On the evening of April 4, CompanyWeek and Manufacturer’s Edge presented the fourth annual Colorado Manufacturing Awards (CMAs) at the University of Denver’s Cable Center.
The event has grown every year since inception, with 2019 marking the first to venture beyond Colorado state lines with awards for standout manufacturers in New Mexico and Wyoming.
As CompanyWeek founder Bart Taylor put it during his remarks, “We’ve come from so many places. We’ve come from Albuquerque tonight, Laramie, Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Greeley. One person has come further than any other: We’re very happy to have Caroll Thomas [director of the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program] from Washington, D.C.”
An early video interview with Left Hand Brewing President Eric Wallace by Hoptocopter Films might have captured the reason people traveled to Denver for the event. Noted Wallace: “Manufacturing is how you build wealth in your community. You have good jobs, you’re bringing in raw materials, and you’re selling the products outside your community.”
That’s really the crux of the importance of manufacturing to Colorado, and any other state. Same goes for cities and regions.
For that precise reason, the CMAs strive to elevate the companies doing the most moving and shaking across a dozen different manufacturing sectors, and there are plans to get bigger and better for the event’s fifth year in 2020. Said Taylor: “We’re just getting started.”
Quote of note: “I started in my garage with my co-founder, Colin Jones. Now we’re 30 people. I agree with what Eric [Wallace] said: People are the heart of manufacturing.” — Neil Fisher, co-founder and head brewer, WeldWerks Brewing
Quote of note: “This is really an asset for the state of Colorado, but also nationally and internationally.” — Ray Goodrich, executive director, Infectious Disease Research Center at CSU
Quote of note: “Food is one of our fastest growing manufacturing sectors in Colorado . . . an industry model that actually shines brighter on the national stage than in its own state.” — Rob MaCoy, partner, BKD
Quote of note: “Without great people, none of it is possible. We’ve got a great team. I’ll put them against anybody in the industry.” — Taylor Merritt, chairman and CEO, Merritt Aluminum Products
Quote of note: “We’ve been around for 53 years. We’ve built so many different antennas for so many different applications. I’m really proud to be part of this company.” — Clency Lee-Yow, president, Custom Microwave
Quote of note: “It’s really nice to know small business still means a lot. At the Lockheed Martins and the Boeings, we’re still moving forward.” — Mike Sneddon, president, Wren Industries
Quote of note: “It starts with personal stories. Manufacturing put food on my table, put a roof over my head, and put health insurance in my life.” — Robin Kniech, at-large council member, Denver City Council
New Mexico Manufacturer of the Year
After remarks from Manufacturer’s Edge CEO Tom Bugnitz and MEP Director Caroll Thomas, Mezel Mods, a manufacturer of aftermarket pinball parts, won the Land of Enchantment’s top honors for its innovative use of 3D printing.
Quote of note: “I’m really honored to be representing the small manufacturers of New Mexico. We might be small, but we are mighty and powerful.” Kristin Browning-Mezel, head honcho, Mezel Mods
Quote of note: “Look at this state we live in. 6,500 feet is our average elevation. We’re at the top. That’s why we’re crazy.” — Tony Lugard, COO, Ross Reels
Quote of note: “We started in a 300-square-foot production facility, we moved to a 7,000-square foot production facility, and this year we’re moving to a 25,000-square-foot production space.” — Philip Rawleigh, brand ambassador, Distillery 291
Quote of note: “I want to thank everybody at the company who works at the company every day. We are at 50 employees now and were 14 a year ago.” — Tony Wibbeler, CEO, Bolder Industries
On the night of April 4, 2019, CompanyWeek is presenting the fourth annual Colorado Manufacturing Awards at the Cable Center at the University of Denver.
Every week leading up to the big event, we are publishing short profiles detailing the finalists in 12 different categories. This edition covers: Industrial Manufacturer of the Year, Contract Manufacturer of the Year, Bioscience/Medical Manufacturer of the Year, Manufacturing Advocate of the Year, and Outstanding Food Brand/Co-Packer.
StickerGiant assists its clients with their labeling and promotional needs, providing products and service that’s affixed a positive reputation to the company.
“More than half our work is product labels,” says founder and CEO John Fischer. “A smaller segment of our business is promotional stickers.”
Overall, business has nearly tripled since 2015, when StickerGiant brought in $8 million. “We’ll do $22 million in sales this year,” says Fischer. “We’re the largest label converter in Colorado.”
Fischer cites “great customer service” for the company’s continued growth. “People are delighted with their experience in working with StickerGiant,” says Fischer. “We have really good customer ratings, customer reviews.”
Adding over 400 new customers per week, the company has provided labels or stickers for over 30,000 customers during its 19-year history. While some of its more noted customers include Netflix and Patagonia, Fischer says “our primary meat-and-potatoes [clients] are small to medium businesses — from a yoga studio to a mom [making] salsa in her basement to a small brewery down the street.”
StickerGiant utilizes open-book management, so all employees can see the company’s bottom line. “The number-one [reason] why StickerGiant has been successful is it’s always been about creating a good company to work for,” says Fischer, who avoids a top-down approach within the company. “We’re a highly-functioning, well-managed machine.”
StickerGiant’s employees will sometimes conduct site visits to local customers to get to know the business better — and, likewise, it invites its customers to visit its Longmont facility. The company even produces a podcast that spotlights customers.
Whether it’s internally within the company or with its customers, Fischer says, “StickerGiant knows how to stick together.”
CEO Taylor Merritt says his company makes what truckers sometimes call “truck jewelry.” In other words, any product that “looks great on their truck,” but also has a functional aspect that “helps them do their job.” They sometimes call it “truck bling” within Merritt’s company, too.
Products include cab racks, which sit behind the truck cab and in which truckers can store their valuable tools and personal items. Saddle boxes provide storage, as well, and truckers can use the built-in steps to access, for instance, the top of the truck. There are rugged, mountable toolboxes. Tire chain carriers are “big in winter time,” says Merritt, since “the DOT mandates truck drivers carry chains when going up and over I-70” in the event of snowy and icy conditions. And there’s a hose rack that’s especially popular within the Texas oil and gas market.
“As a provider of aftermarket aluminum accessories for semi-trucks, Merritt is definitely the market leader in North America,” says Merritt. “We’re utilizing higher-grade aluminum and other component parts in our process for fabricating and welding the products together. We feel [our products are] superior to our competition.”
The company’s customers range from individual truck operators to “large fleets that will have thousands of trucks that they run all over the country.” Merritt says, “We do sell in all 50 states, as well as Canada and Mexico.”
