It's fair to say that 2009 was not a good year for Ausco Products.
"It was awful," says Brian Dennis, Vice President of Sales and Design. "The worst year I’ve seen in my professional career."
Still, the Benton Harbor-based heavy duty brake manufacturer broke even. And its employees sprang into action with increased community involvement and aggressive sales, engineering, and business strategies designed to climb the company out of that hole.
They didn’t just climb, they clawed. Sales skyrocketed. Jobs were created and restored, taking Ausco Products from 89 employees to the 131 they employ today--including two hired in the past three weeks.
"We went at it tooth-and-nail," Dennis says. "In the last two years, we’ve had 82 percent sales growth and 77 percent of that is new business."
As a result, Ausco won a Cornerstone Chamber of Commerce Platinum Stake Award for 2011. The award went to a number of companies that either created 100 new jobs, increased sales or unit volume by 100 percent, expanded facilities by 50 percent, or increased their capital investment by at least $300,000.
John Deere is Ausco Products’ biggest client, and the company designs and sell brakes for construction, recreational vehicle and commercial lawn care equipment. They service clients in the agriculture, mining, forestry and oil field industries as well.
"We try to design what the customer needs, not just what’s on our shelf," Dennis says. "And our owners (Cypress Companies, Akron, Ohio) are a big part of this--they let us work without micro-managing but they are always there for us with lots of support. They’re very generous, too."
This culture of generosity includes a profit sharing program that netted 12 weeks of pay for Ausco workers based on the sales that they helped to created.
"You just couldn’t work for better people," Dennis says.
Writer: Kelle Barr, Second Wave
Source: Brian Dennis, Ausco Products
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