EC Life - 2023 Summer/Fall Edition

Welcome to e EC Life, an Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce publication, where you the reader are able to dive into a variety of community driven stories that feature local businesses, explore the vitality of the area and share the overall sense of home that Eau Claire provides.

ank you to all of our readers.

© 2023 Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce

Curiosity keeps leading us down new paths”. I have shared this quote from Walt Disney several times over the past six years.

We, the Eau Claire Area Chamber, continue down new paths and this publication, “ e EC Life” is another new path we’ve set out on.

is publication will help us tell OUR story to those who live here but also to those who are thinking about calling Eau Claire home.

David Minor

Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce President & CEO

All rights reserved. No part of this guide may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including a photocopy, recording or any information retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.

Every e ort was made to ensure the accuracy of this publication. e Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information presented here or be held accountable for omissions or errors. Please report any changes to the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce for inclusion in subsequent editions.

Articles written

by:

Doug Mell

Cover & back photos: Tim Abraham Photography

Published by the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce 101 North Farwell St., Suite 101 Eau Claire WI 54703 Phone: 715-834-1204

Background photo by Tim Abraham Photography

FAST FACTS

EST. IN 1915

1,100

The Chamber website has over 2,670 views with 1,237 visits per month.

Staff consists of eight community oriented thinkers.

40 Ambassadors with over 400+ years of combined business experience.

Our weekly video series the Monday Morning Minute has over 800 views every week.

Developed the Chippewa Valley Alliance (CVA). A collaboration between the Chippewa Falls and Menomonie Chamber.

Four pillar value system that consists of Advocacy, Workforce, Education and Investor Engagement.

Investor dues structure transitioned from traditional structure to new five level tiered program in March 2019.

The Eau Claire Chamber celebrated 100 years in 2015.

Our mission is to be the ADVOCATE of business.

investor businesses on annual basis.

CreatingBusiness

Plank Enterprises and Minnesota Wire have an interesting commonality: They began in places other than Eau Claire but eventually moved to the city and have thrived here since.

Leon Plank began his business ventures that would lead him to establish Plank Enterprises in Osseo, Wis., before the company would become one of the first manufacturing tenants in Eau Claire’s Banbury Place in 1993. The company moved to its current location on Anderson Drive on Eau Claire’s north side in 2008.

Minnesota Wire, as its name indicates, began at the kitchen table of its founder, Fred Wagner, in the Twin Cities area in 1968. Production capabilities moved to its first location in Eau Claire in 1985, and the company has expanded production at the current facility on Prospect Drive on the west side ever since.

Despite beginning elsewhere, Plank Enterprises is firmly grounded in Eau Claire, said Natasha Plank-Ottum, the company’s CEO and daughter of the company’s founder.

“These are our roots,” she said. “This is our home base.”

The company provides multi-disciplined industrial solutions through its three subsidiaries: LPI Lift Systems, LDPI Industrial Lighting and Pro-Cise Machining. LPI makes custom and standard personnel lift platforms and material handling systems for industry; LDPI makes specialized lighting fixtures and related products used in hazardous areas in industrial and commercial locations; and Pro-Cise fabricates, machines and welds equipment parts and assemblies for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Photo provided by Tim Abraham Photography

Plank-Ottum said her company has an advantage in that “we don’t have a lot of competition” especially in the United States, for a number of their products.

“I believe there will be a perpetual need for our products because of our value propositions,” she added.

“In the product lines that we offer, our niche market is in typically demanding environments,” said Shannon Plank, the company’s chief operating officer.

“Our products are designed for rigorous environmental conditions in places that are hazardous in nature” or are in areas that are wet, corrosive and related to explosives, Plank-Ottum added.

“We still make a few of our legacy products,” she said. “But we certainly have product development for new markets. Technology certainly has changed our products,” including the switch from fluorescent to LED lighting.

Shannon Plank said that while the company might have a market share of 80 percent in a particular area, “It’s hard to get more than 80 percent. But the challenge is not losing it” especially with the constant threat of global competition for some of their products.

