Mr. McConnell: Art's Way was started in 1956 by a farmer in Armstrong, Iowa, who incidentally just recently passed away. He started the company to make a grinder mixer that he invented, and it became quite popular; the grinder mixers built up and within about 10 years, he was making 10,000 of these a year. Just as a sideline, the current market is about 300 a year in the United States, so it has shrunk quite a bit over the years. The company went public approximately 30 years ago. Then the grinder mixer market began to shrink and eventually, about 10 years ago, Art's Way got into some financial difficulty. And then I came on board eight years ago.
It's always made farm machinery. And in the eight years I have been here, I've taken it through a couple of acquisitions. One was in Dubuque, Iowa, to make pressure vessels and heat exchangers, and another one was in Monona, Iowa, to make modular laboratories. And then in 2008 we went to Salem, S.D., and started a small company to make grain augers. And most recently, a month ago, we bought another factory building in West Union, Iowa, a 190,000-square-foot building. We're very much in an expansion mode at this time in our life, and we're trying to grow it larger as reasonably as we can with some borrowed money but also retained earnings and so on. It has been successful. In addition to the acquisitions, we also buy additional product lines, and we move them into one of our facilities. They may be some divestiture that doesn't any longer fit the big people in the farm equipment business. For example, in January we bought a product line of manure spreaders from a company called Roda in Hull, Iowa, and brought it into our facility in Armstrong. This was after buying another one a couple of years ago called Miller Pro out of Wisconsin. That's another way we're growing these days.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ARTW
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.