Change is good in the long run

Vermont Business Magazine, Jan 01, 2004 by Kelley, Kevin

Leaving a secure job to start your own business is like jumping off a cliff, Rick Gile says.

"You hope your parachute works or that at least you'll have a soft landing. And you know that a lot of people don't survive it," notes Gile, now the president of Kalow Tech. "So you have to believe in yourself enough to make the jump."

By 1986, Gile had reached a turning point in life that led him toward that cliff After 10 years as an engineering manager at Bryant Grinder in Springfield, Gile was tired of commuting every day from the Rutland area, where his wife works as a teacher. His actual time on the job was also draining.

"When you work for somebody else, putting in long hours and solving problems, your reward is having more problems to solve. I had ended up on a vicious treadmill," Gile says.

In classic entrepreneurial fashion, he tried to start a business in the garage of his home. The original idea was to devise a chemical pump that Gile believed would become a key element in the composites industry for the manufacturing of aircraft. "But we discovered a flaw in the physics of what we were doing," he recounts.

Gile had meanwhile found some work with packaging machines that enabled him to stay afloat as an independent operator. That line of business proved strong enough so that by 1989 he had outgrown the 1200-square-foot machine shop in Clarendon where he had moved his fledgling company two years earlier. With assistance from the Rutland Economic Development Corporation, Gile was able to take tenancy of a 4800-square-foot building in the Rutland Airport Industrial Park.

Kalow Tech ("kalow" means "good" in Greek, Gile explains) has grown steadily during the past 14 years. Following the fifth expansion of its original facility, the company's plant measures 45,000 square feet and accommodates roughly 45 employees, Gile says.

His company's major customer is the New Jersey-based Sealed Air Corporation, which uses Kalow machines to Make protective packaging for industrial and consumer markets. Kalow's big moneymaking component, Gile adds, is not so much its manufacturing operation but the service work it does for Sealed Air and other customers.

Recognizing that it might be overly dependent on a single buyer, Kalow has tried to diversify its product line and its customer base. It makes granite saws and some medical machinery, for example. But those efforts at diversification have largely fallen flat, Gile says.

"Our failure hasn't been on the technical side but in terms of marketing and sales," he explains. "We're an engineering company and we're very strong in that and in entrepreneurial spirit. We just don't have what it takes in marketing."

Although it relies heavily on Sealed Air's continued business, Kalow doesn't have much to fear in the way of competition, Gile says.

"We have had to face competitors in the past, but they've been even bigger klutzes than we are," he says. Low-cost manufacturers in developing countries also don't pose much of a threat, Gile adds, because "everything we make is customized."

He attributes the success of the firm largely to the "good and loyal people" who work for Kalow. The company's key goal is not to maximize its bottom line, Gile says, but "to continue to provide a decent place to work and to keep the area prospering."

He also gives a special salute to the two other members of Kalow's management triumvirate: vice president Paul Van Huis and comptroller Harry Sinos.