May 18, 2001

Plastic parts company relies on reputation

LONGMONT — Shirley and Harold Byers of Byers Industries Inc. are continuing to grow their custom-molded plastic parts business as they have done for the past 25 years. Based in Longmont, the locally owned business of 20 employees has banked on its reputation as a hard worker and enjoyed word-of-mouth advertising to secure relationships with its clients, which

include Hunter Douglas in Broomfield, AntennaTek of Longmont and Pulmonary Data in Louisville.

Byers Industries tied for the No. 31 spot on the list of Boulder County’s Top 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies, compiled annually by The Boulder County Business Report. The company grew 80 percent from $1.25 million in revenue in 1999 to $2.25 million in 2000. Despite these numbers, President Shirley Byers, 60, said “It’s not a business where you make a lot of money.”

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Byers owns the building — 10,000 square feet on South Sherman Street in the industrial part of Longmont. It also owns the equipment, which Shirley Byers said is “extremely expensive. These machines take a lot of electrical power to heat up to 450 degrees. If you can avoid having them cool off, they’re better.”

To be efficient with the machinery, Byers Industries operates a 20-hour day for four days, with two 10-hour shifts a day. “When Harold comes in at 5 a.m., the machines are just starting to cool down, so it’s easy to crank them back up.”

The tight labor market hasn’t taken a toll on Byers. There have been no hires in the last six months, and in the last two years, finding workers hasn’t been a struggle. In fact, Shirley Byers had to rearrange shifts to keep from laying off anyone.

She said, ” ?We need somebody on second shift. If one of you would volunteer, we won’t have to lay anyone off.’ Now they are taking turns on it.”

Labor costs, on the other hand, have made an impact on business. Hunter Douglas, a large customer, recently shipped some of its contract business to a manufacturing facility in Kentucky where labor is cheaper. “We are competing with Mexico and China where they work for hardly anything,” Shirley Byers said.

One of the tactics Byers relies on to recruit new customers is referrals from engineers who move to new companies. An IBM engineer who knows of Byers Industries, for example, will tell his new employer about them when it comes time to contract out manufacturing parts. It has happened enough times to make Shirley believe they must be doing something right.

“Engineers move around to different companies, and if you do good work, they take you with them. We know a lot of the local engineers, since we’ve worked with them before, and we work hard,” she said.

Harold Byers, 68, started his company 26 years ago and brought Shirley Byers in as president four years ago. He grew up in a hard-working family in Canada. “He’s from a family that works until they fall over,” Shirley Byers said. Of his eight siblings -­ six older sisters, an older brother who died and younger brother, everyone still living is still working.

Competition for contracts does exist in Longmont, mostly because the injection mold businesses seem to have congregated there, but the relationships are friendly. Apparently, according to Shirley Byers, everyone gets a piece of the pie.

“Most of the injection molders have known each other forever,” she said. “There’s one across the street and one down the road. It’s not cutthroat or anything. We borrow materials from each other. Usually there’s not that much competition between us. There are a lot of things we don’t get to bid on, and we do bid against locals. Everybody pretty much charges the same thing, depending on the size of the machines.”

LONGMONT — Shirley and Harold Byers of Byers Industries Inc. are continuing to grow their custom-molded plastic parts business as they have done for the past 25 years. Based in Longmont, the locally owned business of 20 employees has banked on its reputation as a hard worker and enjoyed word-of-mouth advertising to secure relationships with its clients, which

include Hunter Douglas in Broomfield, AntennaTek of Longmont and Pulmonary Data in Louisville.

Byers Industries tied for the No. 31 spot on the list of Boulder County’s Top 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies, compiled annually by The Boulder County Business Report. The company…

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