“What we are doing in Cazenovia is a little bit different,” said Traci Schaumberg, Marketing Communications Coordinator for Marquardt Switches. “We are breaking into new industries, targeting the drone industry, startups, medical, defense, and others as a contract manufacturer. We have gone from selling our product solutions to selling our capabilities and services.”

Something new

Schaumberg, who holds a Bachelors in Video Production from the State University at Fredonia, started her career in television news. She worked for a few years as a producer at a local news station before deciding it was time for a change. She joined Marquardt in December of 2019, in a role that includes both internal and external marketing.

Schaumberg chose Marquardt because she liked the feeling she got from the company, including its corporate values. While those things have not changed over the past few years, just about everything else has. In 2019, the Cazenovia plant was heavily focused on the automotive and home product industries. The COVID-19 pandemic hit both industries, but particularly automotive, very hard.

“We had to look at our business model and how we could survive and still flourish and profit during this time,” Schaumberg said. “We realized we could sell our capabilities. Marquardt can do basically everything in-house—from product development all the way through the manufacturing process and mass production. We might as well be selling those capabilities to other companies that don’t have the same scope as we do.”

This initiative became known as Marquardt Partners. Working closely with the company’s business development team, Schaumberg has helped reach out to potential new customers through tradeshows, marketing materials, and public relations.

The company has had the most success in the drone industry, although Marquardt Partners is available to any company, of any size or stage of development, in need of a contract manufacturer for electronic components. Injection molding services are also available, and Marquardt Partners supports companies from product design through end-of-life.

“It is definitely a different business model,” Schaumberg said. “The company really transitioned into something totally new and different, which is exciting for me.”

Partnering with FuzeHub

Although Marquardt Partners technically got its start in 2020, it is really being launched this year. This includes a new website to promote its Contract Manufacturing services which was developed with the help of FuzeHub Marketing Services. As part of Marquardt’s corporate site, the current Partners page is easily lost among a wide array of products and services.

“It was information overload,” Schaumberg said. “I’ve been the driving force behind creating a site that will be regionally focused just on our services in Cazenovia.”

She said FuzeHub has been “a huge part of this whole Partners plan,” having helped Marquardt make several connections with potential clients.

Schaumberg is optimistic about Marquardt Partners’ future. The company’s business development team has already brought on more people and “I can only see that team expanding. I see us attracting more drone industry companies to work with us. We have a lot of other contract manufacturing opportunities as well in defense, medical, and other industries.”

Visit Marquardt Partners >>

STEMming the tide

As for her own future, “I definitely want to stay with Marquardt. It is so exciting with what we are doing right now, so I really want to help drive that momentum forward.”

Schaumberg also has an interest in the future of the local workforce and area youth. She is a big advocate for STEM education and often talks to students about the different paths available to them.

“I do a lot of facilities tours, showing people all of the really exciting jobs you can have in technology,” she said. “That wasn’t offered when I was a kid. You didn’t realize there were all these amazing things happening locally. I want to get kids excited about the careers that companies like Marquardt offer.”

“My sister had an issue with bras because they didn’t fit her well,” said Isabel Castillo, CEO, and Founder of IZANA.  “I had the issue of having to wear two different bras just to go to the gym because I wasn’t getting enough support.  And throughout the day, you wear these bras, and the wires are poking you and the sliders move out of place and then one breast is more supported than the other. We redesigned it with bottom support instead of top support—so when you adjust the straps, it pulls from the bottom and has breathable fabric, so we don’t perspire.  All of these considerations were built into this bra.”

From Army to Entrepreneur

Castillo has designed a line of everyday wear bras, sports bras, and swimsuits for military women, keeping in mind the comfort, support, and endurance that they need. She served for four years in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Kuwait and South Korea.  

When she left the military, she went straight to college, earning an associate degree in engineering. Her performance earned her a scholarship to Vassar College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in physics. The internships she did while at Vassar taught her that she liked to innovate and design things, so a career counselor recommended she join the school’s entrepreneurship program.

She and her sister Eugenia, an advisor to IZANA, had already started working on the company. So, in 2019, during Isabel’s final semester at Vassar, she started going to pitch competitions. 

