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Business Profiles
Relevance, reimagined.
Step inside the heavy glass doors of the Pfeil Innovation Center, and instantly you are greeted with a softly backlit wet bar in elegant shades of plum and black, accented by tasteful paintings and wall sculptures. A tempting array of display cases stocked with colorful food items invites you to step around the room for a close reading of the explanatory captions.
An intriguing assortment of books, props and familiar household objects on bookshelves awaits further exploration. Smooth jazz music plays quietly in the background.
South Bend company shows spectacular growth
By the time David Huber was ready to retire from Imagineering Finishing Technologies, the company he founded in 1959, F. James Hammer already had plans. Hammer had risen rapidly through a succession of management positions and understood the dynamics of running the day-to-day operations.
South Bend company is poised for growth
The bold, angular “G” tipped on its side, affixed to an odd collection of buildings along south Main Street in South Bend, is a positive sign.
It’s a sign that those buildings, bought one at a time as the local company has expanded, prove there’s still plenty of life ahead for the local business as it nears its 90th birthday.
General Sheet Metal Works, founded in 1922 originally as a supplier for the legendary Studebaker auto manufacturer, is alive and well.
And growing.
South Bend company’s global connections get a boost
Valued as much for its gently rolling topography as for its immediate access to the regional airport, the Indiana Toll Road and a major U.S. bypass, the 5,281-acre Blackthorn Development Area on South Bend’s far-northwestside was initially created to make South Bend better able to compete for new office complexes, warehouse and light industrial development.
Stanz Foodservice: Staying power
The website alone is a feast of succulent images and the implied promise of equally luscious flavors: a chorus line of diaphanous citrus slices tumbles across a backlit scrim; cucumber coins sport fluffy dollops of creamy garnish; an elegant cheese-and-fruit platter sits poised next to wine glasses.
As the images appear and fade and reappear, small banners move in to proclaim simple messages.
Peoplelink: Connecting the right people with the right jobs
For Jay Wilkinson, president and CEO of South Bend-based Peoplelink Staffing Solutions, convincing people to relocate and take a job in the region comes easy.
Growing business from the floor up
Peter Brändström knows a good thing when he sees it.
In this case, that “good thing” — the combination of specialized manufacturing, a centralized national location and favorable proximity to partners and customers — happens to be in South Bend.
Downtown. Unchained.
It’s dinnertime in South Bend, and everybody’s hungry. Do you choose a chain restaurant just like the ones you can find in nearly any city, or do you opt for one of the locally owned, one-of-a-kind restaurants?
For the growing number of restaurants joining the newly formed downtown dining association of South Bend, the owners are betting that many people would choose the latter option.
Small ... and growing
While it probably doesn’t rank very high on any infant’s list of favorite hospital experiences, the familiar “heel stick” blood-draw, routinely performed 48 to 96 hours after birth, has saved countless lives by screening newborns for a host of metabolic disorders.
Green. Sustainable. New.
On a sunny, windswept day in March — the kind of day Charles Dickens once described as summer in the sunlight and winter in the shade — the dry brown stalks on the fields of JFNew’s native plant nursery in Walkerton bear little resemblance to the luscious greenery pictured on the company’s website.
Nexus RV: direct to your driveway
It’s a good thing Claude Donati and Dave Middleton didn’t heed the conventional wisdom about the direction of the RV industry.
Had they looked at drooping RV sales figures, or listened to the doomsayers who proclaimed the industry all but deceased, they might not have established their startup, Nexus RV, at Innovation Park at Notre Dame. Tapping the intellectual resources available at Innovation Park, they developing a strategic game plan for a whole new RV enterprise rooted in the pioneering concept of building and selling motor homes from the same facility.
‘Data centers will have to morph’
The building at 6561 Lonewolf Drive all but leaps off its perch at the crest of a hollow, a Jules-Verne-meets-Willie-Wonka-esque meld of sweeping curvilinear planes and jutting angles, defying you to tear your eyes away.
Tire Rack: Started here, staying here
If you can’t figure out how to buy the right tire for your vehicle after checking out the Tire Rack website, you just aren’t trying.
