Wendell August Forge enlisted SEWN's help in the spring of 2009 with its financial restructuring services. Read SEWN's success story on Wendell August Forge.
By Deborah M. Todd / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The week that Grove City metalcrafter Wendell August Forge celebrated winning the largest orders in its 90-year history was almost the same week it mourned its demise.
In March 2010 -- fresh off of six-figure deals with the Pittsburgh Penguins and Robert Morris University -- the handcrafted metal company's flagship store and workshop burned to the ground. In about an hour, millions of dollars in equipment and materials housed at the Exton location since 1934 were reduced to embers on the collapsed factory's floor. The fire, which started in a ventilation fan being used by workers applying lacquer to products, was ruled accidental.
Three years after what typically is a death blow for small businesses, Wendell August Forge has upped its workforce from a team of 70 to 120, struck distribution deals with 600 stores nationwide and broken ground on a new facility behind Grove City Premium Outlets. The new location, which is scheduled to open this fall, puts the company in the sights of more than 6 million shoppers who hit the outlet mall every year.
Add a comment By Marco Trbovich, Vice President of Strategic Communications for Tricom Associates
President Obama’s Special Assistant and Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, Jonathan Greenblatt, joined capital stewards, pension fund managers and other investors at the Heartland Economic Impact Investment Forum: Washington, D.C., the sixth of such forums since 2012. Sponsored by Heartland Capital Strategies (HCS), the forum focused on the need to rebuild the built environment of our cities and to revitalize the nation’s industrial commons.
In addition to providing market-competitive returns and minimizing risk, “Economic Impact Investments” result in community prosperity through the growth of good jobs, innovative enterprises and a more resilient built environment. Heartland fosters a “Community of Practice” for Economic Impact Investments (EII), and this network has invested successfully for decades in Washington, D.C. and around the country. These innovative fund managers and capital stewards came together in 2012 under the banner of Heartland’s Responsible Investment (RI) Forums to re-build cities hit hard by the recession.
The challenge of pursuing a more sustainable built environment in the nation’s capital was the focus of the forum’s opening panel, moderated by Leanne Tobias, President of Malachite LLC.
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An Interview with Tom Croft, Executive Director of the Steel Valley Authority; Suzanne Smethers, President & Founder of Inteprod; and Senator Bob Mensch, PA's 24th Senatorial District, which appeared in the November, 2012 "The Mensch Report", on the Strategic Early Warning Network (SEWN) Program and the SVA.
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This Centre County company engineers, designs, and manufactures drilling machinery for the mining industry. Specifically, the Company’s production includes a series of truck mounted drilling platforms, a full line of tractor and self-propelled based drilling equipment and support vehicles for those products.
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