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).

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.

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.”