It doesn’t take much channel surfing these days to get your TV set vibrating with the metallic symphony of powerful engines. Auto racing is a growth sport as fans fade from traditional diversions like baseball and gravitate toward the vicarious thrill of seeing helmeted warriors chase each other around oval tracks.
Read MoreAfter years of knocking around the Midwest as a laborer, Bill Thomas found a better niche in New Ulm.
With native artistic talent, a dash of casual entrepreneurship, a skilled crew to help and some solid sales connections, his two-year-old company now supplies screen-printed T-shirts and sweatshirts to a national market. Thomas is responsible for the graphics, which range from his original designs to illustrations furnished by customers.
Read MorePlease forgive Dr. Wynn Kearney, Jr., senior partner and president at Orthopaedic & Fracture Clinic P.A. (OFC), if he seems preoccupied with the future.
For thirty years his specialty has been in a state of constant flux, and the next thirty won’t be any different. He doesn’t know yet whether OFC’s Mankato office will expand on-site, out to land on the outskirts of Mankato, or over to Immanuel St. Joseph’s Mayo Hospital. And there’s more: demand for OFC’s services has increased so much it recently had to thoroughly and tirelessly search for a new physician with the “right stuff.” Other exhaustive recruitment forays are on the horizon.
Read MoreW. Kirk Hankins likes to say Winland Electronics, Inc. had three beginnings, one in 1972, another in 1984 and a third in 1995.
Today the Mankato company is recognized as one of Minnesota’s fastest growing electronics manufacturers, guided by a master plan that many of its 125 employees had a hand in crafting. It’s set impressive sales and profit records for three consecutive years, streaking ahead at 40 percent annually, and netting $856,000 on revenues of $18 million in 1998. Earnings per share tripled in that period and more money than ever is being spent on research and development, according to Hankins, who is chief executive officer and chairman of Winland’s board.
He owns every issue of The American Organist published since 1929, and every issue of The Diapason back to 1913. Those trade magazines still print today. His bookshelves are crammed full of faded cloth books with out-of-print titles like Organ Building, Vibration and Sound, The History of the Organ in the United States and The Art of Organ Building. A few have German titles: Die Brabenter Orgel and Zungenstimmen. Not everyone builds pipe organs these days. When the company phone rings, Charles Hendrickson, 63, casually picks it up and says “Charles Hendrickson.” He absolutely loves his freedom as owner at Hendrickson Organ Company in St. Peter.
Read MoreDavid Buesing can give you many concrete answers to all of your building questions. As President and General Manager of Wells Concrete Products Company, Buesing knows there are many reasons to build with prestressed precast rather than other materials:
Read MoreJim Hruska leaned across a table in his cafe replete with mounted walleye and tacked-up Polaroids of fishermen, and he smiled. Glancing over at his wife, Linda, he said, “Sure we work long hours, from seven in the morning until nine at night, seven days a week.” When most small business owners would have burned out in months with such a demanding schedule, the Hruskas have lasted 27 years quite nicely. It’s all in how they do it.
Read MoreThe Taoist religion defines yin and yang as the male and female principles in nature, total opposities that somehow meld together to produce all that exists. In plain Western lingo, it could best be summed up as the synergy that sometimes occurs when “opposites attract.”
“I’m the kind of person who has these very big pie-in-the-sky ideas,” said Donna Lambrecht, her words bubbling up like popcorn through a hot air popper, “while Curt is a practical realist. My cup is always half full, his half empty.” Their synergystic relationship has created New Ulm’s two largest gift shops, both of which zero in on that city’s burgeoning tourist trade.
Read MoreA Locally Owned Business Provides Strength for Fairmont Despite steady paychecks, good benefits and sometimes lavish perks, Corporate America continues
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