Back in 1983, Michael Rasner was walking into Mellen Elementary School in Wallace, Mich., in the Upper Peninsula, to start the fifth grade.
Fast forward 40 years and he's still showing up every day, but as the owner and CEO of Advanced Blending Solutions LLC, a manufacturer and designer of material handling, blending, desiccant drying and controls for the plastics industry.
The school closed in 2011, and ABS moved into the building in 2012. The company continues to grow in and around the former school, most recently investing $750,000 into an 8,000-square-foot outbuilding. ABS officials are considering their options for the outbuilding, including moving the research and development there and turning the R&D space, which is in the former school gym, into a showroom.
Rasner and the former Mellen school have come a long way over the decades.
"Mike fondly relates the story of when he bought the school. The first day he walked through the front door, he headed straight away to the old principal's office and went right to his corner. He said the forehead print was still on the wall," Brent Berquist, vice president of sales and marketing, joked in a phone interview.
Rasner went on to graduate from Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Mich., and become a manufacturing plant engineer who developed a gravimetric loss-in-weight blender that became the predecessor to the Simplicity line of products.
Now Rasner walks into his corporate office at ABS and oversees an evolving business with customers in the fiber, blown film, cast film, compounding, injection and blown molding markets.
"Last year was the largest sales we've had ever. This year is going to be about 20 percent more than that," Berquist said.
He chalks it up to organic growth and "being in at the right levels with the right companies."
"Even if inflation is up and there are negative economic factors, we're still providing tangible value with our technology and customer-centric approach to our customer base," Berquist said.
His office used to be a former colleague's second-grade homeroom. About a third of ABS' 117 employees also are Mellen school alumni. Rasner went there from 1977-84 for kindergarten through sixth grade.
"The people who went to school there and are now ABS employees love this area. The formative school years played an important role," Berquist said.
The company's end-of-summer LinkedIn post this year was a nod to the building's traditions and transformation with a back-to-school banner.
Now those classrooms and school offices are used for the engineering, purchasing, aftersales, human resources, accounting, project management and information technologies departments in addition to sales and marketing.
Early on, the classrooms were part of ABS production.
"When we moved here in 2012, we manufactured out of the school itself," Berquist said. "Each classroom was utilized for various manufacturing processes. We did knife gates in one, control panels in another, painting, etc. The gym was for assembly with the height we had there."
ABS then built a manufacturing facility on the former playground a few feet from the school, which became its offices with R&D in the gym.
"We can take a customer's material and test it here to make sure we have the correct solution for the equipment we're going to be building for the customer," Berquist said. "We do a lot of customer trials and testing in that lab, and we use it internally. That's where we come out with our new products to make a better mouse trap for the industry."
ABS has invested in three expansions in the last nine years, including $5 million in 2016-17 to add and equip 40,000 square feet of added space.
Also, in July 2020, ABS acquired Thoreson McCosh Inc., a desiccant dryers and auxiliary equipment maker in Troy, Mich., with plans to absorb the manufacturing into its headquarters campus in Wallace.
The new 8,000-square-foot outbuilding is part of efforts to expand again with the best use for the facility still being studied.
In the meantime, just like the first-day-of-school photos parents post on social media, ABS officials are sharing their growth story about reshaping their R&D space into a "hub of creativity where ideas flow freely and breakthroughs happen."
"The walls that once echoed with children's laughter now reverberate with the hum of innovation," a LinkedIn post says. "As we embrace this new academic year, we reflect on our journey, our growth and the endless possibilities that lie ahead. Here's to progress, learning and pushing boundaries together."