CLAY — O’Brien & Gere may be best known locally as an engineering firm, but the company’s manufacturing operations account for 10 percent of its revenue and sales in that business are growing.

O’Brien & Gere produces industrial furnaces and other heat-treating systems used in industries like aerospace, defense, automotive, energy, and health care. The firm relocated its manufacturing unit from a site in Fayetteville to a 160,000-square-foot location in the town of Clay late last year.

The new space is actually slightly smaller than the old building, but the floor plan is wide open and flexible. O’Brien & Gere also added overhead cranes, a paint booth, and other upgrades that will allow it to handle the growth it sees ahead in manufacturing, says Stephen Palin, senior vice president for O’Brien & Gere’s Denton TSI brand of furnace and heat treating-systems.

Manufacturing sales rose 40 percent in 2011 and are projected to jump 50 percent this year, Palin says. O’Brien & Gere spent about $3 million of its own money on upgrading the new manufacturing space, he adds, and received no government incentives or other aid for the project.

The Clay site is a better location for much of the facility’s work force, Palin says. Many of the employees in the manufacturing unit come from the North Country, so it’s an easier drive than Fayetteville. About 80 people work at the Clay plant, which is located on Morgan Road and formerly was the home of Rollway Bearing. 

O’Brien & Gere employs another 320 people at its headquarters in downtown Syracuse. The firm, which generated 

$200 million in revenue in 2011, has 850 employees at 30 offices nationwide.

“We see this as one of the fastest growing parts of our business,” O’Brien & Gere CEO James Fox says of manufacturing. “It’s a differentiator for us.”

That’s because O’Brien & Gere provides the electronics that control its furnaces and material-handling technologies that load
them as well. The company gives its customers a complete system, rather than just pieces, Fox notes.

Much of the work involves crafting highly customized equipment to deal with specific metals at high temperatures, he adds.

The firm’s customers use its equipment to manufacture items like bearings, wind- turbine blades, and even replacement hips. The manufacturing unit also produces air quality products and the new facility includes a lab for testing wastewater treatment technologies.

Manufacturing projects range in size from $300,000 to $10 million, Palin says.

O’Brien & Gere’s manufacturing business has traditionally been focused on the Northeast, but that’s changed with the addition of a national sales manager, Palin says. O’Brien & Gere is now pushing its products into Texas, the Pacific Northwest, and California.

And the industries the company serves are here for the long haul, Fox adds. High-value work in sectors like aerospace seems to be returning to the U.S., he says.

Customers for the manufacturing unit include firms like GE and Pratt & Whitney.

O’Brien & Gere’s manufacturing business began in 1994 when it acquired Denton Refractory. 

The company relocated its headquarters to downtown Syracuse from suburban DeWitt in 2010. It occupies three floors of the six-story Washington Station building at 333 W. Washington St.

SYRACUSE — Mohawk Global Logistics is expanding its Buffalo sales office into a full-service branch.

The shipping-logistics firm has added four new employees to the location with the expansion. Previously, Mohawk Global had two salespeople in that office.

The site will now offer local import and export businesses a complete set of logistics services, including customs brokerage, international and domestic transportation, warehousing and distribution, and trade consulting. Mohawk Global, based in Syracuse, has additional offices in the Rochester, Albany, and Chicago areas.

The company employs more than 85 people, including 55 in Syracuse.

Demand from clients drove the expansion to a full Buffalo branch, says Sherie Cuddy, the regional manager for Mohawk Global who is overseeing that location. The company sees strong growth potential in the Buffalo market and expects to add more people to the office in the future, she adds.

In addition to the sales office, the company has been offering free global trade seminars in Buffalo for the past three years to help educate the business community on issues related to import and export compliance.

Mohawk Global opened its Buffalo sales office in 2008. It already had a customer base in the market, even before opening there.

The market was a good one for the firm since it is close to Toronto, a major gateway for international shipping, according to the company.

Buffalo was the final piece to Mohawk Global’s upstate New York footprint. The firm began expanding outside New York last year with the opening of a Chicago office.

