🔒Maine Manufacturing grows on “The Little Red Hen” lesson

Framed in a shadow box in Bill Emhiser's office is a copy of Little Golden Book's “The Little Red Hen.”

Emhiser, president of Maine Manufacturing in Sanford, points to the book by way of explaining his entrepreneurial philosophy.

“Do you know the story of the Little Red Hen?” he asks a visitor, summarizing the account of the industrious hen who planted wheat and tended her crop despite the derision of her barnyard pals. She invited each detractor to join her in tilling the garden, harvesting the wheat and thrashing the grain, but none accepted. In the end, the Little Red Hen used the flour to make bread and ate well while the others went hungry.

“That's my entrepreneurial philosophy,” he says. “If you join us as an employee, or vendor, or whatever, you'll have bread in the end. You have to do the work, but at the end, you can sit down at the table and enjoy your reward.”

Those rewards have allowed the five-year-old company to grow from five employees in 2009 to more than 175 today. The company, which designs, develops and makes specialty filtration products primarily for medical and biological laboratories, recently acquired a division and a product line of GE Healthcare. With that purchase came 500 retail customers, thrusting Maine Manufacturing from its exclusively business-to-business market into a business-to-consumer world.

“We knew we needed to diversify and add new customers,” says Emhiser. “This was attractive because it gave us a base of new customers and we could apply the technology we were already developing.”

Mainebiz chatted recently with Emhiser; the following is an edited transcript.

Mainebiz: Can you tell me a little more about what you do here?

Emhiser: We have two divisions: an R&D department where we research new ways to apply filtration technology, and a manufacturing division where we make custom devices. If you take one of our products [he holds a device that looks like a tiny Starship Enterprise] and open it up, there will be a membrane inside that can be used in multiple life science applications, such as separating proteins from nucleic acids. Most of our customers are scientific laboratories or diagnostics labs.

M: Your purchase of the GE Healthcare division puts you into new retail markets. How do you split your resources between B2B and B2C?

E: In terms of research and development, we support both, but a little more tilted to B2B. Over time, I expect they will be equally balanced. In terms of our energy, it's just about half and half. The dust hasn't settled yet [from acquiring the buisness-to-consumer division], but in the broad sense, a 50/50 mix is ideal, with each side augmenting the other.

M: What's your development plan?

E: We're focusing on growing the business with the existing customer base and bringing in more customers to that pool, especially in the B2B side. We want to develop [those relationships] further so that if a customer wants something bigger and we're already supplying them with another product we can build from here. We want the development capabilities as well as the long-term manufacturing capabilities.

M: Are all your products custom made?

E: Yes, and that's why we think we can build a longer-term partnership. You can't just switch

like you can tires from Bridgestone to Goodyear.

M: What are your growth goals?

E: By the end of 2014, we expect to see 15-20% growth annually, all of it organic, not including acquisitions.

M: Do you have a stash of “The Little Red Hen” books?

E: We do! We've used them very effectively, even handing them out to our banker and the company providing our benefits. We're confident if you join us and work hard, there will be rewards.