As statewide transportation company Star Truck Rentals opens their second Michigan job training location, they’re receiving a $90,000 award from West Michigan Works!. These Going PRO Talent Fund Award dollars help provide paid on-the-job training for diesel technicians — in high demand nationally.
Dr. John Mulder received the 2019 Project on Death In America (PDIA) Palliative Medicine Community Leadership Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Dr. Mulder is Medical Director of the Trillium Institute, in Grand Rapids.
For many years, members of the Oakland County Bar Association have worked beyond their “day jobs” to improve access to justice through various initiatives involving a number of partners throughout the region.
Twenty years ago, their efforts received a significant focus in the formation of a standalone organization — the Oakland County Bar Foundation — and its Signature Event fundraiser that has, in the last five years, raised $1.7 million or about $250,000 a year.
This year’s event marks its 20th anniversary and takes place on April 25,
Veronica Leonard, an attorney in private practice, is president of the Foundation.
“We raise funds used to help organizations who are on the front line when it comes to providing access to justice programs,” she said. “These organizations may not have the ability to seek out the services of a professional fundraiser, so this event is key to their ongoing mission.”
One of the organizations supported through the Signature Event is Lakeshore Legal Aid, with funds raised going to support its Estate Planning Clinic.
Another, from a long list of those helped through the Signature Event fundraiser, is Jewish Family Service, which has used funds raised to develop materials related to guardianship.
Leonard said the primary support for the event comes from various sponsorships, including law firms of all sizes and professionals engaged in providing support for the legal community, including those involved in forensic accounting and other fields.
Later this month, Kyyba Innovations hosts the latest in its monthly string of “Pitch Club” events, where businesses can learn from other entrepreneurs and investors about how to pitch their startups.
If history is any indication, the three entrepreneurs chosen for the March 27 event in Grand Rapids should do very well following their appearance.
Farmington Hills-based Kyyba Innovations has been hosting the “Pitch Club” events in rotating cities since September 2017 and, in the first year, the 30 businesses who took part raked in a combined revenue of some $3 million following their pitches.
“(Pitch Club) is an opportunity for startups to showcase their ideas and to connect with companies,” said Sarah Myrand, Kyyba’s executive coordinator. “All the firms that have taken part have walked away with tremendous connections and a chance to make great progress.”
According to Myrand, Pitch Club is a “mentoring and funding program” aimed at connecting the various ecosystems and smart zones throughout Michigan. Pitch Club has ongoing monthly events that provide entrepreneurs the opportunity to learn from seasoned entrepreneurs and investors.
Myrand said the events are “meant to educate, network, inspire and provide valuable experiences for being investable.”
The monthly event rotates between Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing and Grand Rapids. As part of the events, three entrepreneurs will receive the opportunity to practice their pitch and discuss their business model with funding experts, giving them a better understanding of the mindset of an investor.
“Pitch Club provides a tremendous opportunity for cross-pollination and increased deal flow across Michigan, something that currently is not at the level it should be,” said Tel Ganesan, Kyyba’s managing director. “This program will be very valuable for both the startup entrepreneurs and investors and will hopefully create meaningful dialogue, as well as a technological and economic impact for the entire region. In order to make this initiative even more successful, I encourage seasoned entrepreneurs in each of these areas to join us by serving as a mentor.”
The next Pitch Club takes place Wednesday, March 27, at Start Garden in Grand Rapids and will include three startup presentations and a panel of judges. Matt Larson, co-founder/COO of CampusStarter, is the guest keynote speaker.
Corp! is a media sponsor for the March event.
Distinguished architect Michael Lubbers, AIA, has joined Ghafari Associates as its Director of Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He will assume lead responsibility for design direction and process management in West Michigan while also collaborating with clients in Chicago and southeast Michigan.
What Detroit now knows as Better Made Snack Foods started as a simple 50/50 partnership between two men – Cross Moceri and Peter Cipriano – who both loved food and feeding people with love.
Better Made, which is still family owned and made fresh daily in Detroit, is is celebrating National Potato Chip Day on Thursday, March 14. For 89 years, what started as Cross & Peters has made Michigan’s favorite potato chip.
The potato chip – a blend of potatoes, oil and salt — remains the largest selling segment of the salty snacks market with over $15 billion in sales worldwide.
“We have several different flavors of potato chips and are always experimenting with new flavors,” says David Jones, president of Better Made. “We have many different types of BBQ chips available, including our newest flavor, Southern Style Sweet Heat BBQ, and our Red Hot BBQ flavor was featured in Rachel Ray Every Day Magazine last July/August.”
According to some, and this number has never been proven, Michiganders still eat more chips than people in any other state. That makes sense based on the fact that there are few locally based potato-chip companies like Better Made left in the United States.
