Publisher Bart Taylor, is that collaborative regional strategies – along with traditional tax incentives, enterprise zones and entitlement fast-tracking — are vital to attracting new industry.
So how are Colorado and neighboring states incorporating collaborative strategies so far? Here’s a brief recap.
Wyoming
A few years ago, the Wyoming Governor’s office rounded up 15 key business leaders to form a statewide Business Council.
Bob Jensen, then-CEO of the Wyoming Business Council, says his state decided to rethink its outdated economic development strategies.
“Whatever we were doing in the `80s and `90s didn’t work,” Jensen says. “It wasn’t effective. We’ve always had a low tax base, but that in itself isn’t an incentive to get businesses to come here or grow here.”
Area Development.com – a go-to website for site and plant location consultants and companies, reports the Council adopted a proactive “economic gardening” approach. When companies express interest in the Equality State, Council members work directly to find grants, address infrastructure issues and arrange creative financing. The result: In its first three years, the program drew more than 3,000 new jobs to the state.
Colorado
Fort Collins in Larimer County had been home to a Woodward, Inc. engine manufacturing facility since 1955. The area’s climate and outdoor recreation made it a recruiting plus. The community also offered attractive intangibles: a highly acclaimed K-12 system, a research university, verdant well-maintained parks and rich recreational, sports and cultural activities. In short, a great place to raise a family. Those factors all contributed to management’s decision in 2006 to move Woodward’s corporate headquarters to Fort Collins.
Fast forward to 2013. The company had grown to a $2 billion operation. It needed room to expand. In spite of compelling offers from other states – including at least one that exceeded the local community’s $23 million incentive package — Woodward accepted the Fort Collins City Council’s offer. Community partnership and quality of life won out.
No checks were written, no money changed hands explains an observer of the process, former CEO of the Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp. and former member of the board of the Northern Colorado Development Corp Rocky Scott.
In the end, the city negotiated the company’s tax base, allowing Woodward to donate land and improvements for a city park as well as for public road improvements.
Top talent loves Colorado, Scott says.
“Corporate (tax) incentives are a secondary factor. They alone are not enough to make key talent – the driving force behind a successful business – move their families or to remain in a less than satisfactory environment.”
Utah
The Utah Governor’s office operates in much the same way, and it’s already paying off. Business Marketing Director Michael O’Malley and EDC Utah chief Jeff Edwards often collaborate on industry-attracting incentives.
The state’s EDTIF tax credit is a post-performance, refundable tax credit for up to 30 percent of new state revenues (sales, corporate and withholding taxes paid to the state). A new company, for example, might qualify for a 10-year agreement to bring 250 new jobs. Those positions must pay 125 percent of the average county wage plus benefits. Each year, the operation’s tax burden is offset, based on actual new jobs created. A key provision: each benefiting community must contribute something to the deal.
But tax incentives alone – though important – don’t get the job done by themselves.
“From our experience they’re not the most critical,” O’Malley says.
Like Rocky Scott, he sees pristine quality of life and proximity to recreational amenities as a top draw for owners and employees. Utah is the first state in the country to create an Office of Outdoor Recreation in support of outdoor products industries. As a result, Enve Composites, a growing carbon fiber road and mountain rim and wheel systems maker, has opted to stay in Ogden City. The city’s existing aerospace advanced composite industry resources created an additional win-win R&D opportunity.
The region also benefits from a well-nurtured logistical environment. Named the 4th most diverse economy in the nation, Utah promotes a “robust set of industry verticals” — from Information Technology to Life Sciences, from Outdoor Recreation to Aerospace/Defense.
“Likes attract,” O’Malley says. “It’s a weaving process. A small state can get things done quickly, collaboratively. It’s easier to get key players in the same room talking.”
Walker Manufacturing
/in General/by Bart TaylorWalker Manufacturing
Fort Collins
www.walkermowers.com
Privately held
No. of employees: 155
Product focus and a purposeful culture drive Walker Manufacturing, one of northern Colorado’s enduring companies
“We build machines we’d like to own ourselves”, say Bob Walker, President of Walker Manufacturing. Bob and his brother Dean lead one of northern Colorado’s most successful companies.
The sentiment dates back to the company’s formative years, on the Walker farm in southwest Kansas near Dodge City.
“Farmers would develop an implement, make one, and the next thing you know they’re making stuff. My dad, Max Walker, saw that. By 1960 he’d quit farming.”
Max Walker’s design and production talents evolved from a fully functional mini-Caterpillar he built for his sons, to a gas-powered golf cart, the first full-production machine of the fledgling Walker manufacturing company. In the ensuing years, the product line changed, as did the Walker family’s locale, following opportunity – and financing.
“The squeeze was on. There was always the challenge of managing seasonal operating lines with the bank, of meeting financing and cash flow demands.” It was a recurring theme in the company’s early years.
The Walkers eventually landed in Colorado to do contract manufacturing for a company in Greeley, with Bob, who in 1975 and six years out of college left Cessna Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas to join his dad and brother at the ‘new’ Walker Manufacturing. Based in Ft. Collins, the now full-on family business built tractor cab-coolers, making over 70,000 units until the contract ended in 1983.
By the late 70’s, though, the company already had begun to diversify, landing on an idea for a much-improved riding lawn-mower.
“The notion of ‘contract landscaping’ was just taking hold. We went shopping and bought a couple riding mowers in the spring of ‘77, and after using the mowers knew we could build a better machine. In ’77 and ‘78 we built prototype each year, and in ‘79 built another and took that one to the 3i SHOW (an agri-business expo) in Kansas. Based on interest there we built 25 machines on speculation. It took us a year to build and a two years to sell ‘em.”