Plank-Ottum said one of the trends for the company is doing more customization work across their three subsidiaries. “We’ve probably gone to less of a standard product line to more of a customization,” she said, that is “specific to an industry or customer need.”

Besides having its roots firmly in Eau Claire, the sisters said, there are some real advantages to doing business in Eau Claire. The first benefit they mention is the work ethic of employees in the Chippewa Valley.

“There’s a work ethic here in the Heartland that is hard to match,” Plank-Ottum said. “The skill set we need has changed so much over the years” but the company has benefited from hiring employees who come from the agricultural community over the years.

“There was a time when that (agriculture) skill set was abundant in this region” found in “the typical worker who would grow up on a family farm or would be exposed to equipment and how it works, how to take it apart and put it together,” PlankOttum said.

Another advantage of the Chippewa Valley is the quality of the higher educational institutions found in the Chippewa Valley, Plank-Ottum said, singling out the University of Wisconsin-Stout and Chippewa Valley Technical College as being important sources of talent for her company.

“We’ve had great partnerships with particularly UW-Stout and CVTC,” Plank-Ottum said. The programs the schools offer, she said, fit well “with the skill set needed for our production facility and for our engineering department.”

Those schools and UW-Eau Claire also contribute valuable employees for the company’s administrative side, she said, adding, “We have finance, we have marketing needs, so we are blessed” with quality educational institutions to fill those needs.

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, Campus

Another advantage in the Chippewa Valley for Plank Enterprises is the easy access to major transportation routes, Plank-Ottum said, adding, “We are centrally located to ship our product out,” mostly by truck. Plank-Ottum said a challenge for the future will be maintaining a quality workforce.

“I think it starts with K-12,” Plank-Ottum said.

“There needs to be promotion and education of industry needs and opportunities in the schools.”

She praised the work of Wade Latz, founder of the local group Manufacturing SOS Alliance, that is working to increase interest in manufacturing trades in school districts and improve high school technical education programs.

Latz “has a solution that I have more faith in than anything I have seen in the last 15 years,” Plank-Ottum said, adding that the private sector is backing his efforts.

Shannon Plank said Plank Enterprises will continue to succeed because of the deep relationships it has developed and nurtured over the years.

“Just like anything else, our business is purely based on relationships,” Plank said. “You have to meet the costumer challenge or need. We’ve got long, long standing relationships, and I think that is what success looks like.”

Fred Wagner had spent four years selling electronic parts in the Twin Cities to technology companies. One day he and his family sat down at their kitchen table and what would become Minnesota Wire & Cable was born. That was in 1972 when Wagner sold his company Wagner Consultants and got into manufacturing.

But what to manufacture? Wagner looked around and quickly realized that the Twin Cities quickly was becoming a hub for medical technology, and he decided to concentrate in that area. That decision would be the ticket to a successful company.

“Medical cables are our bread and butter,” said Carrie Ferris, an executive with Minnesota Wire, adding, however, that the company has evolved into doing a significant amount of work for the Pentagon.

Fred Wagner started making his first wires in Edina and as the company grew over the late 1970s and early 1980s, Wagner and his family knew the company needed to expand. One of Fred’s sons, Brian, had taken a liking to Wisconsin and suggested that Minnesota Wire open a plant in Eau Claire.

“Fred’s motto was to be fast, be friendly and be flexible,” Ferris said. “So, when they were looking for a place to branch out, Brian had suggested Eau Claire.”

That moved happened in 1985, with the company moving into a small space near downtown. A decade later it moved to its current location at 2515 Prospect Drive.

“Eau Claire has been very good for us,” Ferris said. “Literally, we love it here.”

She added that the city of Eau Claire “has been very business friendly and manufacturing friendly” and offered incentives along the way that helped the company locate in the city and eventually expand.

The bulk of the company’s manufacturing now happens in Eau Claire, with research and development, along with the headquarters, remaining In St. Paul.

“We made a conscious decision two years ago to increase our footprint in Eau Claire versus St. Paul,” Ferris said. “Actually, we are downsizing in St. Paul a bit and moving those operations over to Eau Claire as well. So, for all intents and purposes, this is our main manufacturing hub.”