Due to a currently robust truck market, Merritt points out that, “For 2018, we increased our top-line revenue by over 26 percent. And, here in early ’19 — comparing January-February [2019] to January-February [2018] — we’ve increased revenue to the tune of 43 percent in those months.”
With close to 100 team members, Merritt says that laying out a set of core values has informed its hiring choices and has helped to guide the company. At the top of that list is integrity — an important quality in both a product and a person. And recruiting possible future hires? The company has partnered with Morgan Community College on a welding program, and it offers internships to high school students at Fort Morgan High School.
Titan Robotics custom builds 3D printers for a variety of customers — which, increasingly, include Fortune 500 companies. Titan CEO and founder Clay Guillory says those companies “are printing end-use parts, things that save them hundreds of thousands of dollars by using 3D printing versus traditional manufacturing.” Guillory calls Titan’s medium-format printers his customers’ “secret weapon for saving a ton of money, and [it’s] changing the way they make things.”
Through the development of both its own pellet extrusion technology and motion control systems, Titan has reduced the cost of 3D printing “by a factor of 10, and we’re increasing the throughput — or speed — by at least a factor of 10,” says Guillory. He adds that those changes now make production manufacturing a “reality” using 3D printing.
“We have over 40 machines in operation globally,” adds Guillory via email. “In the last two years we have grown by 300 percent. The number of employees has doubled in the past year alone to over 20 individuals.”
Guillory calls his employees a “true testament to what the company is, and how we’ve gotten here — it’s not just the technology.” Titan workers execute the “[steel-frame] welding, wiring, programming, and calibration” at its Colorado Springs facility.
And what kind of objects has Titan’s 3D printers been responsible for fabricating?
“From rocket parts, to production parts, patterns and molds for metal casting, [to] full-sized 3D-printed dinosaurs and mannequins, our machines are in use in many industries around the world,” notes Guillory.
Launched in 2004, Cogitic continues to make high-value, low-volume critical components for applications in submarines and reactors, among other burly machines.
“Unless somebody has a critical application, we’re not the right supplier for them. If they can buy it from 10 other companies and quality is not the absolute highest requirement than likely we won’t be competitive,” says Jared Veteto, who co-owns the growing company with his brother, Jonathan. “It’s a very difficult sector to work in. We have extraordinarily demanding customers, with extreme requirements, but certainly for contractors that demonstrate through performance, there’s a lot of opportunity for growth.”
Since late 2016, Cogitic has moved to a 25,000-square-foot space, hired five employees and purchased a high-pressure piping system product line. It also is looking into purchasing another product line and expanding further to meet customer demands for larger pieces. “Customers are encouraging us to move into work pieces on the order of 100 inches in diameter, which will necessitate new machinery and new inspection equipment,” Veteto explains.
While Cogitic contracts with the Navy servicing submarines, Veteto notes that it also works with commercial shipyards and is expanding into other fields. “Our greatest growth potential lies probably outside of defense,” he adds. “Some of the newest customers we’re taking in are in astronautics research and development, as well as advanced oil and gas exploration.”
To help make that happen, the focus is squarely on business development. “We’re to a size now where we have to diversify,” says Veteto.
It’s hard to find another company whose equipment has traveled as far as Custom Microwave — its antennas are on NASA’s New Horizons satellite, which recently sent back images of Ultima Thule on New Year’s Day. At 4 billion miles from Earth, it’s the most distant object that’s been explored by a satellite.
Founded in 1965, the 60-employee company initially developed scientific instrumentation but its focus continues to change, explains Clency Lee-Yow, president of Custom Microwave. “For the last 18 to 20 years or so, the focus has shifted to supplying communication equipment for the antennas onboard communication satellites,” he says. “Fortunately for us, every satellite that goes up there is usually a new antenna that is typically needed.”
“We supply things directly to JPL, NASA,” Lee-Yow explains. “So whether you’re talking about probes that go to Jupiter, Mars, or just orbiting close to the sun, they have to send signals back and they’re received through equipment that we build for NASA.”
Lee-Yow estimates that 75 percent of the company’s work is commercial, with some of that being developed through government contractors. He says the company has some catalog items, which make about 5 percent of the company’s business, and about 20 percent is supplied to the government directly.
Custom Microwave also continues to evolve, while it saw a lot of growth in commercial satellites between 2008 and 2015, that growth has subsided. “We had to reinvent ourselves a little bit to address the changes, which are fairly drastic,” says Lee-Yow. “But the changes are also opening up a lot of opportunities.”
The new satellites are about a 10th of the size of older satellites, and notably less expensive. “Now you’re looking at a lot lower cost per capability,” Lee-Yow says. “It’s creating more opportunity. Where we used to only supply a part of the system, now we can supply a much more significant part of the system.”
High Precision Devices’ products are in everything from quantum computers to MRI machines and NASA research planes. The 50-employee company’s catalog includes cryostats and detectors used in aerial spectrography and scientific instrumentation.
The manufacturer’s cryostats and cryogenic capabilities, which can cool things to temperatures 2 orders of magnitude below deep space, have a broad array of applications, explains High Precision Devices (HPD) Director of Business Development Kevin Miller. “Currently, some of the bigger users are doing advanced detector systems that need very very low noise,” he says.
Other applications include superconducting supercomputers, quantum information systems — “a big, growing new field of endeavor,” Miller says — and a “new instrument suite provides holographic imagery of cloud particles and how cloud formation forms” for NASA.
Launched in 1993, HPD has grown about 20 percent year-over-year, according to Miller, and the staff has doubled since 2016, when it had 25 employees.
More recently, one of the company’s MRI technologies was rolled into a spin-off, QalibreMD, that makes a quantitative MRI hardware and software platform that Miller calls “a real game-changer in the medical industry.”
The system can clarify MRI imaging to allow clinicians to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy tissues — and even identify cancerous tissue. “This technology allows a medical clinic to be able to definitively evaluate human tissue response in an MRI and unambiguously and specifically evaluate it,” Miller says. “It has a lot of benefits in a lot of different ways.”
While HPD’s contract work is custom, QalibreMD requires a more standardized approach. “When you look at the fact that there are 30,000-plus MRI machines worldwide, providing traceable products to supply all of those is a different kind of business than atmospheric research or cryogenic fields,” Miller says.
From precision medical equipment to aerospace fabrication the company makes highly specialized pieces for multiple industries. “A lot of our stuff is one-off, a typical lot size is between one and 20,” says owner Mark Ingram. The company works with materials including titanium, nitronic stainless steel, and other types of stainless steel like 17-4 and 15-5.
To meet demand and accommodate new equipment, the company moved from an 8,000-square-foot facility to a 19,000-square-foot facility in January 2018. The additional space has allowed for the installation of a 5-axis CNC machine.