“We placed first at the Mid-Hudson Valley Competition,” she said. “A month later, we went to the New York Business Plan Competition, and I received the Minority Women Business Enterprise award.  From there we just kept competing and gaining traction.”

It was at about this time that IZANA was introduced to FuzeHub through the Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship (GSCEN). Castillo met Everton H. Henriques, NY MEP Solutions Director, at GSCEN’s headquarters in Kingston, New York, and discussed design and manufacturing with him. The company is now leveraging FuzeHub’s Manufacturing Solutions Program and has been connected to New York State contract manufacturers that provide cut-and-sew services.

“FuzeHub has been helping to guide me,” Castillo said. “They have been a resource of information, connecting me to manufacturers, people who can help me [and] people who can mentor me.”

Putting the pieces together

Once the bra designs were set, it was necessary to determine the best way to produce them.  After trying traditional manufacturing, Castillo decided  3D knitting was best for the individual components. She was determined to use contract manufacturing in the United States, to ensure ethical labor practices, and kept moving the company forward even during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

For example, she hired a seamstress to produce a sample of the bra to show manufacturers how to sew the 3D knitted components together. At the same time, fabric swatches made from anti-microbial and breathable yarns were being prepared for testing. 

“What is important about this fabric is that the cooling effect and breathability are inherent in the fabric rather than applied with a chemical,” Castillo said. “The chemicals wash off, so they don’t last long.”

Testing the various swatches to determine which would work best for each bra component will take about two months. Castillo, therefore, expects to be able to start manufacturing by March 2022.

Meanwhile, IZANA is selling its innovative bra clips that close but don’t slide. “We launched them to support the company because it is a bootstrap company,” Castillo said. “So, here we are, working on marketing, selling them [and] shipping our orders.  We are also working on our newsletter, trying to build interest and a customer base.”

Castillo has big plans for IZANA.  Within five years, she expects to have her own factory producing a full line of conventional bras, sports bras, and swimwear.  These will be available at military bases in the US and around the world. Non-military women will be able to order online, using an app that scans the torso and ensures a perfect fit.

Tropical Harvest Slushies & Juices is a Queens-based producer of slushies and juices made from natural ingredients. The company combines fruits and vegetables to create exotic, flavorful, and nutritious drinks meant to meet a demand for authentic, tropical, and natural-flavored beverages.

“There are a few reasons why there is a need for the juice,” said Kishana Mills, owner of Tropical Harvest. “One is that our millennials—even if they or their parents are from the tropics—often don’t know these flavors authentically. Some of these flavors are new to the American market. The other reason is that the majority of the juice products you find in our community don’t contain much nutrition. They are made mainly from synthetic materials: powders, dyes, and flavorings. There is a need for natural ingredients, natural taste, and authenticity.”

Youthful Curiosity

Mills grew up in Jamaica, in the lowland hills of the Blue Mountains, where she was exposed to a wide variety of fruits. She lived with her grandparents, who would use native produce in a number of ways.

“I was very curious,” Mills says. “My grandmother could make anything, and she taught me. I would bring home bags of produce and ask her what she could make from them. So, I learned very early how to do a lot in the kitchen.”

As a teenager, Mills moved to the city, where her mother was a nurse. There, she connected with church and community groups who would both learn from her and teach her. Before graduating from high school, where she majored in agriculture, she did an externship at the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) but was also connected with a home economics officer who helped women make the most of their husbands’ farm resources. This helped Mills to understand the importance of agriculture and how it should fuel the food industry in developing value-added products with farm produce.

“There was an abundance of pumpkins, and [the home economics officer] would make drinks and chips and casseroles and pies,” Mills recalls. “That stuck with me, hence my knowledge of how you can use one product in varying ways.”

However, it is the curiosity of her own sons that Mills credits for the creation of Tropical Harvest. They were born in Jamaica but raised in the United States. Mills was in college, studying nuclear medicine, so she sent the boys back to Jamaica for boarding school. There, they tasted the same fruits and juices with which she had grown up. When they returned home, they asked their mother if she could make fresh Caribbean juices.

