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Hendrickson Organ Company

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He owns every issue of The American Organist published since 1929, and every issue of The Diapason back to 1913. Those trade magazines still print today. His bookshelves are crammed full of faded cloth books with out-of-print titles like Organ Building, Vibration and Sound, The History of the Organ in the United States and The Art of Organ Building. A few have German titles: Die Brabenter Orgel and Zungenstimmen. Not everyone builds pipe organs these days. When the company phone rings, Charles Hendrickson, 63, casually picks it up and says “Charles Hendrickson.” He absolutely loves his freedom as owner at Hendrickson Organ Company in St. Peter.

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The Dam Store

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Jim Hruska leaned across a table in his cafe replete with mounted walleye and tacked-up Polaroids of fishermen, and he smiled. Glancing over at his wife, Linda, he said, “Sure we work long hours, from seven in the morning until nine at night, seven days a week.” When most small business owners would have burned out in months with such a demanding schedule, the Hruskas have lasted 27 years quite nicely. It’s all in how they do it.

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Lambrecht’s & Christmas Haus

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The Taoist religion defines yin and yang as the male and female principles in nature, total opposities that somehow meld together to produce all that exists. In plain Western lingo, it could best be summed up as the synergy that sometimes occurs when “opposites attract.”

“I’m the kind of person who has these very big pie-in-the-sky ideas,” said Donna Lambrecht, her words bubbling up like popcorn through a hot air popper, “while Curt is a practical realist. My cup is always half full, his half empty.” Their synergystic relationship has created New Ulm’s two largest gift shops, both of which zero in on that city’s burgeoning tourist trade.

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Robert W. Fitzsimmons & Sons

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I like my bacon as well as the next guy, maybe better, and inch-thick porkchops simmer on my gas grill every week or so. Pork’s leaner these days, a big improvement, but pigs still smell. Years ago, I knew some pretty sharp hog farmers, nice guys, but even in their good clothes, they brought a certain odor to church. They might sit two pews behind me, but I knew they were there. Although I’d seen their hogs rolling around in the mud, it didn’t diminish my appetite for thin strips of crisp bacon.

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Cuddy Energy Systems

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Ever try to sell an idea before its time? Neil Lillo did, enduring a six-month drought without a drop of revenue. “My wife was getting nervous,” Lillo said, recalling the period in 1980 when he came home night after night without ever having made a sale. It was an uncomfortable time for Lillo as well as his wife because in his previous business, he’d been accustomed to “selling something every day.”

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Lindsay Window & Door Company

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John Roise avoids credit for the rapid growth and financial success of Lindsay Window and Door Co., which manufactures vinyl and wooden windows in North Mankato.

Despite his lack of experience in the industry, Roise introduced new products that more than tripled sales. Employment escalated from 14 to 65. He’s paid back all the long-term money he borrowed to buy the company in 1989.

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Forstner Fire Apparatus

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With computers elbowing workers aside and manual labor often reduced to nothing more than pushing buttons, automated production dominates many manufacturing processes today.

But Floyd Forstner and a handful of employees still fashion fire trucks by hand, one at a time, every one different, in an 81 year-old shop on the edge of downtown Madelia. They start with a cab and chassis purchased from a major automotive manufacturer and custom-build the rest. The first truck born in that shop in 1940 still sees limited service with the Madelia Fire Dept.

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