“We need to find new opportunities, and that requires a new building and people, but I guarantee we’ll do that in Geauga County.” – Scott Sapita
When ITW Polymer Castings of Chardon closed its doors in 2009, Scott Sapita panicked.
It was the start of the Great Recession and businesses were failing everywhere — and his main supplier was one of them.
Ten years later, his BaseTek LLC in Burton Township has turned out more than 10,000 vibration-dampening polymer base plates for industrial equipment and the company is the market leader in North America, Sapita said July 12.
He has traveled a long and winding road to delivering a successful business, so it’s a good thing Sapita likes to keep moving.
During the Geauga Growth Partnership business breakfast on his shop floor, Sapita reviewed his checkered history, starting with salvaging 10-speed bikes in Boston as a boy to working for a lumber company as a teen, going to college at the University of Dayton and taking a summer mentorship program at Duriron Company, now Flowserve Corporation, a maker of industrial pumps.
“I learned more about business than pumps,” he said.
Sapita spent several after graduation setting up an ACE store for the lumber company, where he developed a love for small business. He then took the Duriron job.
“I absolutely hated my job,” he said.
It entailed working in a cubicle and tracking competitors’ stock prices by leafing through stacks of Wall Street Journals in the 1990s, before the Internet made that kind of grunt work unnecessary, he recalled.
“I was pretty miserable for a couple of years. Then they put me in sales and I loved it. I had a chance to go out and learn,” Sapita said, recommending anyone wanting to be an entrepreneur should lean those skills before striking out.
“After 10 or 12 years with Flowserve, I still had that itch. I wanted to go back and do something small,” he said.
Flowserve offered him a distributor line in Richmond, Va., but Sapita knew Cleveland and didn’t want to relocate his family, so he took a job with another pump company in Dayton serving three states.
“I was driving everywhere and getting orders,” he explained.
At the Great Lakes Industrial Show in Cleveland, in 2001, Sapita had a booth, trying to bring in more business. He displayed a picture of a pump mounted on a base plate — and it changed his life.
“Justin Sly walks up behind me and asks, ‘Did you ever think of making base plates out of polymer?’” he recalled.
Sly was working inside sales at ITW and urged Sapita to come visit.
It turned out ITW had the tooling, but didn’t want to enter the market directly.
“They said, ‘We can make them if you can sell them,’” Sapita said.
ITW agreed to make them, but only if the pair would buy them.
“I didn’t have two dimes to rub together,” Sapita said, but they got an order at a Houston pump show and, with a little website, were off and running.
“We sold more than 400 base plates in the first year,” he said.
Sly and Sapita had their issues with ITW. Getting items timely shipped, meeting their customers’ needs and keeping their momentum were all part of the picture.
By 2009, they had become one of ITW’s largest customers, but it was an uncomfortable relationship. Their business was growing despite ITW’s push-back.
“We were having fun. After eight years we had grown the business,” Sapita said, adding they had placed about 9,000 custom base plates in the field.
But it was no bed of roses.
“There were a lot of growing pains, trying to run a business we had no control over,” Sapita said. “All I wanted to do was grow the business.”
Then the world changed — again.
“Justin called. They were closing ITW,” he said.
Sapita shared his panic with Sly over a few beers at Mangia, Mangia in Newbury Township, finally asking themselves if they were in a position to start manufacturing the base plates themselves.
They agreed they were passionate about their company and Sapita loved making things. They had the customer base and most of the knowledge they needed, and ITW would sell the equipment. ITW employees also might be available for hire.
The question was, Where to open shop?
They approached Newbury Business Park owner Chuck White about leasing 8,000 square feet of industrial space.
“I told him, ‘We’ll be good tenant and I promise I’ll pay the rent on time,’” Sapita remembered. “Chuck looked at me and said, ‘So you say.’ But we paid the rent on time and Chuck was a phenomenal part of our success. He was great to us.”
When BaseTek outgrew that space in a couple of years, White helped them find the property on White Road in Burton Township. With help from former GGP CEO Tracy Jemison, the deal went through.
“Tracy got everybody together in the county offices,” Sapita said, and it only took six months to fund the project and get it rolling.
The Mullett Company of Newbury broke ground in November 2012 and raised the building in record time.
Since then, the partners have added to the building and are out of space. If they expand their market, they will need to find a second location. However, they won’t be leaving the area.
“We need to find new opportunities, and that requires a new building and people, but I guarantee we’ll do that in Geauga County,” Sapita said.