“Here and there I would make it and they would enjoy it so much and so did their friends,” she said.

“Then I guess the news spread and family started asking, ‘Can you send me a bottle?’ I started thinking about how I could really get into making it because I realized there was a need.”

Learning on the job

Tropical Harvest officially began operating in 2017. Mills started out selling at community and cultural events and her products were always well received.

“Wherever we would sell it, wherever people would consume it, they would love it,” she said. Yet Mills did not always know what she was doing when it came to setting up for events or anticipating demand. For example, she did not foresee that slushies would be more popular than bottled juices. At one event, she had to resort to someone opening 16-ounce bottles and pouring them into a slushie machine to fill orders, rather than having large batches of juices for that purpose. She also could have used more slushie machines to meet the demand.

“There were a lot of mistakes that wasted a lot of time and resources, but we learned,” she explains.

One day her son, then 25, offered to distribute the bottled juices to local vendors, including barbershops and hair salons, and brand awareness grew. Mills has since taken over delivery, keeping it to a manageable number of customers. She is now in the process of hiring someone full-time to handle distribution so that the company can expand.

Tropical Harvest continues to do events about once a month, although they have been much smaller than the ones Mills attended before the pandemic—such as her biggest event to date, the 2019 Reggae Festival in Queens. Purchases can also be made online.

Seeing the (UV) Light

Mills has a team of five per diem workers who help her with production or events. They work at Stony Brook University’s Food Business Incubator at Calverton. About every two weeks, Mills orders fresh produce and has it delivered to the Long Island facility for production.

“We go in and wash, prep, shred, press, boil, and bottle, then load the van,” she said. “We get back to Queens and do distribution within a day or two.”

Mills has developed nine varieties of juices but is currently licensed to sell four: Pineapple Ginger, Jamaican Ginger Sorrel (Hibiscus), Beetroot & Lemon, and Guava Passion Fruit. The company markets its products as having “the nutrition you deserve and the flavors you know and love.”

Now Mills is putting her science background to work in an attempt to make her juices even more nutritious. She is working with the Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture at Cornell AgriTech to test the hypothesis that putting juices under ultraviolet light enables them to better retain their nutrients. Samples of products treated with UV light will be compared to those processed thermally.

Once that study is completed, Tropical Harvest will obtain its official nutrition label and barcode, enabling it to scale up and sell its products in supermarkets.

Mills has big plans for Tropical Harvest’s future. Within five years, she sees the juices being widely distributed as the demand grows for what she calls “healthier alternative products”.

“We are laying the foundation to do private labels for the hotel industry and other places that might want fresh, tropical flavor and nutrient-rich products,” she says.

Advanced Tool Inc., of Marcy, Oneida County, manufactures carbide end mills for clients primarily in the aerospace, automotive, medical and power generation markets. The second-generation, family-owned, and certified woman-owned business sets itself apart in a $37 billion industry by offering custom solutions designed to make customers more productive and efficient.  “What makes us unique is that while our competition focuses on catalog sales, we focus on one-on-one engineering that targets the exact geometry our customer needs,” said Sherry DePerno, President and CEO of Advanced Tool. “We take the tool they are currently using and do a 21-point wear analysis that tells us exactly what to change to help them produce more and save more.”

The Family Business

DePerno’s father, Harold “Butch” Lockwood, founded Advanced Tool in 1975 as a manual job shop, and built the business by “pounding the pavement” and meeting customer needs no matter what they were. With a shop full of tool makers, he was able to resharpen and produce any cutting tool a customer desired. Although she grew up around manufacturing, DePerno did not see it as her future. When she was 16, her parents hired her and quickly fired her. “I was a terrible employee,” she said. “They told me to grow up, get a real job and go to college.” Studying business in college changed her perspective. “Once I started understanding business in general, I really loved the idea of building something,” she said.

She was invited back into the family business, and this time she threw herself into the work and learned everything she could. Butch and Denise Lockwood were never easy on their daughter, always making her work hard. “My parents did not hand me anything and I honestly think that is the best thing they could have done for me,” she said. “My son just came into the business this year—so technically we are a third-generation manufacturer—and I find myself doing the same thing my parents did: Wanting him to really learn it, throwing him into the deep end and letting him make mistakes. It really is the only way you learn.”

