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Framed by stainless steel tubing, Douglas Gore, vice president of sales for KVA Stainless, holds a prototype bicycle made from the company's super-strong, lightweight stainless steel. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / September 14, 2009) |
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The e-mail from an executive at Ford Motor Co. was blunt and direct.
"I do not have any interest in pursuing anything," the official wrote one of the company's parts developers in Escondido earlier this year, as the auto industry was sliding into a historic meltdown.
That was how tiny KVA Stainless Inc., a 5-year-old start-up working to develop lightweight, gas-saving stainless-steel components for Ford, got dumped and how it found a new direction on the shop floor.
The e-mail presented a challenge for KVA founder Ed McCrink, an 88-year-old entrepreneur whose long career included developing other steel businesses and a smoke alarm company. Small businesses with one main product and one customer need to be prepared when the market changes or the customer looks elsewhere.
McCrink found a new use for the company's stainless-steel piping in an even older transportation industry: bicycles. And the company is also exploring the possible use of stainless-steel tubing for golf clubs, lacrosse sticks and other sporting goods.
Bicycles have a long history with steel, but in recent years, the industry has gravitated to aluminum and carbon fibers as the main frame materials because of their light weight.
Luckily for McCrink and his family business, the bicycle industry is discovering that new formulations of stainless steel can be light enough and more durable for frame construction.
KVA has a patented method of turning rolls of stainless steel into tubing used by the builders of custom bicycles.
"Even when we were working with the auto industry, I always thought that bicycles would be a smaller but worthwhile avenue to pursue," McCrink said.
The change in strategy already is paying off for the five-employee business.
Earlier this year, KVA began shipping high-grade stainless-steel tubing to Reynolds Technology Ltd., the British firm that has supplied bicycle frame materials for more than a century.
In the coming months, KVA will begin selling its own MS2 branded stainless-steel tubes to a small but influential group of craftspeople who make bicycle frames by hand that sell for as much as $5,000.
David Bohm, a Tucson bicycle builder known for intricate work such as inlaying mother-of-pearl into his frames, is already working with prototype KVA tubing.
"I am fairly confident this will be good, but nothing beats time to see how it works," Bohm said.
McCrink said the sporting-goods industry also is ripe for the introduction of the type of lightweight stainless steel his company fabricates into tubing and other parts.
KVA is working on developing steel lacrosse sticks, steel golf club shafts and tubing for wheelchair manufacturers. It has already met with several major lacrosse companies and golf industry executives.
"I think these guys have a good shot at the golf market," said Dick De La Cruz of Carlsbad, a golf club designer and former executive at both Callaway Golf Co. and Goldwin Golf Inc.
Stainless steel enables designers to take weight out of the shaft of the club and redistribute it to the head to change the performance, he said.
"That's the quest in golf today: lighter and stronger," De La Cruz said.
KVA owns a patented method of creating tubes from large rolls of flat stainless steel that becomes harder with heating and cooling. The company shapes the flat metal into a tube and carefully controls the cooling when the seam of the tube is welded. This prevents the cracking and weakness that previously was a problem.
"I do not have any interest in pursuing anything," the official wrote one of the company's parts developers in Escondido earlier this year, as the auto industry was sliding into a historic meltdown.
That was how tiny KVA Stainless Inc., a 5-year-old start-up working to develop lightweight, gas-saving stainless-steel components for Ford, got dumped and how it found a new direction on the shop floor.
The e-mail presented a challenge for KVA founder Ed McCrink, an 88-year-old entrepreneur whose long career included developing other steel businesses and a smoke alarm company. Small businesses with one main product and one customer need to be prepared when the market changes or the customer looks elsewhere.
McCrink found a new use for the company's stainless-steel piping in an even older transportation industry: bicycles. And the company is also exploring the possible use of stainless-steel tubing for golf clubs, lacrosse sticks and other sporting goods.
Bicycles have a long history with steel, but in recent years, the industry has gravitated to aluminum and carbon fibers as the main frame materials because of their light weight.
Luckily for McCrink and his family business, the bicycle industry is discovering that new formulations of stainless steel can be light enough and more durable for frame construction.
KVA has a patented method of turning rolls of stainless steel into tubing used by the builders of custom bicycles.
"Even when we were working with the auto industry, I always thought that bicycles would be a smaller but worthwhile avenue to pursue," McCrink said.
The change in strategy already is paying off for the five-employee business.
Earlier this year, KVA began shipping high-grade stainless-steel tubing to Reynolds Technology Ltd., the British firm that has supplied bicycle frame materials for more than a century.
In the coming months, KVA will begin selling its own MS2 branded stainless-steel tubes to a small but influential group of craftspeople who make bicycle frames by hand that sell for as much as $5,000.
David Bohm, a Tucson bicycle builder known for intricate work such as inlaying mother-of-pearl into his frames, is already working with prototype KVA tubing.
"I am fairly confident this will be good, but nothing beats time to see how it works," Bohm said.
McCrink said the sporting-goods industry also is ripe for the introduction of the type of lightweight stainless steel his company fabricates into tubing and other parts.
KVA is working on developing steel lacrosse sticks, steel golf club shafts and tubing for wheelchair manufacturers. It has already met with several major lacrosse companies and golf industry executives.
"I think these guys have a good shot at the golf market," said Dick De La Cruz of Carlsbad, a golf club designer and former executive at both Callaway Golf Co. and Goldwin Golf Inc.
Stainless steel enables designers to take weight out of the shaft of the club and redistribute it to the head to change the performance, he said.
"That's the quest in golf today: lighter and stronger," De La Cruz said.
KVA owns a patented method of creating tubes from large rolls of flat stainless steel that becomes harder with heating and cooling. The company shapes the flat metal into a tube and carefully controls the cooling when the seam of the tube is welded. This prevents the cracking and weakness that previously was a problem.
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