Growing in Gardnerville

About five years ago Aervoe, an industrial paint and lubricant manufacturer in Gardnerville, began selling products that blue-collar working people would find handy solar-charged and hand-cranked flashlights and radios, portable gas stoves for construction sites and 12-volt appliances truckers can use to cook while they're on the road.

Today those products account for about $5 million of Aervoe's $60 million in annual sales.

Aervoe has more than 300,000 square feet of manufacturing and storage space off Saw Mill Road in Gardnerville. The company recently constructed a $3.5 million, 62,000-square-foot warehouse and light assembly building to house products it imports from China. Aervoe took half of the new space and seeks a tenant to rent the other half.

Sales to the construction industry account for about 25 percent of revenue for Aervoe's industrial products division, and with the downturn on residential construction the company has seen a significant decline in sales for those products. However, sales of maintenance products, such as lubricants and corrosion protection compounds, are holding up better.

"Some of our customers are down 15 to 20 percent in their orders," says Dave Williams, Aervoe's chief executive officer who founded the company in 1975 in San Jose. "To some extent people aren't buying new equipment, they are repairing. Our name and reputation has been made with the mechanics and the maintenance people."

In 1988 Williams moved the company from San Jose to Gardnerville because of California's tough environmental regulations. He came to the area looking for an industrial site, and got a referral to his current location while enjoying breakfast at the Carson Valley Inn.

The company started out in one building on 40 acres and now owns more than 300 acres of surrounding land for eventual industrial development. Aervoe employs 150, up from its original 60 when it relocated here.

It also operates a 40,000-square-foot warehouse in southern Illinois to serve its East Coast accounts. Williams says 50 percent of his business comes from east of the Mississippi, while California accounts for much of the company's western region sales.

Since moving to northern Nevada, Aervoe has increased annual sales three-fold to the current $60 million.

A few of the company's best-selling industrial products it makes more than 800 are lubricants for chain drives and wire rope, and marking paints for construction sites.

Despite the weakened economy, Aervoe has not laid off any of its full-time staff, but it has cut back on contract and temporary help. The company typically is busiest during the summer months peak construction time.

"We have been through a lot of ups and downs," Williams says. "This is a bad year. We have cut back on extra shifts, but the same people are still employed."

Changes in rules and regulations governing the products made by the company are an ever-present challenge. Williams says trucking to the Gardnerville area has improved greatly in the last decade, as well as freight lines' ability to deliver products overnight to the Los Angeles basin.

"We proved that we can be successful in a rural environment," he says. "We don't have to be in a mainstream industrial zone."

Aervoe's main competitors are more well-known national brands such as Krylon, Sherwin Williams and RustOleum. Both Krylon and RustOleum focus on retail sales while Aervoe sells exclusively to industrial clients and uses specialty distributors such as White Cap Construction Supply.

The company employs a full-time salaried sales staff of 25 people. To get first-hand product feedback, Williams insists members of his sales force spend one-third of their time mingling with the mechanics and tradesmen using Aervoe's products rather than just working through a company's purchasing agent.

"So many people lose contact with the guy who uses the product," he says. "You get some honest feedback."

In 2002 Aervoe acquired Crown Industrial of Chicago, a specialty lubricant manufacturer, and in 2003 it purchased Zynolyte of Carson, Calif., a maker of high heat-resistant paints. Williams says Aervoe seeks other acquisitions and currently has two under consideration.

Aervoe acquired the two companies to diversify its product line, which is a constant challenge.

"We are not usually the first to come out with something, but we don't want to be the last. Sometimes we will let the larger guys make some mistakes and learn from them," Williams says.