Here’s one version of the origin story: Potato Chips were first made in 1853 when Moon’s Lake Lodge was a popular tourist location. As the story goes, a customer kept sending his fried potatoes back to the kitchen because he said they were too thick and not crunchy enough. The chef, George Crum, decided that he would cut them into paper-thin slices, boil them in oil, fry them, and salt them as a joke. It backfired as they became an instant success and the restaurant became well known for them.
In the late 1800s, chips became a staple in cracker barrels and in glass cases. Around that time, a woman came up with the idea of using a heated iron and waxed paper to form the first potato chip bag. The bags were filled as people bought them and sealed them shut with the warming iron.
Cross & Peters opened in several locations but settled on Gratiot, where the company is still making fresh chips, popcorn and potato sticks. A favorite activity for Detroiters of all ages is to stop by the retail store there and look in the factory’s large windows to watch the chips and potato sticks as they’re being made.
(Karen Dybis has written a history of Better Made chips. Her favorite flavor is Garlic Dill Pickle.)
She’s been a teacher, a copy editor and a professor. Gloria House, who also considers herself an activist and a poet, added one more title recently: The Kresge Foundation’s 2019 Eminent Artist.
It’s an honor House didn’t expect – she was as surprised as anyone when she got the call about the honor and the $50,000 prize that comes with it. Yet having such grace in her life is one more reason she said she has treasured her years in Michigan, Detroit in particular.
“It’s an affirmation of a whole life’s journey,” the 77-year-old honoree said.
Invested in art
House is the 11th honoree of the Kresge Eminent Artists program, part of The Kresge Foundation, a national private foundation based in Metro Detroit. The award focuses on celebrating and investing in Detroit artists, such as fellow Eminent Artists musician Marcus Belgrave, artist Charles McGee and photographer Bill Rauhauser.
House’s career spans the past five decades. Most of her career has been as a teacher, professor and student. In other words, she is in love with learning. Her longest tenures were as a student at University of Michigan and as a UM-Dearborn professor emerita.
Born in Tampa, Florida, House traveled the world, earned several degrees, joined the Civil Rights movement and moved to Detroit in 1967. She returned to teaching and was a copy editor at the Detroit Free Press before receiving her Ph.D. in American culture/history at U-M.
After 27 years of teaching at Wayne State University, House joined UM-Dearborn as a visiting and then full professor of African American literature, American culture and research methods in the interdisciplinary studies program. House also designed the university’s major in African American and African Studies.
These days, House is retired yet still working on the projects she loves. She is co-editor of Riverwise quarterly magazine, senior editor at Broadside Lotus Press and a volunteer for groups such as We the People of Detroit, which focuses on water, land and education.
House has published four poetry collections: Blood River (1983), Rainrituals (1989), Shrines (2003) and Medicine (2017).
Jim Clark isn’t the kind of person who runs to do big presentations in front of large crowds. But when he recently had an opportunity to share an idea that could change the way his company did business with and for customers, he jumped at it.
Clark is a CommTech 5 in Comcast’s Heartland Region, which covers Michigan and two other states. He came up with an idea to keep customers’ entryways clean and dry from work-boot debris and water during installations and service calls.
Last May, he pitched the idea to Comcast executives and his fellow employees during an in-house Shark Tank competition. It was something Clark may not have thought he would do, but he felt like his idea was heard and honored.
“I get a lot of good support from Comcast, and this really shows how we care for customers. It’s a respect issue and I appreciate that my idea was selected,” Clark said.
Clark said his goal was to find a way to avoid dragging water, mud, snow and more into his customers’ houses. He knew that Comcast through employees like him wanted not only to provide top-notch service, but leave a great first impression – and tracking dirt through someone’s home accidentally was an issue.
During one house call, a Comcast customer offered Clark a towel where he could stand while he was putting protective booties on in preparation for some work. That sparked his imagination.
The Navy veteran thought back to his early days when he was a journeyman toolmaker and had to come up with solutions.
The result was a pitch at the Comcast event where Clark suggested every technician like himself have a mat they could carry to jobs. If they needed it, they could use the mat to make sure the floor under their boots or shoes was clean as they put on the protective booties. Simple enough. But it was genius at the same time.
As a result of his pitch, Comcast took Clark’s idea and implemented it into its operations across the Heartland Region. The company found a business that makes the mats and ordered enough for everyone to have at least five on them for work jobs. The mats are made from recycled materials, so that also helps the environment. It was a win-win for Pig mats, the company that makes the product Comcast chose, and the entertainment provider.
Frank Orsini, executive vice president and president of seating at Lear Corporation, received the Sam Cupp Impact Award from Kris Marshall, President & CEO of Winning Futures, a Metro Detroit student mentoring program. The award recognizes business executives for stepping up and making transformational changes in the community.
Comcast Business has promoted Chad DeVriendt to Director of Sales. DeVriendt will lead a team of business technology solution consultants who serve the telecommunications needs of small and medium-sized businesses in Michigan.