And, as Ferris added, “It’s very business friendly here versus Minnesota and the Twin Cities. And the people are great.”

As Ferris explained it, Minnesota Wire makes wires and cables for applications for when failure is not an option.

Their products are found in medical devices, such as defibrillators, electrosurgical assemblies and drug delivery systems, among others. A big field for Minnesota Wire is defense, Ferris said, for such things as wearable systems for soldiers and communications systems.

The company also has industrial applications. What Minnesota Wire doesn’t do, Ferris said, is make the standard commercial cables like those for phone charges. “Somebody is not going to come to us and be able to buy an iPhone cord,” she said.

Ferris said the company’s move to doing work for the Pentagon came after 9/11. Paul Wagner, who had taken over as chairman and CEO from his father, decided the company needed to do something to support the service men and women who were sacrificing for their country. “So, we started producing life-saving connections for the military,” Ferris said.

The company has continued to support veterans through various programs, Ferris said, including fundraisers, charities and organizations to help soldiers and their families. The company also holds a Veterans Day barbecue to honor those who have served their country.

Ferris said the company works hard to create an environment conducive to employee retention. They do monthly surveys of employee satisfaction and 80 percent or more of the workers say they are satisfied or very satisfied with their work at Minnesota Wire.“A lot of it has to do with our values,” she said.

“We do treat our employees as literally family.

It’s a clean, safe working environment” with a competitive salary and benefit package. “We have generational workers here. We have a lot of long term employees who just stay and they bring in their kids.” As a family business, Ferris said, employees have a sense they can be part of the company’s decision-making process.

“People feel like they are listened to here, they are valued here,” she said.

Company executives will walk around the production floor, and employees feel they can approach the CEO Paul Wagner or others and tell them about a machine that needs adjusting or some other issue.

“We call those opportunities for improvement,” Ferris said.

Ferris echoed the sentiments of Natasha PlankOttum about the need to get young people interested in manufacturing careers and to dissolve the perception that many plants these days are stifling and dirty.

“We have to not only change those perceptions but also reach the right people,” she said. “We train from within, and we promote from within. So, if they (high school graduates) want to come work with us, there’s a career path.”

Background photo provided by Minnesota Wire, Summer Picnic

Photo provided by Minnesota Wire, Factory Floor

Our Vitality

the backbones of two successful Eau Claire manufacturers that began at the homes of their creators and today have become important players in their respective fields.

Realityworks began as Baby Think It Over on the West Coast in the garage of Rick and Mary Jurmain. There, Rick, a former NASA engineer, built a prototype of what would become the company’s first baby simulator used in schools across the country to teach students about the responsibility of being a parent.

Chip Magnet, an Eau Claire salsa and relish company, began in the kitchen of Alexis Lucas in central Wisconsin. Lucas learned from her grandmother the joys of making salsa. Later, after the family moved to Eau Claire, Lucas would make and sell salsa at farmers markets to supplement the family’s income.

In 1993, Rick and Mary Jurmain were living in the San Diego area and were watching a public television show about how young people were being taught about the responsibilities of being a parent.

“They were watching a PBS special about using sacks of flour to simulate taking care of babies,” said Samantha Forehand, marketing communications manager for Realityworks. The couple had a good laugh at that, she said, and Mary Jurmain then challenged her husband, recently laid off from his NASA engineering job, to do better.

“He went out to his garage and tinkered around and came up with the first prototype of a baby known as Baby Think It Over,” Forehand said. “As you can imagine it, teachers just loved it because it was so much better than what was out there. So that’s really the birth of Baby Think It Over.”

Photo provided by Visit Eau Claire

The Jurmains decided to move their fledgling company to Eau Claire to be closer to family. Now known as Realityworks, the company has called Eau Claire home since 1996. Like many emerging manufacturers, the company was in Banbury Place for a number of years before moving to its present home on Mondovi Road on the city’s west side two decades ago.

“They were building a company that started with that one product,” said Jessica Bierman, Realityworks human resources director, about the simulator that would become known as RealCare Baby. “But this is where they wanted to grow that company.”

