Static Success

Static Success

entrepreneurs by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Good thing Anthony Murfin doesn't listen to doubters. The former airplane mechanic's defiance toward nay-sayers has been the catalyst in launching a $3 million-plus flooring company.

Anthony Murfin's self-made entrepreneurial success story is ripe for Hollywood: He's a college dropout who, in his early 30s, left a secure job as an airplane mechanic to join a start-up business touting a new and unproven technology.

When Murfin felt stifled by the business owners, he ventured out on his own, against the advice of others. He took a $5,000 loan from his dad to get started - Murfin promised to pay it back within 90 days. His mom was his first employee.

He worked out of his living room for six months, stiff-arming his wife who wanted him to go out and get a "real job." (He eventually took a construction job, but only in the interests of maintaining marital happiness.)

Things were slow at first. So slow, Murfin often found himself in near panic over where the next sale would come from, or where he would scrounge up $400 for the next month's phone bill.

And when Murfin faced a difficult financial call, he chose the more risky decision, again against the advice of others who preached caution.

Murfin's risks and chances have paid off. So too has his dad's $5,000 investment. Murfin's Ground Zero Electrostatics, a Bradenton-based flooring company specializing in protecting surfaces from static electricity, had revenues of $2.3 million in 2006 and will likely finish 2007 at more than $3.5 million. Revenues have grown 75% since 2004.

The company has 28 employees in Florida and another 12 in Colorado City, Colo., where the company runs a 20,000-square-foot distribution and production plant. Murfin, again channeling a feel-good Hollywood story, chose the economically depressed southern Colorado town for the plant in 2003 simply because he grew up there.

What's more, Murfin also plans to expand in the Bradenton area, having outgrown the 2,000-square-foot office the company currently uses in a corporate park, a few miles from Manatee Community College. He's looking for an office connected to a warehouse, where he can store expensive and large equipment, such as $200,000 worth of construction and blasting tools he just bought.

Murfin, 45, styles Ground Zero as the be-all, end-all shop for businesses, governments or virtually any organization looking for a floor, either new construction or a replacement job. The company, unlike many others in the industry, Murfin says, does it all, from sales to installation to service. "My grand idea," Murfin says, "is to be the Wal-Mart of the electrostatic discharge industry."

'An electrostatic charge'

The industry, Murfin says, is one where many possible clients don't even know it exists, much less know about the potential of the products.

Essentially, the products sold by Ground Zero will protect against damage from electrostatic discharge, otherwise known as the charge between two entities that creates a spark. For example, Murfin says, friction, or separation of two materials, can cause an electrostatic charge of up to 35,000 volts. And it only takes 30 volts, the company says, to potentially destroy electronic components in a given area.

Murfin comes to the business initially through family friends, who, back in Colorado in the early 1990s, patented technology for a device that can be put on a computer screen to protect hardware against static electricity.

In 1993, the friends asked Murfin, then living in Florida, to be their East Coast salesman for the company, UltraStat, Inc.

Murfin hesitated. He was 31 years old and he was content in his $50,000-a-year airplane mechanic job. It beat his last line of work, roofing, and besides, he knew nothing about sales.

But Murfin gave it a shot, the first of a series of risks he would take over the next 10 years. It paid off. "The next thing I knew," says Murfin, "I sold out a case of the things."

The small business grew, as did Murfin's sales territory and his knowledge of the possibilities in the electrostatic discharge industry. A case of products, Murfin says, quickly turned into a truckload.

After a disagreement over sales commissions and corporate philosophy, Murfin left UltraStat. He decided to go into business for himself and in 1999 he officially opened Ground Zero. Using the loan from his dad, he developed new uses for the product and the concept, specifically in flooring.

Ground Zero now has a catalog of 3,700 products, many of those new ones Murfin and his staff created in response to customer needs. Those products include grounded wrist and mouse pads, as well as static conductive rubber matting made from recycled tires.

A 'little' gamble

Soon after Ground Zero was big enough to go from its founder's living room to an actual office, Murfin faced his first big decision: In 2000, the company had a chance to land a $400,000 project from electric manufacturing firm Jabil Circuit, which was seeking new flooring for 283,000 square feet in its St. Petersburg headquarters. Says Murfin: "We had never seen anything like that."

So much so that initially, Murfin couldn't even put the purchase order for materials through, as it was more than four times his company's current credit limit. Ground Zero's board of directors and Murfin's business consultants told him to pass on the project, reasoning the company was too small and a failure could put an end to whatever the company did have.