The Gerald R. Ford International Airport Authority Board approved the AvFlight, a Fixed Base Operator. This aviation support service company will offer services including fuel sales, hangar storage, aircraft ground handling services, de-icing, concierge services, and all matters related to aviation.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (Fiat) has announced a total investment of $4.5 billion it says will add capacity and capability at five existing plants in the Detroit region and a new assembly plant in Detroit, creating nearly 6,500 jobs in the process.
The plans, announced February 26, 2019, are contingent on the automaker acquiring the necessary land and being able to negotiate development incentives with cities in which the new or expanded plants will be situated.
FCA says the investments are necessary for the production of plug-in hybrid versions of various Jeep models, with flexibility to build fully battery-electric models in the future.
When it comes to the new plant in Detroit, FCA says the city has 60 days to deliver on commitments that were outlined in a Memorandum of Understanding related to converting the Mack Avenue Engine Complex into a manufacturing site for Jeep-branded vehicles. That project, at a cost of $1.6 billion, would account for 3,500 of the new jobs announced.
FCA officials say they are also planning a $900 million investment at the automaker’s Jefferson North facility, allowing it to retool for the continued production of Dodge Durango and a next generation Jeep Grand Cherokee. That project accounts for 1,500 of the new jobs.
It will also increase investment at the Warren Truck plant to $1.5 billion to facilitate production of new Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer models in addition to continued assembly of the Ram 1500 Classic, accounting for 1,400 of the total jobs announced.
Other components of the investment announcement include $400 million related to additional production at the Sterling Stamping and Warren Stamping plants.
The company says it will spend $119 million to relocate production of its Pentastar engine to the Dundee Engine plant. Engine production at Mack is said to end by the third quarter of 2019.
FCA cites the investments as a response to a shift in consumer demand toward SUVs and trucks and follows the discontinued production of compact cars and retooled plants in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan, the intention being to make full use of available capacity for Jeep and Ram vehicles.
“Three years ago, FCA set a course to grow our profitability based on the strength of the Jeep and Ram brands by realigning our U.S. manufacturing operations,” said Mike Manley, FCA’s chief executive officer.
Two groups, one longtime organization and one new group, show that when women come together as philanthropists and community members who care, big things can happen.
What unites Impact 100 and 100 Plus Women Who Care is that they both have local branches, they focus on donating to nonprofits and their membership is 100 percent devoted to making where they live and work better for all.
Impact 100 of Macomb County is the newest version of these donating groups. It started in spring of 2017, said co-organizer Pamela Braund. But in that short time, it has already donated $80,000 to a Macomb County-based charity and donated many volunteer hours to local organizations. Jennifer Kluge, CEO of Corp! Publishing, is on the board of the Macomb group.
Its global organization, the Impact 100 Council, has chapters in the U.S. and Australia. Its mission is to encourage collaboration and sharing of best practices among Impact 100 chapters like Macomb and Oakland Counties to allow for continued growth around the world.
The other group has been just as powerful. Over the past 13 years, a group of small but mighty philanthropists has gotten together to learn about, promote and support local charities and nonprofits under the name of “100 Plus Women Who Care.”
The
In Michigan, groups from Ann Arbor to Troy meet every quarter to talk about how to raise funds for their favorite worthy causes. These groups include women, men, kids, teens and businesses of every size, all coming together to put individual donations of $100 together to make
The 100 Plus Women Who Care Motown Group is a good example of how the concept works, said Nancy Sullivan, a co-founder of the group which was started in 2011. Since then, its 317 members have raised more than $400,000, Sullivan said. An average of about 70
“It’s like an education about our city with the people you meet and the organizations we learn about,” Sullivan said. “You collectively take on what seems like impossible things and make them happen.”
The Motown group started with Karen Rashid-Balow, who heard about the original group and what it had done in Jackson. Rashid-Balow reached out to Sullivan and a mutual friend, Molly Williams, to see if they would help her start a group for Metro Detroit. Although all three worked full time, they also wanted to do charitable work so the 100 Plus Women concept seemed like a great fit.
The first charity meeting for the Motown group took place in February 2012. Sullivan said they hoped a few of the people they called would show up – more than 125 joined that first meeting.
“The meeting process is relatively simple,” Sullivan said. “We all arrive, put on our name tags and put the names of the charities we would want to talk about in a basket. Three names are picked out of the basket and those women present their charities. They get five minutes to talk and then there are five minutes of questions and answers. We take a vote, announce the winner and then we all write a check (typically for $100) to the charity.”
Sullivan is usually among those women who deliver the checks to the winning charity, and she says those meetings are exciting. “It’s amazing to get a glimpse of what they’re doing and how our money is going to be spent,” she said.