Grow it did. By the time the company celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2020, officials said that 10 million people had used the company’s products, and the babies were used by more than 32,000 educational and social service organizations. After the company became Realityworks, its owners knew that they had to expand its product lines to remain viable.

“Realityworks is constantly coming out with new products,” Forehand said, and has branched out to make educational products in the fields of agriculture, trade skills, health science, and career and technical education. That transition began about a decade ago, she added.

“We had to look within our own market and (figure out) what else are we good at and what can we expand into,” Forehand said. A natural progression was into the area of career and technical education, she said, and the company now sells products for virtual welding, ECG simulation, nursing simulation and even for bovine birthing simulation.

When considering new products, Forehand and Bierman said, the company relies on experts in the field for advice on design and curriculum.

“We want to make sure the products we are coming out with mean something to educators,” Forehand said. “We don’t just come up with crazy ideas. We actually use educators to tell us what their students are not understanding” or what tool they need to teach a particular skill.

“So, the educators are really important in that product development portion of our company,” Forehand said.

Many of the products that Realityworks brings out can be used in a number of settings, Forehand said. For example, the virtual welder can be used not only for students looking for a career in the trades, she said, but also for those intent on a career in agriculture.

The company went through significant changes beginning in 2003 with the name change to Realityworks. The Jurmains stepped away from the day-to-day operations of the company in 2005, and the company began an employee stock ownership plan in 2011. Realityworks would become a full 100 percent ESOP company in 2021.

Bierman said the transition to a company fully owned by its employees happened as more of the company was purchased from the Jurmains until 2021. “So now our employees own the company,” she said.

An external trustee manages the ESOP, she said.

A new employee will start accumulating shares in the company after being with Realityworks for a year. www.eauclairechamber.org

Photo provided by Realityworks

Photo provided by Realityworks

“What we tell employees is, as we grow the company, and the longer you are here, you’re going to continue to accumulate shares,” Bierman said. “And if we’re doing everything right, the share value is going to continue to increase, so you are building wealth over time.”

Forehand said that as the Jurmains were looking at what the future would hold for Realityworks, “they really put a lot of value into the employees,” and decided that giving the company back to the employees through the ESOP was the right direction for the company.

Realityworks was named the 2023 Wisconsin Employee-Owned Company of the Year. The award was presented by the Wisconsin Chapter of The ESOP Association.

Bierman said it is important at Realityworks for management to be transparent with the employees, adding, “it’s a big part of our culture to encourage that employee ownership mentality.”

Culture comes up a lot in talking to Realityworks employees, and Bierman said both the ESOP and their line of products contribute to the vitality that employees feel at the company.

“One of the main things that our employees will tell you attracts and keeps them here is people feel good about the culture, what we are doing and why we are doing it and the role that we play in education,” Bierman said.

Forehand said Realityworks will continue to expand into the areas where it is still a relatively new player. Pointing to the company’s entry into the healthcare market, she said, “we are still fairly new within that…we’ve only been in there about six years.”

“Part of our strategy is to just look for other ways of servicing our markets,” Bierman said.

From her earliest days, Alexis Lucas can remember watching her grandmother in central Wisconsin make salsa: peeling, blanching and canning tomatoes and preparing the spices and other ingredients that would render the perfect salsa.

“She taught me everything,” Lucas said of her grandmother while sitting in the Banbury Place office of Chip Magnet, Lucas’ salsa and relish company that in 12 years has become a presence in an estimated 4,200 stores in 42 states and Canada. “Her kitchen always smelled like food.”

Holding up a jar of one of Chip Magnet’s most popular salsa, Mildly Delicious, Lucas said her grandmother “made this salsa.” Lucas said she always had the salsa-making bug, calling it “this magical creation” that would emerge from her grandmother’s kitchen. “It was always delicious.”

Even as a teenager, Lucas said, she would make salsas for her family’s enjoyment. “So, I would just start experimenting,” Lucas said, making three to four different varieties. “It’s so versatile. You can do so many things with it. I had a lot of recipes under my belt.”