Murfin didn't listen. "Sometimes," he says, "you have to step out on a limb and gamble a little bit in order to grow."

The company successfully completed the job. It got around its credit limits, Murfin says, by doing the job one truckload at a time, only paying for what it could.

Jabil Circuit is now a regular customer; Ground Zero has installed more than one million square feet of flooring for the company, in facilities as far away as Mexico and Hungary.

Other Ground Zero customers are scattered throughout the country and world, including Garmin, Sweetbay Supermarkets, Nokia and NASA. For Garmin, Ground Zero is working on a contract for a project in the company's suburban Kansas City headquarters, while its crews are finishing another project in the GPS firm's Salem, Ore. plant.

Another Ground Zero client is Insulet Corp., a Bedford, Mass.-based medical device firm focusing on diabetes related products. Ground Zero crews put in a new floor for the company last year, says Insulet facilities manager Glenn Carter. The company needed a spotless and safe new floor in its "clean room," Carter says, to showcase to customers.

Ground Zero crews responded well to both a time crunch to get the second half of the project done as well as unforeseen problems in the foundation of the building, Carter says. "There was never an issue," he says, "where they put up their hands and said we can't do this."

Marketing drive

Murfin cites two important decisions he made over the last few years that has led to sustained growth.

First, he decided to divide the company into three divisions. The units are for electrostatic discharge (ESD) flooring; ESD products; and industrial coatings, which are sold under the Krypton Floorings banner.

Murfin and his staff also created an aggressive marketing campaign that literally brought the company's products to the floor of potential customers. One of the problems with UltraStat, Murfin learned, was that it didn't have any well-made marketing materials for wooing customers. Adds Murfin: "We had no business cards, no literature, nothing when we first started."

So Murfin developed a series of hardcover packets in binders, with glossy pages detailing Ground Zero products. His goal was to find markets he thought he could penetrate and then design the books specifically for those customers. That included creating materials for FAA airplane control towers and police and fire emergency call centers; cell phone and electronics manufacturers; graphic design and high-tech firms; and pharmaceutical and medical-oriented business, even hospitals.

The marketing drive is working. One recent new client is Motorola, for which Ground Zero is currently working on a $1.3 million project in a plant the company is building.

Goodbye Colorado, Hello Florida

Anthony Murfin's Florida relocation story is half typical, half-comedy.

In 1988, Murfin had just completed a two-year trade school program in aviation repair from Colorado AeroTech in Broomfield, Colo. A native of nearby Colorado City, Murfin had spent the past few years in roofing. And although he was doing well - he was running a 25-man crew by the time he was 19 years old - he had his fill of the grueling and dangerous work.

So after taking a few days off to celebrate his degree, Murfin planned on looking for work in his new field. He planned on remaining in Colorado, too.

But when Murfin stepped outside the next day, he saw that his 1985 Camaro had slipped off the driveway into the middle of the street. The car was now lying on a snow bank. The locks were frozen.

No more Colorado. Within a few hours, a frozen and frustrated Murfin had faxed his resume to several airport and airline maintenance companies in Florida. Five days later, he accepted a job offer at Dolphin Aviation, which runs an airplane hangar and repair service at the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport. He moved to the Sunshine State by the end of the week.

Murfin's move to Florida started off a chain of decisions that ultimately led to him founding Ground Zero Electrostatics, a Bradenton-based flooring company with more than $3 million in sales so far in 2007.

executive tip

After eight years of running his own business, Anthony Murfin, founder of Bradenton-based Ground Zero Electrostatics, has learned firsthand what many other entrepreneurs figure out at one point: Access to cash is a constant priority.

Murfin's solution? Be aggressive. Up until the past year, for example, his credit limit with one line at M & I bank hadn't exceeded $30,000.

But Murfin recently worked out a deal with the bank to up the credit line to $250,000 - even though he doesn't have an immediate need to access the money. "I'm not going to wait until I need the money," Murfin says. "I'm going to go to them when things are good and get even more money."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Industry. Flooring

Business. Ground Zero Electrostatics

Key. Firm's niche in the flooring industry is in protecting buildings and any sensitive equipment against discharges from static electricity.

AT A GLANCE

Ground Zero

Electrostatics

Year Revenue Growth

2004 $1.72 million -

2005 $1.86 million 8%

2006 $2.32 million 24%

2007 $3.01 million* 30%

*(through Aug. 15)