She’s the Boss

One of the things that most intrigued DePerno about manufacturing was the challenges it presented her as a young woman in a male-dominated world. “I dealt with the men who would come into the business and ask me to go get somebody that knew what they were talking about—basically could I get one of the guys,” she said. “My dad taught me what I needed to know and how to ask the right questions and before long I was answering their questions and addressing their concerns and soon it was ‘she knows what she’s talking about!’” Now, she believes being a woman helps her stand out in a highly competitive industry.

After years of helping her parents manage the business, DePerno slowly transitioned into a leadership role. “Finally at one point, my dad said, ‘you have way more ideas and dreams for this business than I have energy for, and I think I need to step out of your way,’” she recalled. So, in 2007 DePerno and her husband, Rob, purchased Advanced Tool from her parents. At this point, it was a regional company. Under the DePernos, it would grow into a global business with customers in five countries.

From Good to Great

That growth took place after DePerno made a big decision about the direction of the company. She had come to realize that as the toolmakers who worked for her father retired, there was no one to replace them. The company tried training people from the ground up, but it wasn’t working. “I saw the writing on the wall,” she said. “We had less and less of that skill on our shop floor. My dad’s way of saying yes to any opportunity was no longer feasible. I felt like I had this freight train coming at me and it was telling me this is not going to work long term.” She decided that what Advanced Tool needed to do was take one thing, become great at it, and dominate the marketplace. “I realized that the area we made the biggest impact to our customers and where we were most profitable was end mills, this includes micro end mills as small as .010”,” she said.

End mills are one of the most complex cutting tools in terms of geometry and function. DePerno knew that focusing on them would enable Advanced Tool to train its workers differently. “Everyone in my shop would eat, sleep, and breath this one thing so that they can be great at it versus trying to do everything and doing it well but maybe not great,” she said. Butch Lockwood warned his daughter that she could not be successful as just an end mill manufacturer. That weighed heavily on DePerno, as she had always valued his knowledge and advice. Still, she remained true to her conviction. Once Advanced Tool had established itself on the world stage as a producer of custom-designed end mills, Lockwood told his daughter that the next time he tried to tell her how to run the business, she should tell him to be quiet.

The Next Generation

The COVID pandemic has presented challenges for Advanced Tool, but the slowdown has enabled it to focus on another project—writing the New York State Apprenticeship Program for CNC Tool and Cutter Grinders. Working with a manufacturing professor affiliated with the Advanced Institute for Manufacturing (AIM)—the MEP center serving the Mohawk Valley—it developed a curriculum to educate future tool makers. This includes both hands-on training and classroom instruction, which DePerno said had been a missing piece. “Our goal is to bring people up to speed relatively quickly,” said DePerno, who sits on the AIM Advisory Board. “It is about being able to continue our path for growth. Without highly skilled people, you’re not going to go very far.” As for the future of Advanced Tool, “I definitely see growth. I see us remaining with our core business in what we do exceptionally well and bringing in more people and training the next generation of toolmakers to do what we do.”

Carmen Luciano, a production worker, performs cleanroom assembly and packaging at PRI. Moreover, he says he does it “with a smile on his face”. A native of Schenectady, Carmen graduated from Schenectady High School in 2012 and worked at Camp Lovejoy in Altamont, New York and at a local Price Chopper before joining Pine Ridge. At Camp Lovejoy, the Boys & Girls Club of Schenectady’s Summer Day Camp, Carmen says he “did everything” and was “hands-on”. This same flexibility and willingness to roll up his sleeves served him well at Price Chopper, where he worked in the front end and stocked shelves overnight.

Today, Carmen can recite his PRI start date (April 16, 2012) by heart and still enjoys working there as his ten-year anniversary approaches. “I enjoy learning new stuff,” he explains, and is “willing to take on tasks that I’ve never done before.” When Carmen started at Pine Ridge, he worked in the warehouse. His responsibilities have changed since then, but he’s still willing to help wherever he can. “We all work great together”, he says of the PRI team.