There is no physical home for the organization. There is no overreaching board or bylaws. Everyone donates directly to charity, so there’s no tax issues or paperwork. Also, the venues where the quarterly meetings are held offer their spaces for free, so there’s typically no cost to the meeting. You stay if you have time afterward for networking or a meal, Sullivan said. It truly is the ideal method of giving back if you have a family, a busy work schedule or other reasons to head out when the meeting is over.
Most people stick around, Sullivan noted.
“We’ve all realized we’re so much more alike than we realized,” Sullivan said. “It’s been very easy to get to know each other and you look forward to seeing everyone at the next meeting.”
This coming August, 100 Women Plus Motown will open up to newcomers, largely through invitation by members who will ask a friend, niece, daughter or grandmother to join. The goal is to pass the baton forward and find new women who want to also donate. To join, a woman must agree to be a member for at least a year and donate throughout that time period, Sullivan said.
The Motown group has donated to
“It’s such a simple idea,” Sullivan said, “but you learn so much.”
Braund of Impact 100 Macomb County said her group heard about the Oakland County version and reached out for help getting started. Oakland County members have been great mentors to them, Braund said.
Impact 100 Macomb County is a nonprofit organization comprised of 100 or more women, each donating $1,000 annually for a shared purpose: To make a difference in their community, the group says. The entire $1,000 goes directly to fund high-impact grants. The number and amount of grants are determined each year by the number of women who join Impact 100 as members.
The membership period runs from October through the end of March. The grant review process runs from April through September. At the annual grant award ceremony in October, Impact 100 Macomb County members vote to determine the recipient(s) of the grant. Pooling individual resources to make very large collective grants creates an opportunity for nonprofit organizations and allows members to have a significant, positive impact in the county, Braund said.
The group is ideal for busy moms and working women because you can get involved as little or as much as you want, Braund said. Some members may choose to serve on one of the many committees required to make the organization successful, while others may only provide their dues and take part in the vote at the annual awards night.
“It’s about women empowering women,” Braund said. “We’re about to really help organizations get to the next level or to get a program in place to help people in Macomb County.”
Talk to any of Michigan’s craft beer brewers and you’ll hear a familiar story: They feel incredibly grateful for the many years of growth, loyal fans and interesting work. But there’s a secondary tale looming, and it is one of concern as the state’s beer companies see consolidation, consumer shifts and other profit-flattening issues on the horizon.
Over the past 20 years, craft beer has generally been a tale rivaling Horatio Alger — a true rags-to-riches story. As recently as three years ago, in-store craft beer sales were enjoying annual double-digit growth. The number of craft breweries in Michigan and the United States more than doubled from 2013 to 2017.
However, that surge ended between 2017 and 2018 with a slight decrease of 0.2 percent in sales, according to Nielsen data. In Michigan, the Detroit Free Press recently reported that six of the state’s largest 25 breweries recorded back-to-back declines for in-state sales volume over the past two years, according to tax data from the Michigan Liquor Control Commission.
“Competition has never been steeper, so 2019 will be challenging for everyone in the beer industry,” said Rex Halfpenny, founder and publisher of the Michigan Beer Guide, which has been covering the state’s brew scene since February 1997.
“As beer sales continue to slow and products fail to move off shelves, breweries must find other ways to sell product, either out of state or out of country, but most will simply try to differentiate by coming up with new flavors or follow the latest trends set by others to stay relevant,” Halfpenny said. “Regardless, quality will reign and determine the survivors. We will see more openings, but we will also see more closings.”
Beer expert Shannon Long agrees, saying she believes the state’s breweries must work together to enlarge the market and get more consumers interested in drinking craft beer.
“Bad beer from breweries doesn’t survive well in Michigan,” said Long, founder of Brew Export, a company with a mission of connecting the world through beer. “The drinkers are knowledgeable and passionate about the liquid they choose to consume.”
Brew Export manages the international sales and exports of craft beer from more than 70 breweries across the United States to countries around the globe. Long also hosted and produced “Pure Brews America,” a television show that ran for three seasons.
“There will be a shake-out as breweries can’t compete in the regional or national distribution game. The trends are going hyperlocal,” Long
predicts. “Prior to Prohibition, there were 10,000 breweries in the United States. Today, we are at 7,000. In my opinion, it is possible to again reach 10,000 or more, but brewers will need to stick to servicing their local market and not too far beyond.”
Slowing sales, other factors play a role
Sales for the U.S. beer industry (all types) came in at $350 billion in 2016, the most recent data available from the Beer Institute and the National Beer Wholesalers Association. In that same year, craft beer accounted for 21.9 percent of the market and craft brewers produced 24.6 million barrels, according to the Brewers Association. Overall, craft beer sales are worth about $4.9 billion, Nielsen reports.
Experts attribute the slowdown to a variety of factors, including some people switching to wine and spirits, which took craft beer’s share of the market. In a saturated market, consumers became choosier and more looked toward new releases than old favorites.