“We’re AS9100 and we’re also ISO 13485, which is the medical ISO, and we’re FDA-registered because we make instruments that actually go in the body,” Ingram explains. “We make the tools that they use to install implants.”
Founded in 2002, the 16-employee company doesn’t design products, but does work with engineers, Ingram says. “We deliver what they want and we ask a lot of questions if something’s not clear in the print. We do some help with design even though we don’t design here.”
While the machining work and finishing is difficult, exacting work, Ingram says the company has a very low scrap rate. “We make mistakes, but we’re careful not to ship them,” he notes.
Ingram Machining is staying plenty busy. “We’re pretty fully booked by our existing customers,” Ingram says. “I wouldn’t mind getting some production work, but we’ve never been known as a production shop.”
The Infectious Disease Research Center (IDRC) at Colorado State University provides a high-quality research environment for developing new scientific discoveries, vaccines, methods of diagnosis, and therapeutic agents for infectious agents.
“This is really a resource not only for the university, the state of Colorado, or the United States,” says IDRC Director Ray Goodrich. “It’s a resource that has a global impact.”
The center’s Bio-pharmaceutical Manufacturing & Academic Resource Center (BioMARC) provides services from process and method development and cell, bacteria and virus storage to bulk drug substance manufacturing and and finished drug project. Its goal is to defeat global health threats.
“We do development work that’s required to move ideas from early phases of discovery to later phases that’s required to put products into commercial use,” Goodrich says. “We don’t put a BioMARC label or CSU label on products.”
Currently, the center is working with a vaccine for E. coli and encephalitis viruses for the U.S. Department of Defense. It’s collaborating with Boston Children’s Hospital on a vaccine against a bacteria that causes diarrhea, work that is being sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s also working on an HIV vaccine for Sumagen, a South Korean investor group,
“We do a lot of work with small, private biotech firms that are trying to get their products launched,” says BioMARC Director John Wyckoff III. “We help them make material they can test in preclinical studies and in clinical studies.”
Cambrex offers custom pharmaceutical manufacturing across its global network. The company provides products, services and technologies to accelerate the development and commercialization of small-molecule therapeutics.
The company’s acquisitions of Halo Pharma in September and Longmont-based Avista Pharma Solutions in January have created the opportunity to broaden its service offerings. The acquisitions added more than 800 employees and six new facilities to Cambrex’s business, bringing its workforce to more than 2,000 people in 13 locations across North America and Europe.
The integration of the companies into the Cambrex network has allowed customers new and easy access to a wider variety of services. Halo Pharma added drug development and drug product manufacturing capabilities, and Avista Pharma Solutions brought early-stage development and discovery, standalone analytical services, solid state sciences, and microbiology to Cambrex’s portfolio.
“Acquiring Avista adds a full complement of early stage development capabilities to Cambrex’s larger-scale capabilities for both APIs (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) and finished dosage forms,” Cambrex President and CEO Steve Klosk said in a news release at the time of the acquisition. “Adding Avista today and Halo Pharma in September significantly increases our customer base and funnel of projects, provides significant cross-selling opportunities and allows us to offer an integrated service offering for most small molecules from the preclinical stage through the commercial stage.”
Cambrex is now organized into three main business units: drug substance, drug product and early stage development and testing. The company continues to invest in its manufacturing sites to ensure it meets the ever-evolving demands of the industry.
Osypka Medtec works with medical device manufacturers and suppliers who are pioneering technologies such as helping paralyzed people walk and deaf people hear.
The Longmont company is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that provides technology and products to companies around the United States that are involved in the healthcare field.
Osypka Medtec is working with a consortium of companies and Harvard University on an implant that has a high data-transfer rate that reads electrical signals on the brain and can determine a paralyzed person’s thoughts to they can make movements, says COO Dana Tompkins.
“They’ve figured out that even though your body is shutting down, all that muscle memory is still there,” adds Osypka Medtec Director Jennifer Tompkins. “When you see that someone can go from not being able to move to picking up a glass, it’s just incredible.”
The company also working on a magnetic hearing implant developed and manufactured by Boulder-based Sophono, which Medtronic acquired in 2015. The Sophono bone conduction hearing implant has resulted in significant hearing and speech recognition improvement with conductive, mixed hearing loss. “It’s for people who have middle ear bones that don’t work properly,” says Dana Tompkins. “It’s not a cochlear implant, but it looks similar.”
Osypka Medtec is part of OSYPKA AG, a German company founded in 1977 by Peter Osypka, who has more than 47 years of experience in the fields of medical technology and electrophysiology.
Manufacturing Advocate of the Year
Comments and bios from the finalists
Robin Kniech, Denver City Council
First elected to Denver City Council in 2011, and re-elected in 2015, Robin Kniech is one of two at-large councilmembers. Manufacturing is part of Robin’s family history, as both her mother and step-father made their living at Master Lock in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Robin has dedicated her life to making Denver a better place for middle class families and those struggling to make ends meet, championing policies that support access to and funding for affordable housing, good-paying jobs, and sustainability.
With a law degree and more than fifteen years of policy experience prior to being elected, Councilwoman Kniech has a record of bold policy accomplishments including promotion of apprenticeship training and Denver’s first affordable housing fund. She is the first out member of the LGBT community to serve on the Denver City Council, and she is the mom of a young son.
“My focus on manufacturing isn’t simply based on family nostalgia, but rather on the economic importance of middle-income production jobs to Denver’s economy and the workers doing the jobs. While our manufacturing sector is made-up of smaller firms and more diverse products than some regions, that diversity is part of our strength, supporting our resilience during ups and downs in markets. In the past, I helped shape Denver’s business personal property exemption program to help support equipment investments and served as a frequent matchmaker between manufacturers and the technical assistance or government program administrators they needed. My current priority is maintaining the land use needed to support manufacturing. This means balancing the preservation of key industrial areas in the face of pressures to meet Denver’s housing needs. And it also means creating more flexibility for uses in mixed-use areas for a new generation of production that is more modern, cleaner, and therefore more compatible with denser, mixed-use development and doesn’t need to be separated from residential to ensure healthy communities. Alongside this priority is a focus on workforce development, to ensure we have the systems in place to recruit and train a next generation of mid-skill employees to help our maker industry thrive.” — Robin Kniech
Tom Neppl, Springs Fabrication
Tom Neppl is the founder and President of Springs Fabrication, a diversified manufacturing company located in Colorado Springs and Westminster. Since founding the company in 1986, Tom has managed the growth from a two man operation to one of the largest primary employers in the area.