Lucas said that despite how ingrained making salsa was in her life, it never occurred to her that it could become a business – until life intruded. As Lucas explains it, the family moved from the Wausau area to Eau Claire in 2009 when her husband Jim took a finance position with a car dealership. “I didn’t want to move,” Alexis conceded.

“I’ve always been a stay-at-home mom,” she said, but it became clear that the family would need some supplemental income.

“I thought maybe I’d make salsa and sell it at farmers markets,” she remembers telling her husband, who didn’t think much of the plan at first.

“I went behind his back” to get the business going, she said, taking food safety classes and buying the first four cases of jars in which to pack the salsa.

Background photo, LEC Tour Chip Magnet Salsa

That was in summer 2011. The first 48 jars of salsa went to a farmers market on the Chippewa Valley Technical College parking lot, Lucas said. “I had to hand write the ingredients on every single jar,” Lucas said. “I sold every single jar of salsa.”

Word quickly spread about the new salsa, Lucas said, with it developing a “cult following from the farmers market.”

A big step forward for the fledgling company came in June 2012 when it became licensed to produce and sell food. “You have to be licensed to sell retail,” Lucas said. At that time, she said, it was taking about 3,000 pounds of tomatoes a week to produce enough salsa to satisfy the local farmers markets. The company put its salsa in its first stores in 2012 and made the move to selling only in retail outlets in 2013.

The first employees were hired in 2012, Lucas said, because the volume of salsa needed to satisfy the demand was so big “there was no way I could do it myself.”

The company moved to Banbury Place in 2014, a move Lucas said was made as easy as possible by the building’s owner, Jack Kaiser, who she said bent over backwards to work with the startup. “I can’t say enough good about him,” Lucas said of Kaiser. (Kaiser and Banbury Place were featured in the summer/fall 2022 edition of EC Life.)

Those early days were a whirlwind of making product and convincing stores to give up valuable shelf space for this new salsa made in a former tire plant in Eau Claire, Wis.

“We had to put boots on the ground,” Lucas said of their sales technique. “We had to take samples to every single grocery store we would stop at.”

A former family nanny made the transition to sales manager, Lucas said, which turned out so well he is still with the company. Eventually, the first salsas appeared on store shelves in Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee and the Twin Cities. This, of course, meant that someone had to drive the product to these locations.

In 2014, Lucas’ husband Jim quit his job and joined the business. The couple’s two sons now work for Chip Magnet, which has four non-family employees as well.

Since day one, Chip Magnet has been all about fresh ingredients and ensuring that its products are free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). As Lucas told an interviewer in 2015, “Why would you make food to sell that you wouldn’t eat? I couldn’t do it. I believe in eating real food.”

In 2015, Chip Magnet entered into an agreement with United Natural Foods or UNFI, a nationwide distributor of natural, organic and specialty foods.

“That was huge,” Lucas said of being accepted by UNFI, because it then gave Chip Magnet national reach. Before working with the distributor, she said, “we were self-delivering everything” that the company sold. “I don’t know how we did it.”

Gradually, Chip Magnet came to rely on distributors to get its products to the grocery stores and less on the old minivan that served as the company’s distribution vehicle. Someone still has to drive to Madison to the Willy Street Co-op, one of Chip Magnet’s first customers, that wants a relish that isn’t available through a distributor, Lucas said with a laugh.

So where did the Chip Magnet name come from? It was a play on the term “chick magnet,” Lucas said. “It just hit me,” she said, “Chip Magnet. That’s it.”

In recent years, Chip Magnet has gotten into the private label market, including for the Lunds & Byerlys chain in Minnesota. A game changer, she said, would be to become a private label supplier for a major national chain like Costco. Despite the company’s growth, Lucas said, there are no plans to leave Eau Claire.

“We love Eau Claire,” she said. “Why would we leave? It’s not a big city. It’s close to the Twin Cities. It’s progressive. I think it’s a great spot.” Lucas said that her grandmother would be “amazed” at what Chip Magnet has become.

“We built this entire thing because she taught me how to peel tomatoes and how to make salsa,” Lucas said.