Michigan has about 330 breweries, ranking it fourth in the nation, according to the Brewers Association. That is up from about 105 craft breweries operating in 2011, the association said. These craft breweries produce about 873,995 barrels of craft beer annually, or about 3.7 gallons per adult over age 21.
But those numbers are starting to decline with high-profile mergers and bankruptcies. In November, Ferndale craft-beer store 8 Degrees Plato Beer Company announced its closure. Then, in December, Arcadia Brewing Co. said it was “in transition” as officials moved toward a foreclosure sale at its Kalamazoo brewery and taproom, saying the company owed more than $1.4 million on its mortgage.
Brewers also face long-term issues, including new tariffs on aluminum that are impacting the price of packaging materials. A Beer Institute analysis shows that the industry faces more than $347 million in additional costs annually and more than 20,000 jobs are at risk from the impact of those tariffs.
Still life in the industry
Despite these challenges, experts and brewers agree there is still life in the craft beer industry. As Long noted, brewers who have brewpubs, taprooms or other experience-based locations are likely to be the survivors, as consumers look for unique drinking venues that serve locally made products and where they can gather with friends, co-workers and family.
One early example of the trend toward consolidation is the Roak Brewing Company’s acquisition of Traverse City’s Right Brain Brewery in 2018. The goal, according to Roak and Right Brain officials, is to make both companies better, pool resources and boost their collective financial security in a tough market. Each brewery will maintain their own brands, taprooms and employees; no layoffs were planned or announced in 2018.
Russell Springsteen, owner-operator of Right Brain Brewery, called his company a strong business and said the business was “making changes to continue that trend.” That includes introducing new brands, styles and ideas for the craft beer consumer. Right Brain is known for its all-natural ingredients, no artificial flavors and brews with unique flavors such as asparagus, Grand Traverse Pie Company pies, smoked pig and Michigan sugar beets.
The bottom line in craft brewing is that the people involved need to have fun making beer, but they also need to make money, Springsteen said.
“That boils down to our customers and how to treat them and listen to them. They are a huge inspiration in the beers that we brew. They often ask us if we can do it. The answer is yes, then we figure it out. So the creative challenges drive us as well. We are making fun beer to drink for a lot of different people,” Springsteen said.
“Competition drives us as well. We don’t take our shelf space and draft handles for granted,” Springsteen added. “The current craft beer scene is pretty crowded here in Michigan and nationwide. I think you are going to see small breweries start to co-habitate or work new, creative business solutions to stay in business and be profitable. I think you will also see a decline in the number of breweries in the next couple of years. The market seems to always have a way to correct itself.”
Being flexible, staying in touch with consumer wants and having real conversations about the industry is partly why Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales has succeeded with its expanding business. The firm, founded by husband-and-wife team Ron and Lori Jeffries, specializes in oak-aged sour beers that were considered outside the box at the time the brewery was founded in 2004.
These days, sour beer is widely accepted so Jolly Pumpkin has grown in part through its locations, said Keifer Fillinger, events coordinator for the Dexter-based company. Today, Jolly Pumpkin under its parent organization Northern United Brewing Co., operates seven pubs in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Dexter, Royal Oak, Grand Rapids, Traverse City, and Chicago. Jolly Pumpkin has several more pubs planning to open with locations in Dearborn in the spring 2019 and at Detroit’s airport in the beginning of 2020.
“It’s our way of bringing our products to different people. Each location has its own feel, helping us be more relevant and part of that neighborhood. We want each pub location to be community focused,” Fillinger said.
This fall, Jolly Pumpkin made news when it announced it was adding its first non-sour beer, joining the trend toward IPAs. Pure Speculation came out in October, and its combination of hops and aromas of ripe peach, pineapple and mango proved successful. In fact, Jolly Pumpkin is scheduled to release its second non-sour offering, Fillinger added.
Adding new products has been important to Shorts Brewing Company, founded in 2002 in Bellaire. The company, which added production facilities in 2008 in Elk Rapids, expects to have just over double-digit growth for 2018, something that is increasingly rare for the industry, said Scott Newman-Bale, a partner focused on business development.
A maturing industry
“This past year, you saw many of the largest and well-established breweries closing up. It was shocking to see how quickly it happened,” Newman-Bale said. “We see 2019 as a year of contraction or right sizing. Craft beer companies are figuring things out. It’s a natural part of a maturing industry.”
The merger and acquisitions that are coming are a result of companies looking to get economies of scale, a necessity to compete, Newman-Bale said. While there are areas of opportunities, consumer booms and busts still control what happens within the craft beer market.
“We are still seeing continual consumer change. Something that was hot yesterday might not be today. That’s both scary and positive,” Newman-Bale said. “If you bring out the right product at the right time, you’re going to see a brewery grow rapidly and do well. … But then things will change and you see products that were once around forever stall.”
