Starbuck Machining has been chosen by the SBDC as the West Michigan Region’s Best Small Business of 2013
When Rich Starbuck contacted the West Michigan Region SBDC for help with a business plan in 2000, he didn’t know he’d be beginning a working relationship that would last through all stages of his business’s growth. For two years Starbuck and his SBDC consultant, Dave Sayers, worked on a business plan that would allow him to receive the financing needed to purchase an existing machine shop’s assets and start his own.
On the day Starbuck Machining opened in April of 2002, owner Rich Starbuck recalls running machines as fast as they could get them started.
“We literally moved our first machine into the shop, hooked it up and had somebody run it while we went and got the next one,” Rich laughs. Since that day twelve years ago, both the staff and the machine equipment at Starbuck Machining have never stopped moving, and never stopped growing.
Since this Holland, MI based business opened Rich Starbuck and his son Aaron Starbuck have grown Starbuck Machining from six employees to twenty-seven, and currently have $3 million in sales. Starbuck Machining manufactures products for the agriculture, aquatic, automotive, electronic, security and oil industries, and are government sub-contractors of military armor. Most of their sales come from within Michigan, but they are beginning to do business in other states as well. (more…)