Tom has played an active role in promoting and growing the manufacturing industry in Colorado, helping to launch the Southern Colorado chapter of CAMA, serving as its chair for several years as well as numerous community boards. In 2015, Tom was named Business Citizen of the Year in Colorado Springs for his work on promoting manufacturing in the region.
“Manufacturing is the lifeblood of a strong economy and has played a key role in building our great nation. As it provides economic stability and is an integral part of every industry sector, manufacturing provides the tools for everything else to function. Through innovation and technology, manufacturing will continue to provide opportunity and stability to families and communities. Our job is to continue challenging the next generation, reinventing and retooling our industry.” — Tom Neppl
George Newman, Front Range Community College
George Newman is director of the advanced manufacturing program at Front Range Community College (FRCC), and director of the Center for Integrated Manufacturing that will open in fall 2019 at FRCC’s Boulder County Campus. He has spent over 30 years in various manufacturing industries including paper, plastics, automation and industrial equipment.
Newman gained invaluable experience in the mid-1990s running a sheet metal business in Massachusetts. He was unable to attract skilled sheet metal workers at any wage rate and in response began a training program with a local vocational-technical high school. This understanding of the manufacturing skills gap has enabled him to provide leadership in creating and expanding advanced manufacturing programs in northern Colorado. George is on the Board of the Northern Colorado Manufacturing Partnership. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard Business School.
“According to the Manufacturing Institute, manufacturing has the greatest regional economic impact of any sector, returning $1.33 for every dollar of GDP. It follows that the health of an economy is partially driven by the robustness of its manufacturing sector. With its successful research universities, its concentration of federal research agencies and its diversified manufacturing sector, Colorado is poised for continued economic growth. The challenge is that many companies are today unable to fulfill orders due to a shortage of skilled employees. This skills gap is costing the economy billions of dollars. Front Range Community College is working to close that gap through its investment in the Center for Integrated Manufacturing which, when up and running, will graduate over 100 advanced manufacturing students each year.” — George Newman
Married co-founders Josh and Zora Tabin criss-crossed the U.S. by car in the late 2000s to find the best place to raise a family and chose Fort Collins. What followed is one of Colorado’s great food stories. Today Wild Zora products, including the flagship Paleo-inspired, gluten-free meat and veggie bar, are sold in over 1,000 Walmart stores and online at Amazon and WildZora.com.
The happy ending almost never happened. “We started up in Farmer’s Markets in Boulder and Ft. Collins and by the end of 2015 were in 80 retail stores,” says Josh Tabin, now CEO of Wild Zora. “By the end of 2016 we were in 800 stores, including local Safeway and King Soopers — but burning through cash, so that by the end of 2016, going into 2017, we were running on fumes,” Tabin chuckles.
“So we pivoted the business. We put the retail effort on autopilot, focused on our online business, and by the end of 2017 had saved the company,” Tabin says, adding, “in early 2017, 80 percent of our business was retail, 20 percent was online. By the end of 2017, it was the opposite.”
The big assist came from Amazon. “Initially, our focus had been on our website, but we found that a large number of visitors would come back and purchase on Amazon,” says Tabin. “We didn’t start out to have an Amazon-centric online plan but it turned out that way. Eventually we hooked up with an Amazon consultant who really helped us refine our plan. They grew it from $300 month in online sales to $3,000 month. We took it inhouse and grew it from $3,000 per month to $3,000 per day.”
But there’s more. “Going into 2018, we met a Walmart buyer – even though we didn’t have a retail strategy after focusing online through ’17,” Tabin explains. “Turns out Walmart is very committed to working with health-focused, organic, small brands. They wanted us, and they proved it.”
Today Wild Zora products are in 1,000 Walmart stores — eight percent of their total. It transformed Wild Zora. “Today half our business today is Walmart, and it’s now the fastest growing part of the company,” Tabin says.
It also pushed the company into an entirely different stratosphere from a manufacturing standpoint. “It took us months to create the product, and two 48-foot trucks to fill the orders for the initial 1,000 stores — one box per store!” Tabin laughs. “We doubled the staff, having to be ready for big increase and improve in speed of production.”
The Tabins found a willing public-sector partner to accommodate growth. “We moved into a new facility in Loveland — the City of Loveland really came through for us. They got us permitted and ready to go, and with their help, we’ve increased production capacity by 600 percent,” Tabin says.
Teton Waters Ranch manages a supply chain stretching from here to Australia, but the company’s themes resonate for anyone familiar with other fast-growth Colorado food brands.
“We were founded as a company with a passion for regenerative agriculture, to sustain damaged pastures, increase biodiversity, and enhance ag ecosyst
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 22:31:112020-05-21 22:31:112019 Colorado Manufacturing Award Finalists Spotlight, Part III
On the night of April 4, 2019, CompanyWeek is presenting the fourth annual Colorado Manufacturing Awards at the Cable Center at the University of Denver.
Every week leading up to the big event, we are publishing short profiles detailing the finalists in 12 different categories. This edition covers: Outstanding Craft Brewer, Builder/Construction Co. of the Year, Outstanding Cannabis Manufacturer, Outstanding Consumer/Lifestyle Brand.
Last year was a big one for the team at WeldWerks Brewing — in more ways than one. Not only did they increase total production by nearly 84 percent (to 5,700 barrels), but they also exceeded an ambitious goal for new beer development.
“For our new beers campaign, we wanted to produce 100 brand new beers that we had never brewed before in addition to our year-rounds and rotators,” says co-founder Neil Fisher. “We ended up exceeding that goal by brewing 137 new beers in 2018. Of those, 125 were packaged and 100 were distributed along our footprint.”
Fisher says that WeldWerks’ employees took up the challenge to push themselves into greater creativity and innovation. And they did it without sacrificing their stellar reputation.
“We’ve built our brand on innovation and quality,” he explains. “This idea that no matter what you buy from WeldWerks, you’re going to get the highest level of quality. If it’s a WeldWerks beer, you know it’s well made.”
The purchase of nearly an entire Greeley city block in November guarantees that 2019 is going to be equally eventful for the growing brewery with renovations, expansions, and production increases ahead.
“It’s three buildings on about three acres,” Fisher says. “We took over the rest of the building that we currently occupy, which is close to another 4,000 square feet. We’re in the midst of construction there with new floors, drains, concrete, a new canning line, and larger 90-barrel fermenters on the way. That will increase our capacity and help us get to 8,500 barrels this year.”
Since opening in 1989, Odell Brewing Company’s founders have nurtured a long-term view of the future — a philosophy that co-founder Wynne Odell believes differentiates the brewery from other companies and has contributed to its success.
“We’re committed to the long term,” Odell explains. “It’s a concept called an evergreen company, and there are principles we subscribe to. It has enabled us to grow steadily and healthily. When we look at our history over 30 years, we’ve never been down more than 0.01 percent.”