For example, Shorts added a cider business in 2014 called Starcut Ciders that the company says was “born out of a desire to make unique ciders from the orchards that surround us in Michigan.” Its surprisingly popular new cider called Mosa, a blend of hard cider and sweet orange juice, making it similar to a mimosa, has been flying off the shelves, Newman-Bale said.
“We thought Starcut would do well,” especially because it was diversifying Shorts as a whole, Newman-Bale said. “We launched Mosa (in late fall) and it’s really booming.”
Another company that is booming is Founders, the granddaddy of Michigan craft brewers. Company officials said Founders Brewing Co. has had double-digit growth in every quarter recently, both in Michigan and across the Midwest, thanks to its loyal followers.
Founders has the classic rags-to-riches story. Co-founders Mike Stevens and Dave Engbers took out loans to start the business and faced bankruptcy multiple times before the beer took off. The secret, according to Communications Manager Francesca Jasinski, was when Founders started making full-flavored “in your face” beers, the kind the two founders wanted to make instead of following trends or other companies.
Recently, the Grand Rapids-based company announced that its beers—including its year-round, seasonal, specialty and barrel-aged series—will begin shipping to Colorado, making it the 47th state where Founders is distributed; the three remaining states are Wyoming, Utah and Hawaii.
Pushing boundaries
Twenty-two years after he started brewing beer, Founders’ Mike Stevens is a well-known speaker on the beer industry and his keynotes often make headlines because of his bold proclamations and quotable statements. For example, Brewbound recently highlighted a talk where Stevens said the beer industry needs to bring sexy back to American beer—a statement he stands by.
Stevens said he was trying to highlight the need for new beers and beer companies to push boundaries and to come up with recipes that capture the imagination of the craft beer consumer. He believes the big brands have lost their emotional connection to consumers and Founders, as the seventh largest brewery in the nation, is well positioned to step in and take their place.
“If we can feed their imaginations and offer refined, consistent beers, that will keep the craft movement going,” Stevens said. “Regional players and national players have to start looking at things in terms of what will our audience look like five to 10 years down the road. I’ve been telling our team that we need to punch through the ceiling and get those 85 percent of consumers who aren’t drinking craft beer. We need to design beers for a broader audience.”
Founders wants to be that great all-American company that is nationally competitive with the big brewers such as A-B InBev, which produces Budweiser, Michelob and Busch, as well as Molson Coors, which produces Coors, Miller and Blue Moon. In other words, Stevens said, Founders wants to be the biggest craft beer producer in the nation, playing right alongside the big boys.
“The American beer landscape 25 years from now will have a whole new set of players,” he said. “Those companies – Bud, Miller, Coors – are losing volume and they’re not going to get that back. They need to reinvent themselves. If you look at the next great brands, I see some craft players in there. Why can’t we be the next great brewer on the national scene? They were all our size once.”
As part of a sponsorship package announced by the Lansing Ignite FC, the name and logo of an area credit union—LAFCU—will be featured on sweaters and other field gear starting this year and running through 2023.
The sponsorship is an inaugural one for the team’s “kits,” the term used for the standard equipment and attire worn by players.
“As an organization, Lansing Ignite FC strives to support our local communities and businesses, and this partnership with LAFCU furthers those efforts,” said Nick Grueser, team president. “It’s important to us that LAFCU is locally headquartered and we believe LAFCU is an amazing fit.”
Pat Spyke, the credit union’s CEO said the organization was an early believer in the team, one reason it took an active role in helping to bring Lansing Ignite FC to the area.
“Stepping up to be the official jersey sponsor seemed like a great way to demonstrate our commitment,” said Spyke.
The Lansing Ignite FC begins its USL League One campaign against the Richmond Kickers when it travels to Virginia on March 30, followed by a game facing the Greenville Triumph FC in Greenville, South Carolina, on April 6.
The team’s website is www.lansingignite.com.
Blue Medora is a Grand Rapids-based IT monitoring firm that relied on hometown support to get off the ground, but only grew its wings thanks to capital investment from outside Michigan.
Started in 2007 by Nathan Owen, Blue Medora embarked as a startup providing innovative enterprise-grade integration of IT monitoring.
Six years after launching, the fledgling company sought financial backing. Enter Grand Rapids-based seed accelerator Start Garden and Wakestream Ventures, an early stage fund that backs entrepreneur founders working with physical products converging with the internet, and Grand Angels, a Holland consultancy service. The initial seed round raised a tidy $1.3 million, according to Crunchbase.
By 2015, Blue Medora was stable enough to seek what is known as Series A financing, which means the business model was likely generating revenue, but the overall operation was not yet seeing a net profit.
To observers, though, all the signs were there. In the previous year, Blue Medora quadrupled product sales and doubled staff to nearly 50 people, including software developers, quality assurance engineers, sales and marketing professionals.