When Carmen isn’t working, he enjoys spending time at Saratoga Racetrack for “the atmosphere” and to “see the people in their hats”, part of a tradition of elegant attire at the nation’s oldest thoroughbred racetrack. “I’m a person who likes to try and stay busy,” he adds, and his work ethic and flexibility are just some of the reasons why Pine Ridge Industries is fortunate to have Carmen Luciano.

Dan Connelly, Production Manager for Plug Power, joined the company 21 years ago on a part-time basis but says, “I quickly realized that this company represented an opportunity to change the world.”

Growing up together

Plug Power was founded in 1997, as a joint venture of Albany-based Mechanical Technology Inc. and DTE Energy Co. of Detroit.  Connelly, now 41, joined the company just two years later.  He was a student at Hudson Valley Community College, studying criminal justice with an eye toward joining the FBI.  His father, a scientist at GE, had a friend at Plug Power and got Dan a part time job there.

“I was tasked with taking data every hour, so during the down periods I watched the units, I saw how temperatures moved and trend lines moved and how if you did this it would change that,” he said.

This knowledge would come in handy when he decided criminal justice wasn’t for him and he would stick with Plug Power.  He was named an Assembly Technician, helping to build fuel cells. He also was helping to build Plug Power’s Latham headquarters. The company was growing rapidly and hiring test technicians, a job one step above Connelly’s.

“The day finally came when we had our first fuel cell delivered to the room, and I was helping build the room,” he recalled. “It was kind of funny because these 15 guys were standing around this unit and no one knew how to hook it up or start it up because they’d never seen one before.  I walked over and helped them hook it up, start it, and get it producing. The manager grabbed me by the ear, walked me to the VP of Operations’ office and made him hire me as a Test Tech on the spot.”

Six years later he was promoted to Team Leader. About 12 years ago he advanced to Production Manager, overseeing about a dozen people. He now has 230 people, in 10 teams, reporting to him.

Teal Hoyos, Director of Marketing and Communications for Plug Power, said Connelly is a “perfect example of someone who showed up and was ready to work and wanted to learn and contribute.  Plug Power offered him that opportunity to grow with the company and to help influence the company over the years.”

Going Global

The 230 people under Connelly are among the roughly 1,300 people Plug Power employs worldwide.  The company, which started out making proton exchange membrane fuel cells for residential use, now tailors its work to the needs of large commercial customers.

“I think that is the biggest change in the company over the years,” Connelly said. “Instead of trying to take the technology and make it fit, we took a customer’s problem and had our technology solve that problem.  That took us from an R&D concept into a money-making manufacturing company.”

There are more than 40,000 Plug Power fuel cells deployed worldwide. The company also now provides hydrogen refueling infrastructure, green hydrogen architecture and the service to support it.  It is the world’s largest user of hydrogen.

Some recent deals have helped solidify Plug Power’s position as a truly global company. These include a memorandum of understanding, signed in January, for a joint venture with Groupe Renault, a leading European vehicle manufacturer, and a $1.6 billion joint venture with SK Group, the largest conglomerate in South Korea.

“Despite its worldwide reach, Plug Power is still a ‘proud New York company’ with over 1,000 employees across upstate NY.  It is a New York State economic development success story and enjoys strong relationships with members of the state legislature, Empire State Development, the New York Power Authority, NYSERDA, and several local economic development corporations throughout the state.”

“I need to find another me.”

The tremendous growth at Plug Power has led Connelly to two, interrelated, conclusions.  One is that the company is running out of manufacturing space and will likely need a second location.  It already has opened a plant dedicated to the hydrogen assembly process.

The second realization, he said, is that “I need to find another me.”

In other words, Plug Power will need a second Production Manager to take on more manufacturing units, as well as people to work in those units. He predicts that fuel cells for cars will be the “next massive jump” for the company.

“I have an expectation of, in 2022 maybe, coming to work realizing I have to make 15,000 fuel cells for the fork truck industry and 10,000 for the vehicle industry,” he said. “It is pretty cool.  It is also scary.  I need people who will be here after me.”