The online retailer of name-brand performance tires and accessories to consumers and to other retailers spells out everything for all who log in. There’s something for everyone, from the novice buying snow tires for the first time, to the enthusiast who stays current on all the latest trends.
Turning inspiration into reality
Using nanotechnology equipment in the Stinson-Remick Hall of Engineering, University of Notre Dame professor Gary Bernstein is working to perfect a technology that sounds more like something you’d buy at a Mennonite relief sale than something you’d find at the heart of a groundbreaking technology.
Award-winning Chocolate Café enlivens downtown
You’re on the phone discussing complex issues with a client, and the two of you soon realize a face-to-face meeting is in order. You need a location that is centrally located, has ample parking space, and — oh yes — happens to have a dizzying display of freshly made chocolates on hand.
You know, just in case your client has a hankering for something sinfully sweet, locally made and distinctive to the city of South Bend.
No question about it, you’ll hold your meeting at the South Bend Chocolate Co. Chocolate Café.
RemSense hopes to engage students in STEM disciplines
With her extensive background in teaching students with disabilities, Gina Anderson recognized that it is more effective for people to learn when the lesson is tied to situations to which they can relate.
Lake Michigan Mailers finds business community ‘a breath of fresh air’
When David Rhoa was looking to expand his business to a second location, he did his homework, researching various cities in a three-state area.
It didn’t take him long to conclude that South Bend would be the ideal spot.
A leading provider of document creation, mail assembly, mail processing, presorting, data management, digital marketing and distribution services, Lake Michigan Mailers had been located in Michigan since its beginnings in 1977 and headquartered in Kalamazoo, Mich., since 1999.
Weiss Homes: Selling well
To look at the lovely, traditional-looking homes clustered along a tree-lined street close to downtown, it’s hard to believe that a little more than a year ago, most of them were still in the final stages of construction.
Today, less than a year after the last home was finished, Notre Dame Avenue Homes are completely sold out.
While that may not be the typical scenario for the rest of the housing market, for Dave Weiss, soft-spoken owner and CEO of Weiss Homes, it’s very much business as usual.
Strong schools + business involvement = success
On a mild September afternoon, crowds have gathered on a sunlit blacktop to cheer on their favorite teams of 20 people from area businesses – some attired in superhero garb – engaged in a game of tug-of-war.
At the other end of the rope hulks an 80,000-lb. semi truck emblazoned with the Towne Air Freight logo on its side.
Employees put Mack Tool & Engineering on top
When Mack Tool & Engineering began 22 years ago in South Bend, the sky literally was not the limit.
That’s because its first customers were in the aerospace industry.
“My dad always ran other people’s machine shops very successfully,” says Paul Hartz, president of the company. “I was a junior at Purdue when I got a call from my mother saying, ‘Your dad wants to mortgage the house and start a machine shop!’ We started off doing aerospace work, and this led to other niches.”
Emu Solutions, LLC: Eliminating data ‘bottlenecks’ on microprocessors
As microprocessors have gotten faster, and as computer chip companies place more and more processors on a single “multi-core” chip, a bottleneck has developed that clogs the flow of data between processors and memory.
Emu is developing innovative solutions for reducing or eliminating the data bottleneck through their proprietary “Enhanced Memory Utilization (Emu)” hardware and software technology.
Apprentice Academy fills a gap
Steve Hartz was frustrated that many job applicants were unqualified and lacked even basic skills for openings at his company, Value Tool and Engineering, Inc. in South Bend.
So he decided to do something about it.
New Carbon Co. thrives in South Bend
When managers at the New Carbon Co. began looking for a new home about 10 years ago, they found an ideal building in South Bend.
Corporate profile: Heraeus Kulzer
It has been a little more than two years ago since Heraeus Kulzer, a leading provider of aesthetic veneers and other dental products, was nearing a decision about consolidating two of its plants.One was in Westchester County, north of New York City. The other was in South Bend at the former Bayer Dental Lab facilities, which Heraeus Kulzer purchased about 20 years ago.