Ann Arbor’s eLab Ventures, Wakestream and Grand Angels joined well-known Palo Alto, California, computer virtualization giant VMware in raising $4.6 million.
A round of Series B funding ensued, which means that Blue Medora was on solid ground and drawing interest from national investors. Correspondingly, St. Louis-based Lewis & Clark Ventures and Chicago’s First Analysis jumped in with eLab and Wakestream to provide an $8 million injection in October 2017.
The largest capital infusion outside of Michigan, though, came this September when Princeton, N.J.-based Edison Partners splashed $10 million into the Grand Rapids IT company, an amount nearly 10 times the initial funding go-around and bringing the company’s investment to $32.5 million.
The trend illustrates an overall pattern underpinning entrepreneurial endeavors in the state, according to the 2018 report by the Michigan Venture Capital Association. For every dollar invested in a Michigan startup by a state-based venture capital firm, another $3.83 of investment comes from outside sources.
“I think the venture community in general has done a great job of attracting outside capital,” said Mike Morin, CEO of Start Garden, which assists West Michigan startups. “Given the limited amount of capital that actually exists here in the state, that is a critical component if we are going to grow these companies into later stages.”
Start Garden, launched by Rick DeVos in 2012 as a seed accelerator with the goal of launching 100 new business ideas a year, plunked $500,000 into Blue Medora in 2013 as its first major investment.
Morin is also CEO of Seamless IoT, a Grand Rapids-based accelerator, and heads up portfolio relations at Wakestream Ventures, also founded by DeVos. West Michigan is prime for investment, as the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, he said.
Or versus And
If plastics was the buzzword of the late 1960s, then convergence is mot du jour among aspiring business pioneers.
“I don’t know that any ecosystem is generically good for any and all entrepreneurs, but I think how we have talked about it is that historic ecosystems have been built for what we would refer to as an ‘or world,’” Morin said. “They were built in a world when something was either digital or physical, it was either a service or a product. It was enterprise or it was startup; it was public or it was private.
“And now we live in this world that’s an ‘and world’—both of those are ‘and’ right? I mean it’s hard to say whether the phone you carry is either a product or a service. So that’s what we’ve been building the ecosystem in Grand Rapids around, which again aligns very well with this notion of what you read about—how everything is becoming computational … everything from chairs and tables to walls to sensors, everything’s becoming smart.
“Somehow that technology has to make its way into all of these things, and many of those things come from here. Then you start dealing with the implications of the data that’s coming off of those things. What you do with that and how you use that to build businesses and change behavior. What we say is that we’re building the lowest friction sandbox in the world for companies that are working in that space.”
Where public-private entities can tag-team to make things happen, the process can exceed expectations.
Last March, Start Garden met officials from Ann Arbor-based May Mobility at South by Southwest. A resulting deal is now seeing the city deploying four, six-seat electronic self-driving shuttles on its routes.
The city pitched in $250,000 toward the one-year pilot program with $400,000 coming from the private sector, Morin said.
“This is what we believe the new sandbox for innovation looks like, the ability to pull off those types of public-private engagements and partnerships,” said Morin, noting that Seamless also played a pivotal role behind the deal. “We don’t think there’s a lot of ecosystems in the country that have the capacity to do that and to deliver on that in a rapid, cost effective manner for startups.”
Morin adds, “The funny part is we’re not working with May just because they’re from Michigan. We’re working with May because we believe they are nationally—and maybe globally—the leading provider of the type of solution that they’re doing. These vehicles aren’t going to be used in a private parking lot or a (private) shuttle. They’re literally going to be integrated into our public transit system in Grand Rapids. So when you ask if this a good time for entrepreneurs, I think in certain spaces and places they really leverage the native assets we have here, that a lot of other ecosystems don’t have. I think it’s a great time.”
Entrepreneurial engine
Detroit’s revving entrepreneurial engine is also luring capital investment from outside the state, said Emily Heintz, founder and managing director of Ann Arbor-based EntryPoint, which forges entrepreneurship and capital investment in the region and beyond.
The agency’s 2018 Detroit Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Report, released in October, found the city is becoming a burgeoning tech hub with 56 percent of venture capital being invested in information technology startups in the Motor City during the past year.
In the past four years, there has been a 54 percent jump in the number of Detroit venture-backed startups, with $41 million in venture capital poured into 18 startups in 2017 alone.
While the typical funding trajectory for startups is to go local before seeking outside investment, the phenomenon in Detroit transcends that model, Heintz said.
For one, it is less expensive to live in Detroit and in Michigan, which makes it easier to attract talent. The cost of living is 97 percent more in San Francisco and 96 percent higher in New York than it is in Detroit, Heintz said.
