She Built Her Business the Hard Way

Marie Walker’s manufacturing company has racked up several honors and awards in recent years, and as a female business owner, Walker has been singled out in her industry for courage and success. But her 18 years as an entrepreneur based in a remote desert town have not been easy. Young and inexperienced, Walker started her company the hard way and scraped by on the edge for far too long. If only she’d known then what she knows now, Walker says, she would have done a lot of things differently. She talked about some of those things with freelance writer Karen E. Klein.

I graduated from Mojave High School and landed a part-time job as a janitor at a fiberglass company, then worked my way up to administrative assistant. By the time I was 20, I was office manager. I met a gentleman with technical skills who was incredibly intelligent but not sure he wanted to run a business, something I’d dreamed about since I had my first Kool-Aid stand at age 9.

That man, Jim Walker, became my husband. We got into composites in 1976, when we realized that fiberglass material was going to become the standard for the industry. There was a building available here at Mojave Airport for us to rent, so we opened a composite prototyping and fabrication shop, taking fiberglass, carbon fiber and other materials and using them to design and build products for aerospace, the industrial sector and commercial and entertainment firms.

Our timing was really, really good in terms of realizing that this material would spread to about every industry you can imagine. We also have had an incredibly wonderful relationship with the airport, which is very friendly and supportive to small companies. They rented us a 2,400-square-foot building for $360 a month, and in the months when we couldn’t make the rent they extended us--they didn’t kick us out.

But we started with no customers, no credit and no money in the bank. That makes for a long, hard haul. We struggled mightily for the first seven to nine years because we didn’t realize a lot of the business basics weren’t in place. At first, we got jobs just by going out and pounding the pavement. We didn’t compete with my former employer or try to get jobs from any of their customers.

I was very focused and didn’t grasp how important marketing, maintaining a good image and living out that image were. I didn’t think I could afford advertising, especially since I had to turn down work because I couldn’t afford to buy the supplies that were needed!

I knew two gentlemen who were salesmen in the composites business. They gave me $500 on net-30 terms [an interest-free loan that she had to pay back at the end of 30 days] to enable us to buy a five-gallon pail of resin and a roll of fiberglass. Our first job was fixing a sign for a local liquor store that had been wrecked by wind. All we had for equipment was Jim’s toolbox. We didn’t even have worktables. We did some early work for the companies that generate power with wind turbines. I asked them for 50% down with the balance due upon completion, and I needed my suppliers to give me net-30 terms so I could buy the material.

We lived mean and lean for a lot of years. Our first annual sales, in 1983, were $26,000. Our second year, sales jumped up to $28,000. Any time I got a check, I would pay a bill--like the electric bill--and then if I had anything left over I might buy a typewriter or a calculator. I remember the day I had enough left over to buy a stapler. Even the tiniest office supplies had to wait for those checks to come in. When another airport business threw out some furniture, we refurbished it. Jim took the old pieces and made tables and workbenches out of them.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that it didn’t have to be that way. Living from check to check prevented us from taking on additional work that would have increased our revenue. We couldn’t do it because we were so undercapitalized and we couldn’t afford the materials and supplies that it would have taken to do those jobs.

I wish I had known about the help and financing that’s possible through organizations such as the U.S. Small Business Administration and the local chamber of commerce, and the great people at SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) in Bakersfield. Knowing about these resources that we didn’t hook up with at the time, I know now what a tremendous help they could have been when I was starting my company. I didn’t even know that I could have found investors that would have provided the start-up funding that would have made our road to success a lot easier.

Even though we didn’t have much overhead to speak of, and Jim did some odds-and-ends jobs at the airport while I worked part time on space shuttle landings during the ‘80s, it could have been much easier for us. If I had been able to stock inventory, I could have done bigger jobs and bought supplies in bulk at better prices.

The local bank, Mojave Desert Bank, was started by Mojave businesspeople in 1989. The great thing about being in a small town is that they knew me and they had faith in me. I had the support of the town and the airport, and they have helped me upgrade to our current location, which is 13,000 square feet in four buildings. We are expanding from prototyping and fabrication to actually doing manufacturing now, and we’re working with NASA and the Big 3 aerospace companies.

As a woman in the composites industry, I still run into obstacles and people who don’t want to deal with a woman. As a young, 20-something girl with blond hair, trying to convince people to give me their business in this industry was really tough. I don’t think they thought I was capable, and they didn’t know whether my company would be around for the three years of their project.

I advise new businesses to start their marketing efforts early on, make sure they have plenty of capital before they start, call on all the resources for research and contacts they can find and plan on working hard. I’m glad we started our company first and waited to start our family later. I have two young children now, and I’m in a position to take time off to be with them. During those first years, I was working seven days a week, at least 10-hour days. But that’s what it takes to get a business off the ground.

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If your business can provide a lesson to other entrepreneurs, contact Karen E. Klein at the Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016 or at kklein6349@aol.com. Include your name, address and telephone number.

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At a Glance

* Company: Fiberset Inc.

* Owner: Marie Walker

* Nature of business: Composite prototyping and fabrication shop

* Location: 1046 Poole St., Mojave 93501

* Founded: 1983

* E-mail: marie@fiberset.com

* Web site: www.fiberset.com

* Employees: 15

* Annual revenue: $1 million