SULLIVAN — Lakeside Innovative Technologies has added about 1,500 square feet to its facility in the Harbor Lights Business Park in the town of Sullivan. “We’ve moved into it now,” says Bob Hulchanski, the company’s president and sole owner. He spoke with CNYBJ on Aug. 29. He’s added the extra space as the company’s “shop […]
SULLIVAN — Lakeside Innovative Technologies has added about 1,500 square feet to its facility in the Harbor Lights Business Park in the town of Sullivan.
“We’ve moved into it now,” says Bob Hulchanski, the company’s president and sole owner. He spoke with CNYBJ on Aug. 29.
He’s added the extra space as the company’s “shop floor is bursting at the seams with more than $2 million worth of machine stations,” according to the firm’s website.
Lakeside Innovative needs the extra room for new equipment to keep up with customer orders.
Hulchanski also decided to expand following his involvement in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Emerging Leaders program in 2015.
He had no plans to expand the business, but after discussions with people in the SBA program, he figured the extra space would allow the firm to help meet customer demand and to create more jobs.
Hulchanski describes his business as a “job shop, machine shop,” a contract manufacturer that doesn’t make or market a proprietary product.
“We get drawings and computer models supplied to us by our customers and we produce their parts to their specifications primarily in aluminum, plastic, copper, and brass,” he says.
Lakeside Innovative broke ground on the expansion in late June. J&S Construction of Central Square handled the construction work. Essex Structural Steel Co. Inc. of Cortland provided the steel beams, roofing, and walls for the $40,000 project.
Lakeside Innovative operates in an 8,000-square-foot space on a 9 acre lot at 2010 Enterprise Parkway, he says. The location is situated south of Route 31 on the south side of Oneida Lake.
The firm is currently the sole tenant of that business park, according to Hulchanski.
Lakeside Innovative, which Hulchanski launched in June 2006, currently has 10 employees, including Hulchanski, and his wife, Coleen.
The firm has added one full-time employee this year and is currently searching for at least one more additional full-time employee, perhaps two, before the end of the year.
The newest employee operates a computer numeric control (CNC) machine, as will the other workers that Lakeside wants to add.
The firm has also purchased two additional CNC machine centers, he says.
Lakeside’s customers include Falls Church, Virginia–based General Dynamics and the Copper John Corp. in Auburn, which produces archery equipment.
“We’ve been making parts for [Copper John] since 2006,” he says.
General Dynamics, one of Lakeside’s “top” customers, honored the Hulchanskis in Washington, D.C. in May 2015 with its “2015 Defender of the Year” award for producing more than 30,000 precision-machined parts used in the U.S. Army’s MAN-PAC radio “with zero defects,” according to a Dec. 22, 2015, SBA news release.
Lakeside’s operations
Lakeside Innovative Technologies uses CNC machining equipment, controlling those machines with computer-aided design (CAD) computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software, says Hulchanski.
Machine operators tend the machines.
“Their job while they tend the machines is to load and unload the machines and then check in-process verification of sizes using machinists tools like micrometers and calipers and gauges,” says Hulchanski.
The firm takes raw materials, such as plastic or aluminum, and cuts, drills, taps, and machines them into finished parts.
“Those finished parts then ship to our customer and they get assembled into complete units of some other component,” he adds.
Lakeside supplies products for companies that make archery equipment; medical products; telecommunications products; automotive drive-train products for off-road vehicles; and the U.S. Army through its subcontractors.
“It’s a big mix,” he says.
For example, Lakeside makes cams for bows that archery companies sell. A cam is the wheel on a compound bow, Hulchanski says.
SBA assistance
Hulchanski started the company with the help of a $300,000 mortgage loan, so that he could build the structure where Lakeside operates, he says.
The SBA had backed that Patriot Express loan, he added.
The firm has since paid off the loan, according to Hulchanski.
Hulchanski was part of the 2015 class of the SBA’s Emerging Leaders program. In that program, he learned about creating an action plan for his company and making it a bigger company.
“Through that program, you do a lot of planning and documenting your business plan to grow,” he says.
Army service
Hulchanski, a DeWitt native, joined the U.S. Army in 1976.
He went to a machinist school in Aberdeen, Maryland in early 1977. From there, he was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas in spring 1977, working in a machine shop and “often rebuilding broken parts that needed immediate replacement during military exercises,” the SBA said.
Hulchanski would eventually serve a one-year deployment in South Korea, managing both American soldiers and South Korean civilians in the Army base’s machine shop.
His active-duty service ended in November 1979, after which he joined the Army Reserve back in Central New York.
Hulchanski also started working for Foursome Tool in East Syracuse, he says. Two years later, he joined Armstrong Mold Corp. in DeWitt, where he learned about operating a CNC machine.
Hulchanski worked for 24 years at Armstrong Mold before deciding to pursue his own business in 2006.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com