ing, but it appears that they don’t want to pay very much for machined parts.” Fortunately, they had kept their jobs at the auto supplier and had not bet everything on the roll of the entrepreneur- ial dice. Looking for other work, they came across another
gearbox parts, drive-based parts and some wheels, shafts and just various parts for high school teams. The company had done the design work on the parts and was selling them to numerous teams all over the country and eventually all over the world.”
“We had a decent baseline of work to go ahead and try to make it on our own, sink or swim.”
local company, AndyMark Inc. It was C-E’s first step in diversification.
“[They] were involved in [supplying] high school robotics teams, and they were just starting out as well,” said Carney. “I was friends with the two engineers that started that com- pany. They also worked at the same supplier we did and they began to have us make parts for them. That was the biggest reason for us to start showing some growth early. We made
AndyMark became the Carney’s first core customer. The shop still works for them today. Other work followed, but not quite enough for the Carneys to take the risk yet of leaving their employer.
Impact of the Great Recession
By the time the Great Recession reached full force, how- ever, that employer, like many suppliers in the domestic auto