“People come in with their design and we take it and build it,” says Lauren Iuranich, the company’s 31-year-old quality engineer and a $2500 winner of FuzeHub’s 2019 Millennials in Manufacturing Award.  At REDCOM EMS, Lauren is responsible for implementing, maintaining, monitoring, and continuously improving a quality management system according to ISO 9001:2015 and AS9100D. The quality expectations that she sets help mitigate the risk of defective components and products.

“Manufacturing wasn’t on my radar.”

Yet REDCOM isn’t an environment where Iuranich ever envisioned herself. She entered Rochester Institute of Technology as a chemistry major, with the goal of becoming a forensic scientist. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a detective, sort of like Sherlock Holmes,” she says.

After a year of college, Iuranich decided to try a different program.  She remembered liking a digital electronics course she had taken through Project Lead the Way–a national nonprofit which provides STEM curriculum to schools–and made Electrical Engineering Technology her new major. Even then, she wasn’t thinking about manufacturing.  Her interest lay in the nuclear power industry.

“Manufacturing wasn’t on my radar,” she recalls. “They don’t really push that too much in standard four-year colleges. Especially with the engineering side of things, it is more about the design work.  So, it was just something I never really considered when I was in college.”

That changed when she accepted a co-op position with Allworx, a Rochester-based telecommunications equipment company, managing one of its contract manufacturers.  “While I was there, I realized it would be interesting to be on the manufacturing side of things,” she says.  “It just seemed like a much more dynamic and interesting environment.”

Taking care of business

REDCOM EMS was formed from the manufacturing operations of REDCOM Laboratories, when that company shifted its focus primarily to software. Iuranich started work there in June 2017, during a time of expansion.

“I basically manage everything quality related,” she says of her job as quality engineer. “It is always interesting. Every day there is something new, something different, “ she continues. “I like the challenges that come up. We have this issue or this potential issue. What can we do to fix it or prevent it? It is brainstorming with different people and coming up with solutions, implementing those solutions and then seeing them actually help. In a way I am doing forensic detective work. How did this happen? Why did it happen? I think that is the fun part of my job.”

REDCOM EMS had achieved its ISO 9001:2015 certification shortly before Iuranich came on board, so she took charge of securing additional certifications to enable the company to move into the aerospace and medical products markets. Through her efforts, REDCOM obtained its AS9100D certification for aerospace in July 2019. ISO 13485:2016 certification for the medical industry is now in the review process.

In addition to pursuing certifications and ensuring the quality of every product manufactured at REDCOM, Iuranich tries to do “as much continuous improvement as I can,” working to make the facility’s processes leaner and more reliable.

Looking to the future

Now that she’s working in manufacturing, Iuranich is not turning back.  The mother of two young children plans to keep climbing the ladder in the field. “I’d like to stay at REDCOM for a while because I feel like I am helping to build it up to be a larger force in the local New York State contract manufacturing world,” she says.  “But whether I stay at REDCOM or end up somewhere else, I do plan on staying in manufacturing.”

Asked what she would tell other young people about manufacturing, Iuranich says they should understand that it is “more than  working on the line  building products” and is a field with opportunities for everyone.

“If someone is going for an engineering degree or even a business degree, there are the back-office support positions like purchasing, quality and production engineering, program management, managing customer relationships, all that stuff,” she said. “There is a lot more to manufacturing than a lot of people think.”

“I think I’m starting a tea company.”

The idea for Subtle Tea struck Chandler one hot afternoon when he was volunteering at a beer festival.

“I was thirsty, and there was nothing nonalcoholic to just refresh myself,” he says. “It was this legitimate lightbulb moment:  Why isn’t there a craft-brewed iced tea?”

The son of a craftsman–his father John (now Head Brewer at Subtle Tea) was a cabinetmaker–Chandler grew up wanting to own a factory. He jokes that he was “a nerdy kid” who took extra classes instead of lunch.  His high school job was at an engineering firm, and his internship had him de-icing airplanes.

He earned a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Rhode Island, then began a 15-year career with Northrup Grumman. During that time, he would earn a Master’s in Systems Engineering from the Stevens Institute.