“A lot of investors are finding that it’s really expensive to invest in those cities, as well, and are looking outside of the coasts for investment opportunities, and I think Detroit is a really natural spot for them to be investing,” she said. “I definitely think that people’s perception of Detroit is that Michigan as a whole is a real investment opportunity for them.”
The movement is catching on. Revolution, a Washington-based group, created “Rise of the Rest,” a campaign to focus on creating startups in flyover country instead of saturated hubs like Silicon Valley, New York and Boston.
Ryan Waddington, founding partner of Ann Arbor-based Huron River Ventures, says the greater investment community has taken notice at success stories like Duo Security, which was bought by Cisco in August 2018 for $2.4 billion. The Ann Arbor software security company started in 2009 and raised $1 million in seed money in 2010.
FarmLog, an Ann Arbor-based agricultural software company that’s part of Huron River Ventures, saw a $1 million seed turn into a $37 million investment.
“A lot of it was small funds, early stage,” Waddington said. “So, naturally two to three years against that, you start to see that leverage start to build up.”
Another factor fueling the startup spike is a wealth of engineering talent. There are about 1,400 engineers per 100,000 residents, and Detroit is in close proximity to eight of the top 25 entrepreneurial colleges, Heintz said.
The legions of those with slide rules and pocket protectors have shed their dependence on the automotive Big Three.
“We definitely do see an increasing trend of automotive executives, automotive talent engineers that are coming out of universities starting their companies rather than working within these large institutions,” Heintz said. “I think that’s partially because people are looking to create their own opportunities, partially because the shift in mentality between millennials really wanting to make their mark as something that’s important to them, wanting to have a culture that’s a little bit different than you would find at a large established organization.
“We are seeing what I think is a really healthy thing for Michigan’s economy. Those of us that have lived in Michigan for a long time have seen friends and family members of ours during the economic downturn be laid off due to a downturn in the automotive industry and I think that Michigan in the past has put a lot of our eggs in the automotive basket. So diversifying the economy is something that I think a lot of us focus on as part of making a more stable economy, so that we’re able to weather economic downturns in the future.”
When it comes to venture capital, Adrian Fortino has been on both sides. As managing director of Mercury Fund, which has an Ann Arbor office and about $270 million under management, he focuses on industrial software.
Among the companies under his purview is Sight Machine, a San Francisco-based manufacturing analytics firm that has raised $30.5 million in early round capital investment, according to Crunchbase. He was also involved in DeepField, an Ann Arbor data analytics company that was started on $1.5 million seed funding and was sold to Nokia two years ago.
Prior to joining Mercury Fund more than four years ago, Fortino was managing director of Detroit Innovate, an early stage venture capital fund focused on Michigan high-tech companies.
On that front, Fortino started three software companies before he entered the investment field.
“I tried to raise money in 2009 to 2012, and it was very difficult then with very little capital,” said Fortino, who has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan and a master’s from U-M’s Ross School of Business. “But there’s a number of funds that were created and developed and launched in Michigan since around the 2011 timeframe. Then you’ve had funds that have been taking a stronger presence in Michigan—Mercury certainly being one of a number of others—whether through the VMF ($95 million Venture Michigan Fund) the MEDC had or just the organic outgrowth that we’ve seen.
“So now I think we have a pretty robust ecosystem. I think there’s one I would call out. I think we have a gap at the pre-seed and the seed stage. We really only have one or two really strong funds in that world, Invest Detroit’s First Capital Fund … but other than them there aren’t really very many folks that are really active.”
Most days, the staff at Progressive Mechanical in Ferndale are quoting bids in the office or out in the field, putting together mechanical processing and fire-protection systems for companies of all shapes and sizes.
Recently, however, they came together at their headquarters for a serious cause: They wanted to know which employee could produce the best chili.
The annual Progressive Mechanical chili cook-off took place “in a spirit of four-alarm fellowship,” according to people on the scene. This family owned business may be good-natured in general, but they definitely had a strong competition going when it comes to chili.
The chili cook-off started with an idea from Vice President Charly Hosler. He wanted to create a way to adapt the competitive spirit of the company’s employees to build community and camaraderie among the many kinds of employees who work there.
Each year, it gets bigger and the chili dishes get more ambitious, according to company officials. Last year, eight contestants from the company’s Ferndale and Mount Clemens offices vied for the coveted trophy that sits on Charly’s desk.
In the end, the event went off without any airing of grievances and everyone had a good time. Corey Lindros took home the trophy and everyone had a good amount of fun, conversation and camaraderie at Progressive Mechanical’s warehouse.
Progressive Mechanical Inc. is a full-service mechanical, plumbing, process piping and fire protection contractor specializing in the design, fabrication and installation of mechanical processing and fire protection systems for industrial, commercial, institutional and municipal markets.
Income Property Organization (IPO), provider of customized brokerage services, has a new team member—Kevin Jahnke—who has been retained to assist with IPO’s expansion into the Indiana multifamily market.
