View Full Version : Young local movers and shakers



metro
10-11-2007, 08:39 AM
Buy puts young investors on road to becoming movers, shakers

By Jim Stafford
Business Writer

Led by a pair of 27-year-old businessmen, a group of investors recently purchased Oklahoma City-based Smico Manufacturing Co., bringing young leadership to a 70-year-old maker of vibrating screening equipment.

The purchasing group paid $2.3 million for the old-line manufacturer, which makes vibrating screening equipment for such diverse industries as breakfast cereal makers and the U.S. mint, said Erick Heald, chief executive officer.

Buyers included Heald, who owns 52 percent of the company, and Tim Douglass, both 27, along with a silent investor.

Heald and Douglass are confident their marketing strategy can build the company's business, but local bankers were reluctant to back a pair of investors who are still in their 20s.

"We struggled finding financing in Oklahoma,” Heald said. "A lot of the local banks told us that we were too young, and they wouldn't even look at our deal.

"We had everything everybody asked for, but when they came back and said, ‘age is a huge factor for us,' we had to go with a bank out of Los Angeles.”

Former owner Randall Stoner remains a minority investor, Heald said.

With revenue of about $4 million annually, Smico makes the vibrating screening equipment that allows cereal makers such as General Mills to separate products in the manufacturing process or the U.S. mint to shake out the coins it produces. It also produces vibrating equipment used by large concrete producers.

"You have a small chance every morning that you eat cereal that it has gone through one of our machines,” Heald said. "Vibratory screeners is what we make. It's a sorting, sifting kind of (equipment).

Heald said the new owners are intent upon marketing Smico to a wider audience.

"The reason we wanted to buy it was it was so under-marketed,” Heald said. "Randall (Stoner) is an engineer and doesn't think the way we do on marketing and sales. Randall will handle all the quality and engineering.”

Oklahoma native Heald has a background in the health care industry and then moved into logistic work before he and Douglass decided to buy their own company.

"We probably looked at 1,000 different companies, and we went through some trials and tribulations,” Heald said.

"That's a story in itself. Then we happened to run across this one through a broker here locally and liked it from the get-go. One, it was in Oklahoma, which is where I've always been and, two, it was under-marketed and we weren't going to have to go out and find new products right away, or diversify.”

Smico operates out of a 46,000-square-foot building at 500 N MacArthur Ave. and is a client of the Oklahoma Alliance for Manufacturing Excellence.

Manufacturing Alliance extension agent Bob Carter said the company has worked to expand its roster of clients to include Tinker Air Force Base and other government entities.

"They wanted to look at the possibility of doing more work with the Department of Defense and the defense logistics agency,” Carter said.

"I think what the company is looking at are some alternatives it hasn't looked at before.”

Smico employs about 30 people, Heald said.

"We have nine to 10 temps we use periodically when we need them, and right now we need them,” he said.