Boulder Valley Mercury: Fueled by reliability, Avior aims for the stars

Turning a competitor into a loyal customer says a lot about a company’s strategy. For Scott Starin, Avior Control Technologies vice president and general manager, it helped establish the company’s reputation.

With more than three decades in the aerospace industry, Starin left his job with Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in 2004, recognizing a need for value and service in his area of expertise.

“There was a hunger in the industry for high-reliability motors and gear boxes,” he said. “Our growth has been built on the realization that the competition isn’t servicing the market like we are.”

Now that Avior has built a reputation in doing that as well as getting some applications under its belt, Starin expects the company to at least double its revenue this year.

Under the general category of customer service, Avior has focused on meeting deadlines and giving good support. The company’s competition is limited in number because customers need a lot of engineering support.

“There are thousands of companies that serve aerospace, but for space there are less than a dozen because of that demand,” he said, adding that they focus on quality over quantity.

Sources of kudos for the quality of Avior’s work include Ball Aerospace, which is one of the company’s competitors.

“We recently built an application for Ball, and after we shipped it, I got a call appreciating that we underbid, were ahead of schedule and that it performed great,” Starin said.  “We’re now a preferred supplier for them and they’re looking to do more.”

Keeping its reputation flawless in terms of meeting deadlines has sometimes required creative flexibility.

“We were hit by the flood in 2013, and 24 inches of water breached our plant,” Starin said. “Five days prior to that, we had gotten a contract from NASA for a product that was going to the moon.”

To meet the deadline, the company relocated equipment to employee homes and worked through the obstacles. The result was an early delivery five months later, in February 2014.

Another reason for Avior’s success is the current market demand, since there are a number of private space-venture companies that require motion control. Those private companies are moving at a faster pace than traditional rocket-launching organizations.

Challenges with which Avior has worked include staffing and human resources. Like most small companies, Avior requires employees to wear many hats, and that requirement isn’t for everyone.

“We have great talent in our machine shop with two gentlemen who have 100 years of experience between them,” Starin said. The opportunity to work with that kind of talent is a draw for others.

Meeting employee needs in areas such as health care benefits can put a drain on a small business so Avior is planning to outsource some of the work to keep from diluting its focus.

Avior Control Technologies Inc.

2000 Pike Road. Unit B
Longmont, CO 80501
720-491-3708

www.AviorControls.com

Scott Starin, vice president and general manager

Founded: 2010

Employees: 11

Primary service: A full-service custom high-performance motor and motion control company, specifically servicing space, high vacuum and high reliability industries.

Growth: 116 percent (Second place, Flight IV)

on Facebook on LinkedIn