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Warren Design & Build Engineers Early Success
WARREN, Ohio -- Just three months into operations, Warren Design & Build is making money and poised to reach $1.5 million in sales its first year, the owner says.
The engineering firm, which specializes in the design and construction of automation equipment for a range of customers, was launched in June after Adam Sarson bought the Warren assets of Astro Manufacturing and Design. Astro was consolidating its operations.
“We do design work – anywhere from simple brackets to multimillion-dollar machines,” says general manager Loyd Miller. Although the majority of its customer base is local, many of those customers do business around the globe, he says.
Warren Design & Build supplements manufacturers’ engineering resources, Sarson says. Many manufacturers have limited resources for engineering and their resources are generally devoted to keeping those factories running. “But when you get into an advanced project, they don’t have enough resources and time to do the project,” he explains. “We come in and supplement that engineering work from a design standpoint, from an idea standpoint and from a build standpoint.”
Customers “come to us with what they need to do” and their engineers discuss the concept with Warren Design & Build engineering staff, he adds. “Then once we come to an agreement on the design, we will give them a quote to build it,” he says.
Some parts are built at the plant on Parkman Road while others are bought elsewhere – generally locally, Miller points out.
A tour of the project floor shows projects such as a wire-twisting machine for which the company is optimizing software. Another piece is a machine to test injection-molded parts for which Warren Design & Build is improving the activation of its light curtain, a safety device that halts the machine when the invisible curtain is breached.
Miller, who had worked at Astro Manufacturing 24 years, was reluctant to work for another employer when he had so many contacts in the business. He decided instead to seek an investor to help launch the company. “Fortunately I did find a gentleman to do that,” he relates, and we’ve taken off and we’re going at it full steam right now.”
Sarson, whose experience included working internationally 15 years for Valspar, had been president and part-owner of Tecnocap LLC, a metal packing company, when he chose to leave after six years. He decided to spend six months looking for a business to buy in the northeastern Ohio-western Pennsylvania region. “I didn’t want to leave that general two-hour circle. I have young children where I live in Sewickley [Pa.], so I didn’t want to have to uproot them,” he recalls.
A friend at Tecnocap who had worked at Astro told him its assets here were up for sale and “thought it might be something interesting for me,” he continues. “It ended up looking like a good business” based on the assets and asking price.
Miller didn’t expect to find an investor so quickly. “It was luck. It just happened the cards fell where they did and it panned out,” he says.
A recent tour of Warren Design & Build’s 38,000-square foot building – it had housed a Coca-Cola bottling operation before Astro – showed projects including a wire-twisting machine.
What wasn’t luck is the success the business has enjoyed so far. Although there have been what Sarson calls “heart-attack moments” that come with any new business, the experience has been a good one. Employment has grown from the initial two – Miller and one other – to about 15, almost all of whom had worked for Astro. Although he acquired only Astro Manufacturing’s physical assets here, “the implied reputation of the people that I rehired came with it,” he says, “and so I’ve been able to recapture the existing customer base that was here.”
That customer base includes firms such as Delphi, Donaldson, Akron Rubber, RTI International Metals and Genie Garage Doors. “Fortunately a lot of my past customers moved with me, so I’m lucky in that aspect, yes,” Miller says.
Matthew Flannery, senior project manager, who had been at Astro about 2½ years before it was sold, had worked there four years a decade earlier. He says it was “pretty exciting” when the new owners came in. “At first you’re a little disappointed because Astro had been a longtime employer in this area,” he elaborates, “but their business was changing. The center was up in Cleveland and we all kind of knew that, so it wasn’t a total surprise when they decided to pull out, but it was still disappointing.
“But when we got to meet Adam and we saw his approach to building a business and entrepreneurship, it was something fresh that the company really needed. So we got excited pretty quick once we started dealing with him,” he continues. Over the last month, business has “really started to have an up ramp for us,” he adds.
Business is going “quite well,” Miller confirms. “Times are tough right now, but we’re actually finding new customers and working with existing ones.”
The new company is now recording more than $130,000 each month in sales, making Sarson optimistic it will be in the $3 million range this year and in the $7 million to $10 million range in three years. Reaching those targets will require bringing employment to somewhere between 35 and 40.
The company’s potential is unlimited, he says. Customers will always need engineering services.
“It was just a question of how aggressive we want to be,” he says. “This business was at one time almost a $10 million business. I see no reason this can’t be a $10 million business again.”
Pictured: Loyd Miller, general manager of Warren Design & Build, and Adam Sarson, the owner, opened the engineering firm in June.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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