Last May, the brewery opened a second location in Denver’s RiNo Art District. “It’s an entire second brewery and it gives us access to our Denver market, which we really appreciate,” Odell says. The company also expanded their packaged beer distribution to 19 states with the addition of Nevada and Wisconsin.
The Odell team continued to innovate in 2018 as well. “We came out with Rupture last year,” Odell says. “It’s a fresh grind ale, which is a new category. We take fresh hops and break open the oil sacs right before we throw them into the beer. This gives a totally different hop characteristic and intensity to the beer and was technologically a really exciting achievement for us.”
While Odell says that she can’t speak specifically about plans for 2019, the brewery is considering opportunities in three different areas. “We’re looking at all sorts of beverage production that may or may not be related to beer,” she adds. “We’re looking at more retail sites like our RiNo taproom. And we’re looking at leveraging our existing assets with focus on our wholesale delivery teams.”
Nick Nunns, founder of TRVE Brewing (pronounced “true”), isn’t in the business of playing it safe. From 2016 to 2018, he increased his brewery’s production by 40 percent and his taproom staff by 75 percent. For 2019, his sights are set on even more ambitious growth: 2,800 barrels, or double last year’s output.
“We added Illinois and Tennessee last year and are licensed to sell beer in about 14 states right now,” Nunns says. “But we’re actually trying to focus more on digging deep here at home.” To that end, Nunns says that TRVE will be increasing the density of its distribution along the front range. “We want our beer to be more prevalent here in Colorado,” he adds.
But TRVE doesn’t just distribute its own brews. The company acted as distributor for 25 other breweries in 2018. “We really broadened our import and wholesale model quite a bit last year,” Nunns explains. “We brought in small amounts of beer and distributed it around the state for various events, most specifically around the Great American Beer Festival. Being able to actually manage that was a daunting task.”
Nonetheless, Nunns does not see the import/wholesale side of TRVE growing any further. “We’re a manufacturing business and that’s where our heart is,” he adds. “We aren’t in the business of logistics, so we’ll probably just maintain the licensing we need for small events and shift our focus back to the taproom. We feel that our efforts are best suited to focusing on producing beer, taking care of the people making the beer, and ensuring that we’re making some of the best beer here in Colorado.”
Founder Bob Eschino oversees a popular brand of cannabis edibles, concentrates, and wellness products.
His company manufactures the top-selling line of cannabis chocolate bars in Colorado, according to the market tracking company BDS Analytics. And the brand can also be found in Oregon, Nevada, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico. In 2015, GQ deemed its Affogato bar one of the “50 Best Things” to eat in the nation. (It helps that prior to starting incredibles, co-founder Rick Scarpello came from a food production background with Udi’s and Il Fornaio bakeries.)
The company also makes gummies, mints, and tinctures. Even suppositories — which provide medical patients with high-levels of cannabis but with relatively low psychoactive effects. “It’s a very important product for the patients that need it,” says Eschino.
But Eschino’s company doesn’t just manufacture products found in dispensaries. It also manufactures the very machines which turn its raw cannabis into potent hydrocarbon extracts. That venture began after regulations changed, and the manufacturers of the company’s existing machines either wouldn’t retrofit them or couldn’t retrofit them in a reasonable time. “We realized that if we wanted to do hydrocarbon extractions in the state of Colorado then we were kind of on our own,” says Eschino. “We manufactured our first piece of equipment, just so we could stay in business.” The company has now sold over 130 of its incredibles Extractor to its licensees and other businesses.
“It’s nice to be recognized,” says Eschino, about being nominated within the first ever “Cannabis” category at the Colorado Manufacturing Awards. “It’s definitely a shot in the arm, not just for us as a company, but for the whole industry. Having organizations outside of the cannabis industry starting to notice us — and the impact we’re having on the state, and the good that we’re doing — just adds some legitimacy to the industry as a whole.”
As the co-founders of Green Dot Labs, the husband-and-wife team of Dave and Alana Malone are pioneers in the field of hydrocarbon extraction. On the company’s website, they call the concentrates which result from hydrocarbon extraction “the purest expression of cannabis, a true reflection of the plant’s vivid flavor profiles and incredible wellness benefits.”
“We really pushed the envelope from the very beginning,” says Alana, the company’s CEO. “Back in 2012, there wasn’t any framework on how to design a facility to basically use hydrocarbons to extract cannabis. So we had to work with engineers, industrial hygienists, the Planning and Development [Services] department of the City of Boulder, and the State of Colorado to basically figure out how to safely extract cannabis using hydrocarbon gases, and in compliance with International Fire Code. And that just hadn’t been done before.”Alana says the state was “so pleased” with the engineering and planning work that it “adopted that standard as the framework for current legislation and regulation.”
After those safety parameters were codified, Green Dot Labs began commercially making extracts in 2014. At their Boulder facility, they take THC-laden cannabis plants that they’ve grown, flash freeze them, and then create their “Full Spectrum Extract” from the plants using hydrocarbon extraction. (For those who prefer them, they also make solventless extracts.)
In addition to the concentrates themselves, the company’s vape cartridges, filled with Green Dot Labs extracts, can be found at dispensaries throughout the state. The cartridges don’t contain additives like other some brands on the market do. Alana says, “We waited a long time before we were able to perfect the technique, and find the right hardware that would allow us to put our raw, essential oil in a cartridge.”
The Malones are also pioneers in terms of cannabis breeding. Alana says Green Dot Labs has bred “hundreds” of “unique proprietary strains” throughout the years, and the company’s website currently showcases over 130 within its “Exclusive Genetic Library.” “We have more variety available from our own in-house gardens than you would find from any brand, anywhere,” says Alana.
“We had a crazy-busy [2018], and this year is shaping up to be even busier,” says Wana Brands founder and CEO Nancy Whiteman.
Last year, Wana Brands made Inc. magazine’s “Inc. 5000,” which cited Wana’s three-year-growth of 455 percent. In its fourth quarter last year, Wana introduced a line of disposable vaporizer pens – which joins, in Colorado, its drop candies, extended-release capsules (a technology licensed from an Israeli company), and top-selling gummies. Whiteman calls gummies “the perfect delivery system for cannabis.” She notes that gummies are already a popular platform for vitamins and supplements, in addition to sweets.
Outside of Colorado, the brand’s gummies can be found in Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, Michigan, and Illinois, with several other states and Canada on the horizon. To assist with its expansion, Wana Brands hired Dan O’Connor in 2018 as its COO. According to Whiteman, O’Connor comes to Wana due to his previous work helping Oskar Blues Brewery to expand its craft beer operations outside of Colorado. “He’s been through an industry that had a similar trajectory in some ways to cannabis,” says Whiteman.
