It’s a blazing hot summer afternoon. Not a single cloud in the sky and not even the tiniest hint of relief in the thick breeze moving through the air. Outside the door of a pole barn on the shadeless side of Valley Street in New Ulm, temperatures are soaring above 90 degrees. But inside the barn, which serves as Jeremy Drexler’s shop, it is comfortably cool.
Bad news often unravels lives.
Yet it caused this passionate bunch and their co-workers to dream dreams together and plunge headfirst into business ownership. Ultimately, their bad news would precipitate great good and through it hundreds of southern Minnesotans would experience healing from life’s hurts.
You have to know where you’re going to find CHAMP Software.
The office building of the company is like a little island, separate from the apartments, houses and other buildings in its Mankato neighborhood and, at first glance, seemingly located in the middle of an intersection.
As Brian Nutter stands amid huge flasks of raw oil, explaining how the vapors from each are separated and collected in the distillery set up along the wall, he swears that what he and his colleagues at Elysian-based Nu-Chek Prep do is not as complicated as it looks.
If Tom Langhoff were a fish, he’ d be a minnow at best, likely considered a tasty delicacy by sharks swallowing him whole.
He stands only 5’ 3” and from the side looks slender as a rod and reel.
Fortunately, he’s not a fish.
It’s easy to understand why Barb Haroldson regrets being confined to her office on the second level of 16 North Minnesota Street in New Ulm.
Downstairs, the rich aroma of hot coffee lingers in the air; the warmth of hot ovens filters through the space, mingling with the pleasant chitchat stretching from one end of the building to the next. Soft chairs and sturdy tables encourage friendly conversations over a wasabi chicken salad or a cup of Hungarian mushroom soup. The European street scenes painted along the walls provide a brief interlude from a gray winter day in southern Minnesota. And the customers come and go with cheerful greetings for the familiar faces behind the counters.
Since its 1981 genesis, $3 million Kenway Engineering in large measure has made its profits Ken Detloff’s way—by applying old-fashioned elbow grease and adapting well to changing market conditions in the U.S. off-road vehicle, air conditioning/heating unit industry. Detloff was raised on a central Minnesota turkey farm and had to fix whatever his older brothers broke doing fieldwork. It was on that farm where he learned a solid work ethic and developed a sixth sense for adapting to change.
Last fall, some friends in Bob Coughlan’s ballroom dancing class mentioned they were taking a weekend trip to Philadelphia for a teacher’s conference. Coughlan, the great-grandson of T.R. Coughlan, who founded Mankato Kasota Stone in 1885, immediately offered his input on the couple’s itinerary while in the city of brotherly love.
“If you’re going to Philly, you have to go see the Philadelphia Museum of Art,” he told the couple. “My grandfather supplied the stone for that building.”
Say cheese, Dennis.
It’s easy getting Dennis Miller to smile. On November 18, 2005, $10 billion Alltel of Little Rock, Arkansas, announced it would buy Mankato-based Midwest Wireless for a bit more than $1 billion.
Happy days are here again.
