Carolyn Minerich
Carmin Industries
Jacksonville, Alabama

Carolyn Minerich is not your average girl-next-door-and she doesn't have your average business. Carolyn cuts steel - and granite and marble and glass and just about anything else up to six inches thick - with water.

Carolyn once dreamed of becoming an FBI agent. As a stepping stone, she joined the Marine Corps-and stayed. "I found I really liked it," she says, then laughs. "I liked the self discipline and really looked good in the uniform!" One day a "tall, handsome Marine pilot walked in," and Carolyn's life took an unexpected detour. They married, both left the Marine Corps, and Carolyn quit working to raise their two children. Their son, Jon Jr, began reading at the age of three, and soon Carolyn began working with other gifted children. After 10 years, she switched to working with children with emotional problems. Meanwhile, the family followed Jon's career in manufacturing to California, Seattle and Denver, then back and forth between Minnesota and Michigan.

In 1994 their family was living in Muskegon, Mich. "That winter, there were about 135 inches of snow," recalls Carolyn. When Jon got an offer to manage a plant in Jacksonville, Ala., a few hours' drive from Mobile - where Carolyn's family has lived since the 1600s - the family gratefully headed south.

Without a job and with her children nearly grown, Carolyn was at loose ends. "I hadn't finished my masters, so I couldn't teach," she says. "I had a journalism degree, but there were no jobs at the local newspaper. And fast food wasn't looking too good …" Jon, who had heard about a new technology, sent his wife to the library to learn more about it - and about starting a business.

The more she read, the more excited Carolyn got. A remarkable waterjet cutting process forced water, under 60,000 pounds of pressure, through a hole a sixteenth of an inch in diameter to precisely cut smooth edges through almost any material. Jon and Carolyn liked what the process could do and that it was environmentally friendly - and no one nearby was doing anything like it.

Carolyn had no experience, no customers and no money, but the Marine Corps had taught her "not to think twice about doing things that had never been done or seen before." The Jacksonville Small Business Development Center, an SBA resource partner, helped Carolyn "put it all together" and she got a great deal of encouragement from the SBA. Finally, in 1996, she launched Carmin Industries, a precision waterjet cutting and metal fabrication service.

At first, Carolyn was Carmin Industries. She ran the machines, unloaded trucks, and prepared products for shipment. She started by making simple stainless steel plates for the entrance of the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu. The company followed with jobs for Estée Lauder and Clinique, Lord & Taylor, Giorgio Armani, Neiman Marcus, Universal Studios, the Smithsonian Institute and the U. S. Air Force. They've cut parts for the Patriot and Sabre missile systems and the Abrams tank. "We try," says Carolyn, "to amaze at least one person each day with the wonderful things that water can do."

The business grew quickly, thanks, in large measure, to the enthusiasm Carolyn has for what she and her team do, and their willingness to tackle jobs no one else will. The company's slogan is, "If you can dream it, we can cut it." Living up to that slogan has made the company very successful in very short a time - but first Carolyn has to get the jobs. And that takes moxie.

"I summed up the courage to send my brochures to Walt Disney World", she says. "When they didn't call me back, I called them and I said, 'I'm coming to Orlando and I'd like to tell you about waterjet cutting!'" That first meeting led to a lot of wonderful shapes that Carolyn and her company have cut for Walt Disney World, including many of the dinosaurs that now delight visitors at the Animal Kingdom's new Dino-Rama. At Epcot Center, you'll see Mickey's hand, 47 feet by 50 feet-and all of the aluminum components began at Carmin Industries.

Despite the company's rapid growth, Carolyn has had to face some serious challenges. For her first big contract, Carolyn had to go to an aluminum supplier. "I was lucky," she says. "They gave me 30 day terms - but I still had to come up with the money before I got paid for the first shipment." Her banker told her a loan for $13,000 wasn't worth his time. He's not her banker anymore.

Carolyn also had problems with other machine shop owners when she needed work done that her shop couldn't do. Many literally laughed at her, or made rude remarks. "These macho guys said they'd come back in a year, when I had my fire sale." For many people, it would be intimidating. Instead, she says, "It lit a fire under me." Carolyn lamented to her UPS courier that she needed a machine shop that wouldn't make fun of her. He recommended Greg Bannon, who owned a local shop and with whom she has worked ever since. Meanwhile, several of those other shops have since gone under.

The Disney contracts - done to extremely exacting standards - led to a call from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. The people at NASA told Carolyn, "You must be doing something right-you're Alabama's Small Business of the Year. But you can be better. We take really good companies and make them extraordinary."

To work for NASA, a company must meet the agency's standards, which are very high. It meant another trip to the bank, an extension to the building, and more training for the staff. "It affects every aspect of your business," says Carolyn. What she didn't expect was that seven of her 15 employees would quit rather than meet NASA's standards. It was momentarily devastating. "But you know what it did?" she asks. "It enabled me to put together a team that's even stronger."

Carmin personnel can hold cutting tolerances to five thousandths of an inch if need be. The company also offers top-quality, defense- and aerospace-certified welding, precision bending of metal parts, laser cutting and welding, machining services, powder coating, wet painting, and woodworking to compliment metalwork. Since 1997, the first full year of production, the company has seen a 350 percent increase in sales and a client list of most firms can only dream.

Carolyn, who is known for her commitment to children and education in the community, always includes technology students in her workforce. "We want kids to be excited about technology - or 10 years down the road, we won't have the skilled people we need to do this kind of work!"

The current high school co-op student, Pete, does odd jobs like answering phones and running errands, but he also gets a lot of mentoring. Carmin also has two college students on the shop floor. "Our students must have good grades," Carolyn insists (Pete is in the top 5 percent of his class). The work isn't glamorous, "but by the time they work for me for 2 years, their résumés look fabulous!" All she asks in return is that, down the road, they mentor other young people.

Local schools benefit from generous gifts of metal for fabrication and welding students to practice their skills on, and the company tries to do one community project each year with whatever "leftovers" they have on hand. Carmin also designed and built an accessibility ramp for Jacksonville State University student who had a disability.

Carolyn is on the board of directors for the Calhoun County Area Vocational Center. She's also served as a director of the Calhoun County Chamber of Commerce and as vice chair of the Jacksonville Area Business Council.

She was honored as the SBA Small Business Person of the Year for Alabama in 2002 - a first for a business so young and so small. At the awards ceremony in Washington D.C., Carolyn met Melanie Sabelhaus, deputy administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, who asked, "Are you 8(a) certified yet? You need to be!" Carmin recently got its 8(a) and small disadvantaged business certifications, "and already," says Carolyn, "I can tell a difference."

Carolyn is at the plant by 6:00 most mornings. She doesn't usually load the trucks or run the machines anymore, but she hasn't forgotten what it was like, or how hungry she sometimes got. "I still bake cookies for my guys on the floor," she says.

"We've been really fortunate," she says, "to do some really unique and wonderful projects." She and her team have a lot of fun in the process, something she feels is paramount. "Having fun at work has always been a part of our company's values." But she's very serious about quality and service. At the end of every day, Carolyn says she asks herself two questions: "Did we do what we said we were going to do?" and "Was it what the customer wanted?"

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