According to BDS Analytics, Whiteman’s company is the leading cannabis brand in Colorado in terms of overall sales, and Whiteman says, “We are actually the number-one edibles brand in the country — which also probably means the world, since the United States is the only country I know that has a legal edibles industry.”
In the months ahead, Wana will open its CBD-only, THC-free production facility, where it will manufacture a line of CBD-only products for the wellness market.
Whiteman says she’s “thrilled” that Wana Brands has been nominated for a Colorado Manufacturing Award. Whiteman, a former insurance industry marketing executive, adds, “It’s just a further proof of the mainstreaming of cannabis.”
“Our vision is about all things power, technology, and energy,” Encore President Willis Wiedel says. “In the old days of electrical construction, everything was about power and lights. Today, it’s power and lights, but it’s also technology. And of course energy.”
The company was founded by a group of people who were part of a private company that went public. The group made an unsuccessful attempt to take it over after that company filed for bankruptcy, so instead, they started their own company.
“We started from scratch with nothing, including money,” Wiedel says. “Everybody did second mortgages and took half salaries. We just knew we had something special.”
That was in 2003. Today, the company has grown into the largest merit-shop electrical contractor in Colorado with 841 employees who are rewarded based on their performance.
“We are a customer-driven company,” Wiedel says. “Most companies promote growth in revenue and profitability, but we ask our people to wake up every day to take care of our customers.”
RK, the region’s largest mechanical contractor with 2017 revenue of $297 million, works on some of the most complex projects in the West.
Current projects include the first phase of the expansion of the Salt Lake City International Airport, which serves more than 25 million passengers a year from facilities that were designed 50 years ago to serve half as many travelers; several health-care project, including a hospital in Highlands Ranch for UC Health; and Colorado State University’s Wayne McIlwraith Translational Medicine Institute, a 48,550-square-foot facility dedicated to animal care.
RK, which has about 1,650 employees, also worked on the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Conference Center and is working on a 140,000-square-foot data center at Majestic Commercenter in Aurora for an undisclosed company. On the Majestic project, RK is able to leverage several of its seven different business units, says Jon Kinning, the company’s chief operating officer.
“We can take advantage of our electrical group and the RK Steel group that’s building the steel bases for it,” Kinning says. “We can leverage multiple trades to manufacture data centers.”
RK’s business units include RK Mechanical, which designs and installs mechanical and plumbing systems; RK Service, which helps property managers and owners optimize the performance of their facilities; RK Steel, which fabricates and installs structural steel and metal products; RK Energy, which engineers and manufactures modular and prefabricated skidded equipment for oil and gas well sites; RK Water, a water treatment provider and specialty contractor for sites that need dewatering or groundwater remediation; RK Electrical, which engineers custom electrical solutions; and RK Mission Critical, which provides custom-engineered modular solutions for the data, telecom and power industries.
For the last 45 years, Tharp Cabinet Co. has manufactured high-quality custom cabinets for residential projects throughout the United States from seven different buildings on Denver Avenue in Loveland.
But that’s changing. This month, the company is moving its operations under one roof at 380 W. 37th St., where it will occupy about 100,000 square feet of the 170,000-square-foot building, which gives it plenty of room to grow. The new location will enable Tharp to expand its product line and market reach. It also will allow it to add more people to its workforce of 135 full-time employees.
Tharp owner and President Garth Rummery says that in addition to allowing for growth, the new space is more conducive to ensuring the quality of the company’s products. “Wood does not like changes in humidity,” Rummery says. “It grows and shrinks with humidity. We’ve been moving materials between buildings, and now it will be one giant, open manufacturing space.”
Tharp designs, manufactures, delivers and installs cabinetry throughout Colorado and Wyoming. It uses cutting-edge technology and skilled craftsmen to produce made-to-fit solutions.
“Everything we do is custom — nothing is off the shelf,” Rummery says. “We have a wide selection of materials and we’ve grown to have a scale that gives us some pretty good advantages in the marketplace.”
Bill Boyer launched Denver’s iconic coffee company in 1965, and today owners Jason and Doug Barrow are keeping the brand as relevant as ever. It starts with maintaining a deep respect for the company’s longtime connection to the community. “We’re the home team,” says Jason Barrow. “Boyer’s has been around for over 50 years, which means that everything we do oozes Colorado. We’re the official brand of the Colorado Rockies, we love the mountains, and more. Boyer’s products are high-altitude roasted. Recognition in the Colorado Manufacturing Awards further reflects this unique position.”
As compelling the Boyer’s legacy, the Barrow brothers are even more focused on the present — and the trajectory not only of the brand but the industry. “From an industry perspective, we’re right on the middle of a transformation, a movement,” says Doug Barrow, “where the coffee experience is moving out of the cafe into the home. In this way we’re paralleling the craft beer market. Our customers care that we’re a handcrafted coffee company. They’re looking for memorable experiences in the products they buy.”
The craft coffee movement, or as Doug says, the “renaissance of coffee, busting out of coffee shops and into the mainstream,” isn’t lost on America’s retail bellwethers. “The largest retailer in the U.S., Walmart, reached out to us, looking to be part of this movement, this ‘third wave of coffee’ that reflects the artisanal value of what we do and not just ‘coffee as a commodity.’ As a result, the Boyer’s brand is now in 48 states.”
Yet in many ways the Boyer’s story always returns to Colorado, to products like the popular Denver Blend. Boyer’s remains bedrock to the Barrow brother’s uber-connected corporate umbrella of coffee brands, including Luna Coffee and Boulder Organic Coffee. Each have a unique connection to common social themes that inform the entire organization — what Jason refers to as the “flywheel effect of our brand strategy” — like organic products, fair-trade practices, and sustainable underpinnings.
At Boyer’s, it all adds up to a modern coffee brand with deep roots and new growth shaping a transformative industry. What’s not to like?
VOORMI made a splash on the national outdoor apparel scene soon after it introduced its first product in 2013, a technical hoodie that became an immediate bestseller and still is today. Yet even as the company’s catalog and customer base have grown — VOORMI sells in 60 countries around the world — founder Dan English emphasizes process more than products in describing the company’s unique approach to developing leading-edge technical wear and brand awareness.
“We’re in a constant state of innovation,” English says. “We think more like a Silicon Valley company than an apparel brand.” It’s obviously a comfortable place for English, who spent years at Microsoft before retooling his technology background into a successful stint at hook-and-bullet brand Mossy Oak.
“VOORMI is built on the notion that everything we do, we do with purpose,” English explains, “and for us that means focusing on great products, domestic manufacturing where possible, local sourcing [VOORMI sources wool from high elevations in the Rocky Mountains], and innovating at a rapid pace.”
