Today we’d like to introduce you to Parker Bender.
Hi Parker, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Finishing school at the University of Nebraska in 2008, I started my first ‘Real Job’ at a Fortune 500, only to be downsized six months later. Nobody was hiring, so I began doing whatever I could come up with to survive. I was roofing, I had a small recording studio, and I started fixing cars in my garage. This became a hangout for my cousin and our friends who all worked on the Quarter-Scale tractor team at UNL. Instead of working on the project at school, the efforts kindof migrated to my 30’x40′ garage, which led to the acquisition of our first old, orange-screen, 1992 vintage cnc machine. Following this, slowly walk-in cnc work started to appear and at the end of the year, it appeared to be a viable alternative to roofing, and at a much more pleasant temperature, so I shifted all of my focus to that. The first full time year in the garage things looked promising, but then that antique machine quit. After some financial gymnastics I managed to get myself in a whole heap of debt, buy two new machines, and move to a commercial space. That took me ten years to get back on my feet. For that period of time I moved out of my house, and lived in my office at work, and basically all of the time I was awake, making something.
In about 2011 a friend forwarded me a contact that they met on an internet forum, who was looking to make performance automotive parts. We ended up getting along, and we were the exclusive manufacturer for that company until 2017. At that time, the owner decided to move on, and offered me the opportunity to purchase the company outright.
At that time the ‘Company’ consisted of 10 SKU’s. Once I took over, I leaned heavily into growing that business and as the DTC performance automotive business grew, we reduced the custom manufacturing we did, until we completely got out of it, and now just make our own product line that we sell direct to consumer through our website and a few smaller ’boutique’ distributors.
Now we have 419 SKU’s and counting, with 7 employees in our 30,000 sq ft facility we moved into in 2021. We are ‘farm-to-table’ for racecar parts, designing, manufacturing, assembling, shipping, all in house. We even make our own packaging and print our own instructions and labels.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The debt load that we had right in the beginning nearly killed the business, many times. There were several years with no employees because I couldn’t afford to pay anyone, including myself. Also, getting marketshare in already congested markets is a struggle that we still deal with. Lastly, financial help really held us back. Even after all of our debt was paid off and we were net positive, we had a difficult time for many years finding a lender. When trying to purchase our current space, we went to several banks with the cash to pay for the building outright, and just wanted a loan so we could save some back for operating, and we got turned down by many institutions. Finally a smaller local bank, Great American Bank believed in us, and for the past few years, everything has been great!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
It’s kindof a blend of everything. We are a corporation, but I am an employee of the corporation, I do boss things, but I also design parts, and even do the graphic design on our Black Friday ads, and promotional products. When looking at this list of roles/entities, I thought ‘yup’ to every one, so I responded Other.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Be aware, Having done music and now car stuff, things I really loved, once you make it your source of income it changes. People always say ‘do what you love’ and maybe I agree, but you won’t love it the same way after it is your job. It’s still fun and challenging and rewarding, and I don’t know if I could find a better job. But whether you are setting up a band to record in your attic, or revising a belt tensioner for a drag racing car, it isn’t the same as when you were doing it with your buddies on a Friday night. Customers, deadlines, expenses, disappointments. Just be ready for that. It’s not bad, but it surprised me. And everything ends up costing more than you expect it to. Don’t start with ‘just enough’ to get by, or that will probably turn out poorly. Coming from a person who ran a business on ‘just enough’ for almost 15 years, I am sure it took years off.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aadperformance/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aadperformance522
