Presidential Stairs
This company gets Trump into Air Force One,
but it needed a lift of its own.
It was months after Craig Kruckeberg acquired Eagan-based Stinar Corp. out of bankruptcy last year that he discovered the maker of passenger stairways and other ground support for airplanes was in deeper trouble than he originally knew.
The 70-year-old company has a cool factor in that it makes the stairways that the President of the United States uses to get down from Air Force One. That’s put Stinar products in the background of some of the world’s most famous images.
But Stinar was a mess, Kruckeberg said. Orders were two years behind their delivery date and the company was sometimes selling products at a loss of $20,000 apiece. Around 90 percent of the company’s business is government contracts.
“We’ve honored all the contracts and we are taking a beating,” he said. “In the meantime, we are going to build Stinar to be more efficient.”
Kruckeberg has the company on a turnaround plan, which includes moving manufacturing from Eagan to Blooming Prairie, where he operated his family’s truck fender business, Minimizer, for years before selling it in 2018. (Minimizer was a supplier to and was owed money by Stinar, which led to Kruckeberg’s acquisition of the firm.)
Of the 20 workers at Eagan, Kruckeberg said six are planning to make the move to the small town 85 miles south of Minneapolis. Three others decided to retire, and he is awaiting word from the other 11. He is offering employees who stay on additional compensation for their longer commutes, and he is helping the others find new jobs in the Twin Cities.
Kruckeberg said Stinar has always been known for its quality, but its service has suffered. He has hired contract engineers to redesign some of the products (for example, a water truck machine uses a pricey stainless steel tank when it could be using an approved plastic tank) and also plans to speed up production so that orders can be fulfilled in a matter of weeks, not months. But he also plans to raise prices because he said Stinar’s products are priced so low that competitors don’t even bother bidding against him.
“It’s not going to be quality and price anymore,” he said. “It’s going to be service and quality. So buckle up, boys, because prices are going up.”
In the year before Kruckeberg bought Stinar, the company reported $3.6 million in revenue, he said. For the following fiscal year, which wrapped up in the summer, revenue hit $4.3 million.
It will take more time to fix the company’s problems and Kruckeberg said he’s telling customers to be patient while he and his management team straighten things out. But he’s bullish about Stinar’s future.
“If I can’t sell this thing for $100 million in seven to 10 years, I messed up,” he said.