It doesn’t hurt that VOORMI is ensconced in Pagosa Springs, a stone’s throw away from Wolf Creek Ski Area and the Weminuche Wilderness in the formidable San Juan Mountains. It’s a perfect testing ground for any company endeavoring to make the world’s best outdoor apparel and gear.
But for English and his young team that includes son Dustin, a co-founder, and Timm Smith, director of brand marketing, the conversation inevitably comes back to engineered fabrics, to precision blending, to rate of change, and other terms that leave the impression that Voormi is equal parts technology company and apparel manufacturer, a brand position that suits English just fine.
What’s up this spring with watches and awards? Oscar-winning director Peter Farrelly’s shout-out to Detroit watchmaker Shinola earlier this month was only a precursor to Fort Collins’ own Vortic Watch Co. landing on this year’s CMA finalist list for Outstanding Consumer/Lifestyle brand.
Vortic transforms classic pocket watches into compelling new wristwatches, fashioned with new movements and machined parts, some made with metal 3D printing. The company’s timepieces were an immediate hit.
“We’ve doubled the business every year,” says R.T. Custer, who along with Tyler Wolfe co-founded the company in 2013. Luminaries such as Jackson Browne and Jimmy Buffett now sport Vortic wrist watches, and the timepieces have also grabbed the attention of museums that value the the company’s mission of preserving and reimagining historic relics.
Vortic’s success may be a double-edged sword. The company’s rise has also piqued the interest of global powerhouse Hamilton International — parent company of the ubiquitous Swatch brand — who today is suing Vortic for trade infringement in, of all places, the Southern District of New York. Custer certainly wants his brand in the news, if not in this way.
Yet as Shinola deserves credit for its bold statement about U.S. manufacturing by locating in Detroit, Vortic’s own homage to American craftsmanship is equally profound — if even more ingenious.
“Building a manufacturing company is difficult, but with the continuous support of the Colorado entrepreneurial community, our mostly Colorado-based supplier network, and the financial backing of Colorado Lending Source, we’re not building it alone,” says Custer. “We are proud to make the only truly American made watch entirely in beautiful Colorado.”
A who’s who of Colorado’s clothing and gear makers converged in Denver to talk cut-and-sew hubs of the future.
CompanyWeek‘s fifth annual Apparel & Outdoor Industry (AOI) Manufacturing Summit took place on October 18, 2018, at Cultivated Synergy, a coworking space in the RiNo Art District in Denver.
Two themes were front and center: places and people. The places are the apparel and outdoor industry manufacturing hubs of the future, and the people are the skilled cut-and-sew workers who will drive growth in Colorado’s manufacturing sector.
Since 2014, the summit has been in the middle of the conversation. “It has been an amazing journey, and we’re going to talk a lot about that journey tonight,” said Bart Taylor, CompanyWeek‘s founder and publisher.
Carol Engel-Enright of Colorado State University’s Design and Merchandising program spoke of the event’s beginnings in 2014. She said AOI launched with a simple question for local brands: “What would it take to reshore manufacturing?” The answer revolved around “high quality and high standards of sewn goods in the needle trades.”
The hypotheticals have since jumped off the drawing board, as new models start to take shape in the state. Taylor gave kudos to Engel-Enright for her work with Rural Colorado Apparel Manufacturing, or RCAM. “You’re rediscovering the institutional memory this country has lost in terms of apparel manufacturing,” he said.
“For the first time, we’re not talking about it, we’re doing it,” noted Engel-Enright. “One lesson learned: We can’t compete. We have to collaborate. We have to be invested in each other’s success.”
She added, “Now it’s about possibilities. It’s possible.”
Connecting the dots
The first AOI panel covered cross-pollination between manufacturing sectors. Jeff Vierling of Durango-based Tailwind Nutrition said he learned a lot about scaling manufacturing from Ska Fabricating. “They helped us a ton,” he said. “We still work with them on a monthly basis. We also got great advice from Zuke’s, which is a dog treat company.”
Zuke’s helped prepare Tailwind to export pallets and containers of products. “It sounds silly, but these are the things we’re going to have to learn if you’re going to go overseas,” said Vierling.
He’s not alone. “Partnership and collaboration is what we’re all about,” noted panelist April Archer of SaraBella Fishing in Erie.
SaraBella works with a variety of businesses and nonprofits. It turned to a local nonprofit contract shop to make sleeves. “We teamed up with Mile High WorkShop,” said Archer. “It’s a beautiful partnership.”
David Dragoo of Mayfly Outdoors in Montrose, manufacturer of Ross Reels and Abel Reels, said the company’s catalog was 60 percent imports in 2012, but it now makes 100 percent of its products in Colorado. “Everything we make is now made in our state,” he noted. A big part of that shift was tied to leveraging contract manufacturers in Colorado.
New hubs of apparel manufacturing
Next up, Deborah Vandermar, the Seattle-based executive director of The Makers Coalition, discussed new apparel manufacturing initiatives around the country. She said it’s all about building a foundation of apprenticeship programs that will allow for the industry’s success. “How do you build it? How do you expand it? How do you build infrastructure?” And it goes nowhere without private businesses. “There had to be a job at the end of the training.”
Reshoring isn’t simply challenged by labor availability. “We all think labor lext our country because of cost,” said Vandermar, “but in my opinion, labor did not leave our market because of cost.”
It was about innovation: In the 1970s and ’80s, Brittania and Liz Claiborne realized that the cut-and-sew operations in Hong Kong could make apparel domestic manufacturers could not. “Brittania revolutionized jeans,” said Vandermar. “What was the trigger? It was not cost. “It was innovation.”
The big lesson? It takes an industry cluster to establish standards, said Vandermar. And innovation, she added, starts with standards.
Mike Miller, CEO of The Airtex Group in Minneapolis, discussed the mission of The Makers Coalition: to revive industrial sewing in the U.S. It’s something he’s worked on for the better part of the past decade at Airtex and as a boardmember of the nonprofit coalition.
“We feel it’s essential to have education, workforce development, and industry,” said Miller. “You have to have all three of these to make something work. You can’t train people if you don’t have any place to put them to work.”
But there’s another critical ingredient, he added. “We needed those pillars, but we also needed government support.” The big picture also encompasses affordable housing, banking, grocery stores, transit, as well as jobs and educational opportunities. “It’s an ecosystem,” said Miller.
After the idea took shape in 2010, Miller said the first goal was to build it in the Twin Cities. “We thought we could make it happen in Minnesota,” he explained.
