New In Print
Business Builders
Free Subscription
Upsize Minnesota is at the center of the local small-business community. We want to connect business owners
with the resources they need to build their companies, and share the best practices of fellow entrepreneurs.
Cover Stories
Go above and beyond for employees, they’ll do the same for you
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Read More
Doing it right
The catering company Chowgirls has about 50 full-time employees and another 150 who are seasonal. In its early days, the company functioned largely with an internally created technology system. But as it has grown, its technology needs have become more complex — and necessary — as keeping track of everything from staffing events to logging […]
Read More
Employees with equity
Schu Marketing Associates Inc. has been entirely employee owned since 2020 when founder Steve Schumacher decided to retire. He’d previously sold 30 percent of his shares to his workers in 2016. But the independent manufacturer’s representative that sells for the plumbing and building materials industries began its transition to employee ownership more than a decade […]
Read More
When you try sometimes …
As the name suggests, Owatonna-based Kamp Automation looks for customers with a process they’d like to automate. It could be a small, inconvenient, tiny part that people can’t assemble. It could be a high-volume product so needed that the customer can’t find enough labor to produce it in the necessary quantities. “We’ll work anywhere from medical device companies to the seed industry for corn and soybeans,” says Kent Patterson, co-founder, president and CEO. “We just jump all over wherever there is custom automation.” The company started in his garage. Patterson and his partners built a machine. The company started to grow to the point where now it has 48 employees — and had a bunch of people and stuff in different locations. “We went from a garage to a shop to a shop and just kept moving to new places and signing leases,” he says. “We got to a point where it’s like, OK, this is getting big enough and sustainable — we felt that we wanted to look for our own space.’”
Read MoreMultimedia
Mergers & Acquisitions | Club E | Upsize Mag | Mpls Club
Upsize MN and Club E: Managing Rapid Growth
