Jim Westman got ahead in the world by moving to the big city of Atlanta from Sarasota.
That was more than 20 years ago.
Within the last few months, he found a way to come home again.
He bought a 20-year-old Sarasota company called Octex Corp. that now employs 55 humans and 15 robotic machines making plastic parts for others.
At the same time, he bought himself a job. He is the new CEO.
The trade calls what Octex does "custom injection molding."
It is enough to make a normal, non-manufacturing person experience severe eye-glazing.
But, really, Southwest Florida residents are surrounded by plastic products that have been injection molded at plants just like Octex's.
They can just look around their home or office. Their phone, the mouse for their computer and the frame of its keyboard, the handle on their scissors, maybe even their coffee maker -- chances are they are all injection-molded plastic.
Pellets in, products out
The factory that Jim Westman bought is hidden a mile back in the Sarasota International Trade Center, an industrial park east of Interstate 75 off Fruitville Road that has gradually become a hub for a wide variety of companies that need space to move trucks in and out, off and on the highway.
Underneath its 35,000-square-foot, flat roof, the plant is divided into three main parts: the inventory room, where plastic raw material arrives and finished products leave; the plant itself, where the robotic machines operate in a clean environment that makes them suitable for producing any components; and the tool shop, where heavy steel molds, some as big as a car engine, are tuned up, refitted and stored.
The raw material, delivered by trucks to the back door, is plastic pellets in bulk cardboard boxes called "Gaylords." Each box weighs 1,100 to 1,600 pounds.
As Westman has learned, there are about 20,000 different grades and compositions of these pellets.
It is almost surgical the way these raw materials are injected into the clean room.
A worker uses a fork lift to place each box on a special "table" that can be hydraulically tilted to get the last of the pellets out of it. A giant vacuum cleaner is attached to the box by its hose, and the pellets are sucked into the system for a given injection molding machine assigned to a specific job.
On the other side of the wall, where the machines are, you are in much cleaner, quieter environment.
There is a permanent overhead crane that runs back and forth over the tops of the molding machines so that the selected mold can be gently maneuvered into place on the machine without damaging its robotic arm.
Once the mold is in place and the proper raw material is flowing into the production room, the worker turns on the machine and lets it rip.
He or she does not even touch the parts being made until the robotic arm has lowered the finished product into a waiting tray. At that point the worker visually inspects the product to make sure it is up to snuff, before it is shuffled away for packing and shipping.
From Riverview to wheeler-dealer
Westman is a true Sarasotan.
He graduated from Riverview High School in 1982, but not before meeting the love of his life, Anne, who was a 1983 graduate. They did not get married right away, but they stuck together.
After Westman graduated from the University of Florida and did a stint at Arthur Andersen as an accounting undergrad, he attended Emory University in Atlanta and earned his master's in business administration.
It was only after his graduation that he and Anne got hitched.
He spent six years at the Atlanta offices of one of the world's larger accounting firms. Ernst & Young was big enough that, in addition to doing basic accounting and CPA work, it also provided specialized services like investment banking, assistance in acquisitions and mergers, and business appraisals or valuations.
That was his real school, he now says.
"And they pay you for it, so that's great," he said.
In 1996, he and another Ernst & Young alumnus started their own boutique investment banking outfit called River Hawk. Then, drawn irresistibly by the companies he was analyzing for a living, Westman started putting together deals of his own.
He would come across a specialty business that had an owner who wanted out or that needed a fresh infusion of capital. If Westman thought the potential was real, he would put together an investment group, taking stock in the refinanced company in lieu of a cash commission.
He is still a shareholder and director of three such ventures, a Southeast U.S. logging company called Tidewater, based on St. Simons Island along Georgia's coast; Vitron, a plastics extrusion company in Tennessee; and Atlanta-based Prime Technological Services, which makes circuit boards for other companies, just as Octex makes plastic injection molded parts for others.
Shopping for a business
It was a recent high school reunion in Sarasota that reminded Anne and Jim that they still had some sand in their shoes.
Using the skills he had honed in searching for businesses for others, he began looking for one he could acquire on his own, with some financing.
He did not know exactly what he was looking for. He preferred manufacturing or value-added distribution, and preferred to stay away from the hospitality field -- no restaurants or motels.
"I was moving here whether I found one or not, quite frankly," Westman said. "I figured I could do what I was doing from anywhere. I didn't need to be in Atlanta any more."
Once he started looking on the Internet for a business, he was surprised at how many he could choose from. He even considered buying a tortilla factory in the Tampa Bay region.
Then he found Octex, which turned out to be a gem of a business.
Maybe it is not glamorous, but imagine you are walking the floor in Westman's shoes.
You just bought company with a 20-year track record, and one of the main reasons you did so was because you liked the management team that was already in place.
It also already had a tremendous book of business.
"We are very blessed in that we have got good customers that are actually weathering the storm," Westman said.
In general, his clients are not crazy about telling the world that their products are made somewhere else. But recognizable, brand-name products, or parts of them, are made in Sarasota County every day.
The day you walk in the door, your specially built plant is already cranking out as many tumblers, no-slip boat deck squares, medical device components and oil-change funnels as possible on 15 lines that run three shifts a day, five days a week.
You are doing $10 million a year, you have opportunities to grow and room to knock out a wall and expand the plant.
You are confident enough about what is ahead that you just ordered a new robotic injection-molding machine that will expand the neat lineup from 15 to 16. You have invested in a rolling rack system for the warehouse space that will help in product flow while allowing the existing plant to handle more products and raw materials at any given moment.
"We've added eight employees since I got here," Westman said. "If you include me, we've hired nine."
