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Lake County, Ohio, Metal Fabricator Grows Quickly

Posted on: Wednesday, 6 July 2005, 21:00 CDT

Jul. 6--When John Stegh was in high school, Aero Welding was the place to be if you were a metal fabricator in Lake County. It's where everybody in the profession wanted to work, he said.

Now, Stegh is working there. Well, kind of.

It's no longer Aero Welding, but Stegh bought the impressive 48,000-square-foot facility at 34820 Lakeland Boulevard in Eastlake that Aero Welding once called home. It now houses Stegh's company, Tru-Fab Technology, Inc.

Tru-Fab purchased the building last year and has occupied the former Aero Welding site since February, when the company moved from a shop in Willoughby. It was a move that more than tripled the company's square footage, and it was another step in the rapid growth of the 10-year-old company that began in Stegh's garage.

It's the pursuit of rapid growth that motivates Stegh to put in the 15-hour days he does.

"You can't get to the top," Stegh said, "by sitting on your bottom. I think I've learned that in everything I've done."

Tru-Fab, which fabricates items for the automotive, medical and aerospace industries and others, was able to put its newfound space to good use by expanding its fabricating, machining, welding, deep-hole drilling, powder-coating and product finishing divisions. Included in that expansion were the purchases of three new large pieces of equipment, one of which is a $350,000, state-of-the art laser cutting machine that allows Tru-Fab to cut larger sheets of metal than previously possible.

That laser-cutting device is run on the Windows computer operating system, and a customer can send plans to Stegh electronically. He then loads the file into the machine, and the laser follows the computer's directions.

"With the laser, it's quick turnaround," Stegh said. "That's one thing I try to market here. I have quick turnaround in my shop."

Jack Elershich is a Willoughby machine-shop owner who knew Stegh when the latter was just a welder. Their businesses were neighbors on Erie Street, and Elersich remembers Tru-Fab adding capabilities by buying out the businesses around them.

First, it was a silk-screening business, then it was a deep-hole drilling business. Pretty soon, Tru-Fab had outgrown its building and moved to E. 345th Street, the stop it most recently outgrew.

"Now he's in this massive unit," said Elersich. "He's just gone leaps and bounds. Unbelievable. But he's into it himself -- he's hands-on. He is hands-on."

Though Tru-Fab has gone from annual sales of about $24,000 at its outset to roughly $2 million in 2004, Stegh remains the metal fabricator who started out in a garage. He has an office, but he's rarely in it. He prefers the shop floor to the tie-wearing, desk-sitting world of running a business.

"I wear work pants every day," said Stegh, who counts himself among the company's 23 employees. "I wear a baseball cap -- it's turned around backwards. Everyone expects to come see me like that."

Stegh is certainly preoccupied with his company's growth -- it's what he works for and why Tru-Fab is now in such a large building -- but he's not that intent on tracking it. He rolls up his sleeves and puts in the sweat, and he lets the numbers fall where they may.

"At other places, everybody kind of looks at the numbers on a monthly basis," Stegh said. "At Tru-Fab, I don't. I look at it at the end of the year. I'm not trying to make a projected number for the 30th or the 31st. I want to know on Dec. 31 if 15 hours a day for 365 days a year, whatever we work, did I do better than the last year?

"Every year, we've grown."

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Copyright (c) 2005, The News-Herald, Willoughby, Ohio

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MSFT,

Source: The News-Herald

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