Concrete Growth

Concrete Growth

COMPANIES by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

A passion for power tools and a mind for inventing have led a father-son business team to the cusp of $10 million in annual revenues.

By mixing a heaping portion of inventiveness with a dose of old fashioned entrepreneurialism, Darrel Adamson and his son Brandon Adamson have built a near-international franchising system without even opening an actual franchise.

The story starts in the late 1980s, when the elder Adamson - a construction foreman and commercial concrete sawing expert by trade, but an inventor by heart - was tooling around with drilling equipment. He ultimately came up with a series of high-powered and precise tools that could be used to drill decorations and lettering into concrete floors and driveways.

But Darrel Adamson didn't want to just work on people's driveways; that was the type of life he was looking to leave. He also didn't want to run a corporate franchising businesses.

What Adamson wanted to do was build, market and sell the tools, equipment and training for doing the drilling work to an army of entrepreneurs. Those customers could then go forth and run their own independent businesses putting in new decorative concrete.

The business model, combined with the growing niche industry of decorative concrete, has turned the Adamson's Bradenton-based Engrave-A-Crete into a hardened success: What started in 1992 as a four-person family-run operation headquartered in Darrel Adamson's garage, has grown into a 20-person multimillion dollar business. Sales have grown 30% annually for each of the past four years and the company is approaching $10 million per year in revenues. The Adamsons declined to release specific sales figures.

Out of a long list of success factors behind Engrave-A-Crete, one stands out: The Adamson's ability to maintain an obsessive focus on doing one thing well - a common business principle that nonetheless many businesses struggle with.

"We don't dabble into other people's industries," Brandon Adamson says, "and that allows us to be the best at decorative engraving."

A tools menu

Engrave-A-Crete started as essentially an idea Darrel Adamson had while riding his motorcycle along Interstate 75 one sunny afternoon. There had to be a way, Adamson thought, to combine his knowledge of drilling and power tools with his desire to start a business where he could utilize his passion: Inventing and creating machines.

The business was born after a trial and error period inside Adamson's head, and then his workshop. The elder Adamson especially liked that he could build machines and run his own business at the same time. He adds: "I'm probably not employable by anyone but myself."

The Engrave-A-Crete system starts with tools that can cut patterns and designs into existing concrete. It's a process that combines penetrating acrylic or chemical acid with a unique diamond saw blade mounted in the engraving machine.

Contractors and installers using the Engrave-A-Crete machines can give new life to standard or cracked concrete by making it look like a series of new surfaces, such as brick, polished marble and cobblestone, the Adamsons say. The engraving can represent virtually any type of design, print or logo.

The Adamsons have invented several machines that do various parts of the cutting work; the machines are then built and put together by Engrave-A-Crete employees in the 20,000-square-foot Bradenton facility.

The next step is to sell the equipment. The Adamsons created a menu of choices, from buying a full set to purchasing items a la carte. The complete package comes with three major drilling machines, secondary tools such as a pressure washer and a vacuum and a 14-foot long trailer that stores everything. The trailer comes with painted logos displaying the product, too.

The full package costs just under $50,000. A ten-foot long trailer with fewer tools inside costs about $26,000 and individual tools can vary in cost from $4,000 to as much as $14,000.

Brandon Adamson says customers who buy the tools and machines are so diverse that there isn't a typical client, although many have a contracting or construction background. Some are retired executives, while others are looking to pick up a second job. Many customers come from Texas and California, two states where decorative engraving has become trendy the last few years.

New products, markets

The current roster of tools is a work in progress, Brandon Adamson says, as he and his father regularly look to improve what they already have.

That can be a costly process. Brandon Adamson recently spent about a year working on one of the company's newest tools, building two prototypes and improving it as he went along. That cost about $100,000 in research and development.

The creating side is still what drives the company, even as it's grown well past its start in Darrel Adamson's garage. "If there's not a tool doing what I think it should," says Brandon Adamson, essentially speaking for himself and his dad, "I'll redesign it."

And the Adamsons also realize that long-term growth will have to include products and markets past what they currently offer.

In products, the company recently began selling a private label of concrete stains and sealers, an item not sold in the full Engrave-A-Crete package, but one many customers have asked for. The Adamsons are opening a new facility in Mansfield, Mo., likely later this year, to handle demand and distribution of the bottled product. (See related story).

The Adamsons have moved slowly in the stains market, following their stick to what you do best rule. "We are very good at building tools made to cut concrete," Brandon Adamson says. "We are not chemists."

Likewise, the father-son team is moving deliberately into new markets, including going international. Brandon Adamson says the company is seeking distributors for the machines in Italy, among other overseas countries, and hopes to have an international partner within 10 months.

"We are driven and consumed by this," says Brandon Adamson. "It's been a wild experience."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business. Engrave-A-Crete, Bradenton

Industry. Home improvement, construction

Key. A business model that combines aspects of franchising with a growing niche in the business of decorative concrete has been a successful venture.

Engraving the town

Darrel Adamson would make a perfect regional economic cheerleader or Chamber of Commerce greeter.

But not in Bradenton, his home for the last 20 years and the headquarters for Engrave-A-Crete, the concrete engraving machinery company he founded. Instead, Adamson's heart is currently committed to tiny Mansfield, Mo., a town of about 1,500 people in the middle of the Ozarks, three hours southwest of St. Louis. That's the spot where Engrave-A-Crete is expanding its business, retrofitting an 85,000-square-foot abandoned shoe factory in the center of town into a distribution and training facility.

Indeed, Adamson's such a perfect fit for the town, he actually has taken on the job of Mansfield Area Chamber of Commerce president - after moving there only eight months ago to oversee the Engrave-A-Crete expansion project.

It's not that Adamson doesn't appreciate Bradenton. But Mansfield, he says, has several points that make it whole lot more business-friendly than Bradenton, such as land availability and low taxes.

And there are a few secondary and more emotional reasons Adamson chose Mansfield. He spent several years there as a child and his grandparents and several other relatives are buried there.

What's more, Mansfield, which Adamson says has a Mayberry-like appeal, was down in the dumps prior to Engrave-A-Crete's arrival. The town lost its only big employer a few years ago when the local steel plant moved jobs to China.

"I think we are doing really good things for this town," Adamson says. "There are a lot of things progressing and it's because we've come here and spent some money."

And Southwest Florida economic development groups - whose officials never have a shortage of ideas about why companies and business should move and expand on the Gulf Coast - could learn a lot from Mansfield. Adamson says high construction costs combined with cumbersome fees and regulations prevented him for expanding in the Bradenton area two years ago.

He chuckles when considering the difference between the Bradenton bureaucracy and Mansfield's easy process. "As quick as I can write a check," Adamson says, "I can get a building permit."

-Mark Gordon