“I did a lot of really cool stuff in that world,” he says. “I landed on an aircraft carrier. I did radar integration.”

One day at Bed, Bath & Beyond–where he was using all of his 20% off coupons for tea pots, timers and other needed items–he ran into curious friends.

“I said, ‘I think I’m starting a tea company.’  Now that I’d told people, I had to do it.”

Now he is engineering recipes for tea, making spreadsheets on steep times and sugar amounts.

Making a commitment

He took space in the Calverton Incubator at Stony Brook University. Space was limited, so the 1,400 bottles he brewed each week would be loaded into his truck and taken home.  Every Thursday, he invited friends to a “labeling party”.

“It’s amazing what you can do with pizza and beer,” he says.

The first batches were sold to shop and brewery owners he knew through the beer festival circuit.

He was still working at Grumman, meaning Subtle Tea was relegated to nights and weekends. But two years in, he knew something had to give.

“I left Grumman and it was incredible the traction that happened after that,” he says. “You have to commit to it.  If you have a plan B, it’s not going to work.  Grumman was a crutch for me for a long time. Now I was able to devote 100% of my efforts and time to Subtle Tea and it just doubled and doubled.”

With orders too large for his friends to handle, he bought labeling equipment and put it in a shipping container in his back yard.  In another container was a heat tunnel used to apply shrink wrap to cases.

Tea that wasn’t bottled went into kegs and wine-style boxes–an idea which won an InnovateLI Innovator of the Year award in 2017–enabling restaurants to offer Subtle Tea by the glass.

Company Origins

Chris Nelson, FiberTrap’s Chief Executive Officer, and Brianna Nelson, Esquire are two of the four children of Glenn Nelson, the company’s founder. Glen Nelson was a landlord with a high-rise building that was repeatedly plagued by bed bugs – small brownish insects that live on the blood of animals or humans and cause health problems such as skin rashes and allergic reactions. He spent tens of thousands of dollars on bed bug treatments, but none of these approaches worked.

After many failed attempts to eradicate an infestation, a tenant tried to solve the problem and suffered tragic consequences. After pouring alcohol onto an infested mattress, the resident lit a cigarette which ignited the mattress. Fire spread to a large portion of the building. Glen Nelson was “devastated” and “unfairly branded a slumlord”, Brianna Nelson recalls, so he engaged an inventor, Kevin McAllister, to find a bed bug solution. “They created a better approach that actually worked,” Brianna Nelson says. “Subsequently, they teamed up with university researchers to develop a safe, effective product.”

Early Stages

Dr. Harry Shan He, a chemical engineer and now FiberTrap’s Vice President and Chief Scientist, was a student at Stony Brook University when Glen Nelson and Kevin McAllister began their effort. Shan He began working on the FiberTrap technology in 2013 and helped create the specialized elastic fiber that is now used in FiberTrap products. He also developed the proprietary pheromone that entices bed bugs to enter the trap: a rough-surfaced hyperrectangle filled with fibers that, with their specifically tailored loop structures, snare bed bugs by the legs.

Developing FiberTrap technology subsequently required building a custom electrospinning machine. A fiber production process, electrospinning uses electric force to draw charged threads of polymer solutions into micro-level fibers. “Due to the intricate structure of our fiber,” Dr. Shan He notes, “we had to come up with a strategic way to manufacture it and protect it from damage.”

FiberTrap Technology

FiberTrap technology gained the attention of multinational manufacturers when first created but was thought impossible to mass produce. Nevertheless, at the end of 2016, the FiberTrap team engaged an experienced engineer, Jonathan Cook, to custom-build a machine that was capable of mass production and had a compact footprint.

In early 2019, Cook installed a complete assembly line at FiberTrap’s 5,000 square foot facility in a Long Island industrial park. “After thousands of man hours of building, testing, and perfecting, we are proud to achieve what was once thought the impossible,” Chris Nelson says. Today, FiberTrap has multiple assembly lines with a custom-made electrospinning apparatus located in the center. There are also plans for expansion that will encompass additional electrospinning machines tailored to products for combating cockroaches, termites and ants. “We are focused on expansion, aiming to become the ‘green’, safe alternative in the pest control market for all insects,” Brianna Nelson explains.