The company garnered national interest in the early ‘80’s. A product announcement in the landscape trade press generated calls from Florida.
“My dad sold our first big order his first trip there – a contractor maintaining big retirement villages bought 48 units. In 1982 we built 125; in 1984, 450 machines. By then we were out of the cab-cooler business.”
Walker’s dealer network and business also expanded geographically. In 1984 the company entered Australia and New Zealand in 1988. In 1986 Europe. And while the ‘great recession’ hit the company hard in the late 2000’s, Bob Walker forecasts the company will rebound to sell 6000 units in 2014 through its network of 46 worldwide distributors.
Today Walker Manufacturing employs nearly 160 employees in a sprawling, 216,000 square-foot manufacturing facility just east of Ft. Collins. The company builds machines at the “high-end” of the market, resisting over the years the promise of economy mowers or ancillary products to focus instead on its commercial-grade, signature brand. The Walker Mower Model B is the latest in a single, long line of machines, each improved from the last but retaining the mower’s unique visual and functional attributes.
The company is equally focused on corporate culture. “Strong companies are made up of strong people”, Walker says, “and employees benefit from strong families.” The company maintains the Walker Family Resource Center for employees.
Walker also hands me a list of the companies operating principles – labeled ‘What We Believe’ – as we sit down to talk, a list that’s posted on-site and online. The Walkers espouse a purposeful culture.
For how big the company feels when visiting, Walker Manufacturing’s regional presence seems understated. By contrast the Walker legacy, on the community and its customers, will likely be deeply felt.
Challenges: Walker’s concerned about uncertainty surrounding Obamacare. “The net effect of some of the increases we’re looking at could materially impact our business. Operating with relatively small margins, as we do, it creates a challenge for how you price your product.”
Opportunities: “We think there’s room to improve our market share”, Walker says. “Two of our key product differentiators – the steering lever system and front-mount mower deck – have proven their value.”
Needs: Cost-certainly around employee health-care.
Eagle Claw
/in General/by Bart Taylorwww.eagleclaw.com
Denver
Founded: 1925
Privately owned
Employees: About 200
Denver’s iconic sports and outdoor brand prefers a low profile that belies its global reach and tech-driven growth ambitions
Perhaps no global brand is as iconic and influential in its market yet keeps as low a profile as Denver’s Eagle Claw. Those who fish have spent a lifetime using its products. But for this enduring company, conceived on a stretch of the Colorado River in the early 1920s, success comes with one condition, that it’s done quietly.
That’s the way the McGill family, founders and owners of Eagle Claw and other Wright & McGill Co. brands, prefer it.
It also suits the president of the company, Donn Schaible. It’s clear he’s at home when describing the 90-plus year company’s demeanor. “We’re still a privately-held company that doesn’t seek the spotlight,” he says. “Lee McGill’s a private individual, and our company’s the same way.”
To equate modesty with complacency, though, would be a mistake. Eagle Claw’s a global powerhouse — the only hook manufacturer in the Western Hemisphere — and Schaible’s ambition to keep the company on top is unmistakable.
“We direct all our efforts toward driving sales,” he says, obviously proud of the company’s products like the ultra-sharp, high-end Trokar hook brand and the fact they’re made in the U.S. and not Asia, manufacturing home of global competitors Mustad (Norway) and Gamakatsu (Japan). “100 percent of our products are made right here, and we’re the number one importer of ‘terminal’ tackle in the U.S., made to our specifications.”
The company guards its IP and manufacturing processes fiercely, in keeping with its reserved nature but as a practical matter as well. A tour of the sprawling manufacturing facility is out of the question.
Think making hooks, rod and reels, and other equipment is easy? Think again. “Much of our equipment is highly proprietary,” Schaible says. “What we do here is very unique.” Technology’s an important driver here, as is the company’s commitment to advancing the industry. “Innovation is very important. Our people want us to be seen as the drivers of innovation in our markets”.
As with most companies, market conditions have impacted business, but in a surprising way. “When the economy is tough, sales tend to increase,” says Schaible. “People tend to stay closer to home, to do more camping and fishing.” Schaible keeps close watch of long-term trends. The sale of angler licenses in the U.S. has been flat for the past decade or so, but natural resource management and the availability of ‘fishable waters’ leaves him more concerned.
“There’s pressure from very well-organized groups working to diminish the amount of water available for sports fishing,” he says. “We’re very supportive of groups like Keep America Fishing and others working to protect habitat and access to public waters.”
That said, Schaible, Eagle Claw, Lazer Sharp, and the people and brands of Wright & McGill Co. look from the outside to be doing very nicely.
So is the company growing? Schaible smiles, and simply responds, “Yes.”
Challenges: As with other manufacturers, workforce is a challenge, Schaible says. “We manufacturer here, so we pay higher wages than our competitors who don’t. It’s also difficult here in Denver to find talent, even though it’s finally getting some attention. We have to stop demeaning the industry, even at a high-school level. Manufacturing is different than it used to be. But trying to find employees with the right skill set has been a challenge.”
And Schaible chafed when discussing the “raft” of regulation the company manages. “It’s a constant battle to keep up with amount of regulation this company faces,” he says. “It’s ludicrous.”
Opportunities: Technology is disrupting manufacturing operations in a positive way. “Trokar’s a good example. No one else is playing in that market, or have the machines to be able to make that work.”
Schaible is also bullish on the long-term prospects for the industry. “Over 90 percent of us have a favorable impression of fishing, despite the efforts of some who unfairly berate the industry.”
Needs: Eagle Claw actively seeks to improve its supply chain. “We continually evaluate our suppliers from a cost, quality and availability standpoint. Quality is key but it must also be cost competitive and the suppliers must have a track record of delivering on time.”