The effort didn’t succeed on the first approach. But when Jennifer Guarino, his colleague on the board of The Makers Coalition, went to work as VP of manufacturing for Shinola in Detroit, he saw a very similar vision coalescing in the Motor City: ISAIC.
Short for Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center, ISAIC aims to integrate education and industry at a one-of-a-kind manufacturing hub in a worker-owned factory. The first iteration of ISAIC could launch as soon as early 2018 above the Carhartt flagship store in Detroit, but the bigger picture is revitalizing a shuttered pickle factory on about eight acres that could include all of the elements of the ecosystem at one place.
An anchor brand like Carhartt is a key piece of the puzzle, added Miller. “[Clients] need to know there’s going to be a business there in the future,” he said. “There’s a known quantity, there’s a known quality, and a level of service no one has today. That’s really the goal. It starts with us in Detroit, but our hope is it comes to Brooklyn, it comes to Denver, and it comes to communities that are interested in us.”
Engel-Enright said ISAIC provides a model for a similar operation in Colorado. “We are going to do this, and it’s going to change us moving forward,” she said. “Because everybody has the same problems: ‘I can’t find the right sewers. I can’t find the right skills.’ . . . You can do anything if you have the right skills.”
A new paradigm in the Rockies
The evening’s final panel looked at outdoor-oriented manufacturing places coming soon to Colorado.
“Historically, Mesa County has been reliant on one industry, and that’s the energy industry,” said Brown. After decades of booms and busts, “2008 was particularly bad,” she added.
So the communities of Grand Junction, Fruita, and Palisade took a good hard look at their economic assets. “The leadership of all three communities got together and discusses how to diversify the economy,” said Brown. “The most obvious industry was outdoor recreation.”
With manufacturers like Bonsai Design, Leitner-Poma, and Loki calling the area home, local leaders decided to emphasize the outdoor industry as an economic pillar. It’s already paying big dividends.
But the Las Colonias development could take it to the next level. The project pairs a 140-acre park and a 15-acre business hub. The concept has already lured RockyMounts from Boulder, and Brown said that she expects the trend to continue. “We’ve created this talent pipeline in hard goods,” she explained. “I don’t think that’s very hard to take that to soft goods.”
To the south in Montrose, Mayfly Outdoors is building Colorado Outdoors to house its manufacturing on 1.5 miles of the Uncompahgre River. “We couldn’t find any space that worked for us,” said Dragoo of the project’s impetus. Mayfly’s facility on the 164-acre site is slated to open in January 2019, and will ultimately include other businesses and housing. The city and Great Outdoors Colorado are funding trails and river restoration projects.
Dragoo again hit on cross-pollination in manufacturing through proximity. “It really brings the synergies of being together,” he said. “They support each other. I think it’s potent.”
In Golden, Yeti Cycles is in the pre-construction phase of a 26,000-square-foot facility it’s developing with Neenan Archistruction on a site that will ultimately include a brewery and other manufacturers if a re-zoning effort bears fruit. Dubbed Mountain Lab, the 40-acre parcel is adjacent to the mountain bike trails at White Ranch Park.
Yeti Director of Operations Bill Mueller said the goal is to spur efficiency and growth as well as “offer something that’s truly unique to workers. It’s not always monetary for them.”
Neenan’s Shawn Sullivan said the project stands out in his 22 years in real estate. “In that time, this is the coolest project I’ve worked on,” he said. “There’s been an amazing amount of interest. It’s going to be what I hope is a national draw.”
Jeff McCubbin, dean of CSU’s College of Health and Human Services, showcased the 45,000-square-foot Richardson Design Center, slated to open on campus in January 2019. It will include an 8,000-square-foot makerspace and facilities for students and faculty from several different departments. “We’re very excited about this,” said McCubbin. “It’s all about multidisciplinary collaboration and and facilitating opportunities for our students.”
These places are ultimately about people. CompanyWeek‘s Taylor called the projects “talent magnets” for their communities and Colorado as a whole. “This is what we have to do to sell the next generation on manufacturing,” he added. “I believe your projects will be absolute catalysts.”
“Modest growth” is an apt term to describe the trajectory of Colorado manufacturing the past several years, one that continues to accurately describe the sector’s performance year-to-date in 2018.
Economic data released the past 30 days or so also speaks to more volatility creeping into the sector as the impact of tariffs threatens Colorado exports, thus far a bright spot in 2018 reporting.
Modest job growth compared with other sectors, within what cber.co describes as a “volatile growth category”
Wage increases slightly above the state average
Workforce challenges as manufacturers struggle to find qualified employees in a highly competitive landscape
Export growth year-over-year; momentum that nevertheless faces potential headwinds from proposed new tariffs
Stalled productivity throughout the economy, as automation and technology continue to prove elusive for small to medium-size manufacturers
Low levels of manufacturing-related capital investments
Detail: Colorado
Modest job growth compared with other sectors
Colorado will add 51,400 to 57,400 jobs in 2018, a growth rate of 1.9 to 2.1 percent annually. The “volatile growth category” — including manufacturing — will add 15,900 to 17,900 jobs in 2018, an increase of 2.1 to 2.3 percent.
The manufacturing sector is on track to add 2,400 jobs in 2018, an increase of 1.6 percent, a “weak rate of growth” per cber.co.
Workforce challenges as manufacturers struggle to find qualified employees in a highly competitive talent landscape
Projected Job Changes All Sectors – 2018 Forecast
Wage increases slightly above the state average
Colorado Wage and Salary Employment 2018 Forecast:
Export growth year-over-year
Total exports are up 11 pecent year-over-year through May ($3.6 billion year-to-date May 2018 vs. $3.3 billion May 2017, with total exports in 2017 $8.05 billion.) Several of the top 15 manufacturing export categories year-to-date (by revenue) may be impacted by reciprocal tariffs in the second half of 2018:
Source: WISERTrade: State HS Database http://www.wisertrade.org, data from U.S. Census Bureau Foreign, Trade Division.
Productivity gains are proving elusive for small to medium-sized manufacturers
Productivity gains across economic sectors including manufacturing have stalled. It’s officially a trend, one that has economists flummoxed.
Horvath of cber.co cited its duration, noting, “With the exception of spikes in 2002, 2003, and 2009/2010, labor productivity has trended downward since 2000. In has been in the range of -0.5 percent to 1.9 percent since 2011,” while at the same time speculating about the root causes:
“The decline in productivity has been a result of weak to modest investment, catering to special interest groups — which has decreased efficiencies, impact of new technology, and a slowdown in the rate of the development and utilization of technology.”
It’s as cogent an explanation as any. Other anecdotes point to the implementation gap between large organizations and the small to medium-sized companies that comprise the majority of the sector.
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.”
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