Tech Shop in Longmont blazes path for others

LONGMONT — Katie Hedrick doesn’t just want to manufacture electronic components. She also wants to build opportunity.

“Our long-range plan is not to be just another contract manufacturer, but to also use our engineering and manufacturing abilities as a platform to better support the needs of women and minority entrepreneurs, as well as new startups and the tech entrepreneur community as a whole,” said Hedrick, owner of Longmont-based Colorado Tech Shop. “We are in the initial stages of creating some programs and resources aimed at women tech entrepreneurs and under-18 entrepreneur mentorship, as well as being involved with STEM initiatives for high school and college-age young women.”

Hedrick seems to have the role-model part of that effort down pat. With a 10-person workforce comprised mainly of minority or women employees, the company she took over in January 2016 doubled its space in its first eight months, from 2,400 to 4,800 square feet, and is likely to see revenue just shy of $1 million this year, up from $270,000 the first year. That performance netted Colorado Tech Shop the 2017 Cornerstone Startup Award from the Longmont Economic Development Partnership.

Hedrick is chief executive of the company, while her husband, Iain Ramsay, serves as president. The couple married last year.

“We work together really well. We have a great overlap of skills,” Hedrick said. “I’m the big-picture person and he’s so great at day-to-day running of things, which I tend to have less patience for.”

It’s even more of a family business, since Hedrick’s brother is head of business development and two of her employees are a mother and daughter.

She described the company as a “full-cycle” shop. “We can take you from initial design, engineering, layout and prototyping into your manufacturing and supply-chain management, and even through to shipping and fulfillment,” she said. “We do small to medium manufacturing runs, and we’re sort of filling that need on the Front Range because a lot of companies no longer do quick-turn proto boards. If a new startup needs 100 boards run, it’s very difficult to find. A lot of manufacturers want you to be in the thousands before they’ll even talk to you.”

Along with building other clients’ products, Colorado Tech Shop developed a line of electronic scoring targets that are based on acoustic sensor technology — and formed a separate woman-owned company, Smart Target Technologies, around that. “We are among only one or two companies manufacturing these products in the U.S.,” she said, “as almost all of them are imported from Europe.” It also has formed Dynatech Biomedical to design and manufacture a line of therapeutic ultrasound and e-stimulation devices.

Hedrick grew up in Ohio but came west in 1996 to attend the University of Colorado “and then I just couldn’t leave because it was so great,” she said. A serial entrepreneur since she was a teenager, she started a photography studio, Third Eye Studios in Arvada.

Colorado Tech Shop “sort of fell into our laps,” Hedrick said. “Iain is originally from Australia. I had an investment in a manufacturing company in Boulder that he came to work for. The owner had had enough after 10 years and didn’t want to do it anymore, and basically we took it over – machinery and two employees.

“We kind of started with nothing,” she said, and in the beginning, “every one of my worst fears happened.

“When we took over, we had one client. Within two months, that client was bought, so we went from $15,000 a month to nothing,” she said, but added that “the cool thing is, that client just ramped back up. Granted, it took a year and a half, but now all that business is coming back to us.

“One of our biggest clients, we had a huge purchase order with them, and they ran out of money and disappeared, owing us quite a bit. We’ve had a client take most of their business to China; we can’t compete with China prices. We had a pick-and-place machine — the heart and soul of our operation — break down. For that to go down in the middle of three big jobs, it was hard.”

Survival was just a matter of “honest-to-God tenacity. You just dig in,” she said. “But we really have a loyal crew; they all pulled together. We dropped salaries a bit. There’s been times we didn’t pay Iain. I’m still not on the payroll; I want everything to go back into the business for a while. It’s definitely a steep learning curve, but we love it.”

They got a loan and line of credit through the Colorado Enterprise Fund, worked with the Small Business Development Center, the Small Business Administration, the state’s minority business office and others — anyone who could help.

“We were lucky we landed in Longmont,” she said. “It does still have that small-town community feel. I’ve even reached out to our direct competition, and they’re helpful. We didn’t know what we were doing in the beginning, so we figured since we weren’t able to compete with the big guys, we’re better off collaborating with them. We’ve met some incredible owners who have been helpful with mentoring and every other way. I don’t know if you’d find that in big cities.

“To be able to work so closely with the economic-development piece has been so important,” she said. “Longmont has some world-class suppliers, too. Most of our suppliers are just down the street.”

Being a woman-owned firm hasn’t presented many unique hurdles, she said. “I think we have the same challenges as men: keeping up, knowing when to put on more people, cash flow. I don’t think it’s more difficult to get financing. Besides, I grew up a tomboy. I’ve never been intimidated being in a male-dominated industry. But still, I’m always excited when I find another woman-owned business in our space. It’s exciting because there’s so few of us.”

More growth is in her sights, including putting on a second shift and maybe again doubling the size of the shop.

“I’d love to expand to 10,000 square feet, but a lot of things have to fall into place before that happens,” Hedrick said. “I don’t want to be huge. You lose your profit margin, and you lose the fun of it. I love being a full-cycle shop where people can come in at any point in their project.

“I’m just more excited about where we’re going — able to morph the company to help the community and help women entrepreneurs, because that’s sort of close to my heart.”

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