Home is Here

Although they make and sell widely different products, a common theme ties the history of Silver Spring Foods and McDonough Manufacturing together: Their founders started their businesses in Eau Claire decades ago and both enterprises continue to thrive here.

Silver Spring was founded in 1929 when Ellis Huntsinger started growing horseradish and other crops near Eau Claire. Huntsinger, to make some extra income, decided to bottle some of that horseradish by hand and what eventually would become Silver Spring Foods was born.

In the late 1800s, Frank McDonough knew through the time he spent in sawmills that better equipment was needed, and he set out to build custom-made sawmill equipment that would exceed in quality what was available at the time. The mill on the banks of the Eau Claire River would survive the depletion of the state’s white pine forests and remains a vibrant operation today, albeit in a new location on Eau Claire’s north side.

Eric Rygg, Silver Spring’s president, is the great grandson of Silver Spring’s founder and clearly knows his horseradish.

He can give a deep dive on the chemistry of horseradish and “what actually makes it hot and why, and why is one root hotter than the next and one batch hotter than the next.”

Through research, Rygg said, the company found that the heat from horseradish is “actually the plant’s defense mechanism. You put horseradish in your mouth, it’s not hot. Start chewing on the root, it releases this enzymatic reaction that creates a volatile compound” that in turn creates the heat.

Photo provided by Tim Abraham Photography

Ellis Huntsinger would be surprised to see all the ways horseradish is being sold these days: with beets, cranberry, cream style, extra-hot, fresh ground, seafood cocktail sauce and nonGMO prepared. Silver Spring is the top American horseradish seller and is distributed in Europe, Japan and Australia.

While horseradish remains important in the company’s product lineup, Rygg said he knew that in today’s marketplace, it would be important to have diverse offerings.

“For a long time I viewed this as a horseradish company,” Rygg said, “but I changed that idea to ‘we are a condiments company.’ Our mission is as simple as to make food taste better.

“That’s the value we bring, to make your sandwich a little more exciting,” he continued, adding that every decision about whether to add a product is based on whether it “brings excitement and flavor to the food.”

While Silver Spring remains a horseradish company, a move into mustards and similar products almost a quarter century ago has proved beneficial. The mustard lineup now includes the famous Beer’n Brat Mustard (with “eye-watering heat” the company says), Jalapeno Mustard, Stone Ground Mustard and a new arrival, Everything Bagel Mustard.

In developing a new product, Rygg said, the three factors to consider are whether the company has access to the ingredients and the capability to make it, whether it tastes good, and whether there is a demand for it. The Everything Bagel Mustard met those criteria, Rygg said.

“It was a trend,” he said. “Everything bagel was going nuts. So we thought we could develop this into a great mustard. And I like it.”

Eric Rygg took over running the company in 2018; his mother, Nancy Bartusch, remains the chairwoman and CEO. One of the management innovations that Rygg brought to the company when he became president was the development of 30 “fundamentals” in 2019 that, as the company says, “are the foundation for our unique culture” and are also known as “The Huntsinger Way.”

Photo provided by Silver Spring

Photo provided by Silver Spring, Products

Rygg said he realized that the annual employee review process at the company “was getting a little bit stale. It was almost just a formality.” With the help of a consultant, the company looked at the traits and behaviors of the best employees. A long list was narrowed to the 30 currently in place. They include: do the right thing, always; make quality personal; be a great listener; make healthy choices; keep things fun; and “give it zing” every day.

The important aspect of the funamdentals is they don’t just exist on paper, Rygg said. The company focuses on one each month and makes sure employees have adequate chances to discuss it.

For example, every meeting with three more people “will take a couple of minutes to talk about this fundamental,” he said.

The fundamentals have been integrated into the hiring and employee review processes, Rygg said, adding, “It’s been awesome for me to see our employees talk about these things and not only how it affects them in the work environment, but at home and with their families.”

A big boost for Silver Spring came in 2021 when Huntsinger Farms hosted the statewide Farm Technology Days – after agreeing to host it in 2020 and seeing the pandemic push the event back a year. Rygg said the company agreed to wait a year because of all the work – he says about 80 percent – that was done in 2020 and he didn’t want that effort wasted.