FiberTrap Protected

Demand for FiberTrap is especially strong among hotel owners because bed bug litigation is common and guests have sued for millions of dollars. “Our Preventative Maintenance Program minimizes liability for hoteliers and helps keep them compliant in their legal obligations to guests,” she says. “The hotel owner will be engaged in taking proactive measures to properly monitor and help prevent bed bug infestations.”

To scale-up production, FiberTrap recently hired approximately 30 full-time workers and 20 temporary workers. As the company continues to grow, it’s opening new distribution channels and pursuing government contracts. Pest management operators (PMOs) and pest management professionals (PMPs) are currently adding FiberTrap to their bed bug control protocols and, according to Brianna Nelson, have reported positive results.

Made in New York State

FiberTrap’s entire operation and production is located in New York State, which is a point of pride for the Long Island company. “We keep everything in-house to ensure the highest level of integrity in our company and product,” Brianna Nelson adds.

Fabwell Studios of Rochester, New York provides metal fabrication and welding services for custom projects. The company specializes in food-grade steel and tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding, but also makes hand rails, exhaust systems, signage, artwork, and safety screens for professional baseball teams. “We truly are a custom shop,” says Philip De Mattia, the company’s owner. “We’re too dumb to be engineers,” he jokes, “and too smart to be fabricators.”

De Mattia, a native of Wales, understands the value of hard work. As a teenager, he attended trade school in the United Kingdom. “The education is very different there,” he explains, and spanned 12-hour days and six-day workweeks. “That would probably be considered child abuse in the U.S.,” he half-jokes. But when De Mattia was just 13, he decided to enroll in trade school because he knew he wanted to build things.

Getting Started

Part of his interest in metalworking surely came from his family. De Mattia’s older brother preceded him at the school and his father, who’d built a replica Sherman tank out of aluminum, handed down a do-it-yourself philosophy. “The family’s mindset was ‘you have to fix it yourself,’” Philip De Mattia explains. “That’s how they navigated the world.”

In addition to becoming an expert fabricator, De Mattia became a professional bike rider. That’s how met his future wife and moved to the United States. Yet his American story didn’t start with a happy ending. After taking a union job, De Mattia says he “fell out of love with fabrication.” Eventually, he’d take his tools and leave. He didn’t own his own workshop at first, but customers who liked his work would seek his services.

Building a Business

De Mattia’s first space was a corner in a friend’s building. “We didn’t have money to buy, but we didn’t want to borrow,” he recalls, so he worked full-time, poured his earnings into the business, and bought a welding machine. Four months later, De Mattia hired his first employee. He then moved to his own 4,000 sq.-ft. building, hired two more workers, and took on what he calls “bigger projects and larger tools”.

For Fabwell Studios, a current contract to build three full-size American Ninja Warrior training facilities is providing a high-profile opportunity. On this nationally-broadcast television show, extreme athletes seek to complete an obstacle course that few have finished. As De Mattia explains, the show’s “franchise” model prompted an equipment designer who noticed his work to seek his services. But appearance isn’t enough.

Competition and Growth

An extreme athlete himself, De Mattia welcomes the requirements for this project. “Foot and feel” usability are important, he says, but so is the ability to build structures cost-effectively. “We use the right equipment and we cut the right way,” he explains. Fittingly then, the company’s local customers include Zweigle’s and Genessee Brewery, food and beverage companies that need expert fabrication and welding.

Fabwell Studios is continuing to grow, but Philip De Mattia still finds time to ride his BMX. He also works with a local mentor, Jeff Mucha of the EEP Quality Group, who introduced De Mattia to Lynn Freid, the Regional Director for the Workforce Development Institute (WDI). Recently, Fabwell Studios received a WDI grant for a hydraulic press brake.

“You have to have good tools,” De Mattia explains, so that “everyone goes home” safely at the end of the workday. Finding good employees can be challenging, but De Mattia is ready to train his own workforce if necessary. “Humans were meant to build things,” he explains, “and we were meant to have difficult times.” At the end of the day, however, “you can make a good honest living with your hands.”