The company already had clients outside the region, but Chicago was its first physical location outside the state. The city is a strategic gateway to the Midwest, according to Mohawk Global.

Major rail connections run through Chicago and it’s a hub for air freight as well. The location will allow Mohawk Global to reach further into cities like Milwaukee and Minneapolis as well, according to the company.

Mohawk Global relocated to a new headquarters at 123 Air Cargo Road earlier this year. The firm is now located in the former US Air reservation center on the Syracuse Hancock International Airport property.

The company had been based in 10,000 square feet of space at 152 Air Cargo Road. Mohawk Global currently occupies about 60 percent of the new building’s 26,000 square feet of space.

The city of Syracuse acquired the building after US Airways shut down its reservation center in Syracuse after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The center was one of several the airline closed nationwide after the attacks. 

Mohawk Global announced a lease-to-own agreement with the city on the building in January 2011.

SYRACUSE  —  Brian Bluff told a room full of military veterans that they’d better be ready for challenges if they want to start their own business. 

“Check your gut,” said Bluff, who was the keynote speaker at the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) 2012 Veterans Business Conference at Onondaga Community College (OCC) on March 13. “If you don’t like to work weekends, if you don’t like to work nights, then this is not the right thing for you.”

Bluff is a veteran of the U.S. Navy. He is also the president and co-founder of Site-Seeker, Inc., an Internet-marketing firm based in New Hartford that has 22 employees in New York, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Virginia. He started Site-Seeker in 2003 and had previously started another Internet-marketing firm, TCO Inc., in 2000.

“If you like a challenge, if you want to bury yourself in your work and do something important, something you feel good about, then [starting a business] is really cool,” he told the veterans. “It’s a good time.”

This is the fifth year the SBA’s Syracuse district office has organized its business conference for veterans, which is titled “Operation: Start Up & Grow.” This year’s conference drew 120 military veterans and about 60 exhibitors, representing more than 30 organizations.

Veterans who attended chose between workshops on social media, financing, and government contracting. Other workshops addressed marketing plans and selling to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Bluff drew from his experiences in the Navy in his keynote speech. He recounted being on the USS Conyngham when a fire broke out at the front of the ship.

That fire killed one man and damaged the ship so badly that it had to be decommissioned. Bluff said he was a damage-control assistant on the vessel when the fire happened, and that he suffered injuries and burns.

“Our mission was to fight the ship,” he said. “As you prepare to begin your business, you’ve got to understand that your mission is profitability.”

Bluff advised veterans to plan for the worst and look as far into the future as possible when starting their businesses. And he recommended keeping as much cash on hand as possible.

He also said business owners should be prepared to take action quickly if their business encounters trouble.

“You need to take evasive action early,” he said. “Lay it out and then make a decision.”

Veterans should be willing to enlist organizations like the SBA, Syracuse SCORE, and the Small Business Development Center at OCC when starting their business, according to Bluff.

“There is no award for figuring it out yourself,” he said. “Take all the help you can get.”

Helping veterans find assistance as they think about starting their own business is one of the reasons the Syracuse SBA holds a business conference for veterans, according to Cathy Pokines, the director of marketing and communications at the SBA’s Syracuse district office. Attending the conference gives veterans access to a wide range of organizations, rather than having to choose from telephone numbers on a list, she says.

The conference typically attracts between 100 and 140 veterans, Pokines says. She estimated that more than 600 different veterans have attended since the Syracuse SBA first held the conference in 2008.

Veterans are good candidates to start a small business because of their military training, Pokines adds. They have discipline, courage under fire, and the ability to take calculated risks, she says.

“The hallmark characteristic of small-business owners is taking risks,” she says. “Because they’re risking their savings, they’re risking their employees’ financial wherewithal, and they’re putting their ego on the line.”

Veterans could qualify for various forms of SBA assistance, including the Patriot Express loan program, according to the SBA. That program is for members of the military community who want to start or expand a small business. The Syracuse district has processed 119 loans under the program since 2007.