As for the future, Rygg said the company is looking to grow, but only in the areas where it knows it can succeed. For example, it purchased Brede Foods of Detroit, Mich., which gave it another source of horseradish and the Farmers Brand of horseradish.

“No one is doing horseradish on the scale we are doing it,” Rygg said. “I do not take for granted how we got here.”

At McDonough Manufacturing, Sue Tietz is the fourth-generation owner and serves as the president/CEO, and her son Matt serves as vice president and owner, keeping the family ownership secure.

While Frank McDonough was able to establish the original factory on Galloway Street, McDonough died in 1904, and the company directors eventually concluded they would have to liquidate the assets. But when John Kildahl came in and reviewed the books, he decided to buy the company He then passed it on to his son, Jack, and then to Jack’s daughter, Sue Tietz. In 1989, the company moved to its current factory on Melby Street near the airport.

Matt Tietz said it made sense for someone to open a sawmill-equipment factory in Eau Claire because of the plethora of sawmills that dotted the rivers here during the logging boom. “I think we had 11 or 12 sawmills up and down the Eau Claire and Chippewa rivers,” he said.

McDonough worked at a mill and “he was used to repairing and working on the machinery,” Matt said, and considered the equipment he worked on “junk,” so he wanted to “build my own stuff.”

Photo provided by Silver Spring, Huntsinger Farms

It turned out that a lot of people wanted the equipment that McDonough went on to build. “He just went down the street and started building great machinery,” Matt added.

Two events almost brought an end to McDonough’s dream, however. The log boom gave out, so the local sawmills eventually closed, and McDonough died. The Board of Directors tried to run the company, Sue Tietz said, “and it did’t go very well.”

By 1920, the directors wanted to concentrate on their careers so Sue’s grandfather was hired to liquidate the assets.

“When grandpa got to looking at the books, he thought maybe he would like to give it try,” Sue said. “So that’s how it got into our family.”

Matt Tietz said it is ironic now that McDonough doesn’t sell any equipment in the town where sawmills once prevailed. But Sue Tietz said it makes sense from many perspectives for a sawmill equipment manufacturer to stay in Eau Claire.

“We are right in the middle of the country,” with good transportation options, she said. “If we were on the West Coast, shipping to the East Coast would be a deterrent” and vice versa.

Besides, she said, the workforce here through the years has proved to be an invaluable resource that would be hard to replicate elsewhere.

Matt Tietz said they have for decades drawn skilled employees from “the farming community,” adding, “when you are a farmer, you learn how to fix stuff” and those skills translate well onto the factory floor.

“We’ve been blessed with a good workforce in the Midwest,” Matt said. Today’s McDonough’s staff of employees, he added, “is by far the best crew we have ever had.”

“We really just have a great team,” Sue Tietz added. The key to building a great workforce at McDonough, Matt said, is “we hire great attitudes. Obviously, you have to have some talent. But we really try to hire great attitudes.”

Like Silver Spring Foods, the company has assembled its fundamentals, 32 of them, which the company says encapsulates what makes McDonough different from other companies.

They include: treasure, protect and promote our reputation; find a way; show meaningful appreciation; deliver legendary service; and work on yourself.

“People want to work for a great company,” Matt Tietz said, “and they want to work for a company where they have authority and a say and can have some input. That’s how we operate today.”

Both Matt and Sue Tietz said it is vitally important for McDonough to continue to innovate in the types of equipment it makes, and that means drawing the customer into the conversation.

“Listening to our customers really is what it boils down to,” Matt Tietz said. “And being open minded and to just try something.

“You have to have the highest quality equipment that we can possibly put out,” he continued, but sales won’t continue “if you’re a hard company to deal with. There’s a reason that people wait two years for our equipment.”

Matt Tietz said that the sawmill business itself has been changing drastically, with smaller operations selling out to bigger operations, many of them still family businesses. The average sale amount for McDonough has increased about four-fold, he said, adding, “A lot of that has to do with consolidation.”