Caleb Douglas isn’t your prototypical custom coater. The father of four small children with little experience in powder coating, he purchased a Denver company in 2020 to fulfill a dream of owning his own business.
Caleb DouglasWorking 60+ hours a week, Douglas took advantage of Structural Coatings’ unique offering of specializing in finishing larger steel and metal fabrication projects to turn his new company into a growing venture.
So how did Douglas celebrate his third year in the powder coating industry? By purchasing a second Denver powder coater — Foothills Powder Coating, located about ten minutes from Structural Coatings — and going all-in on the industry.
“With both shops, it is very synergistic,” Douglas says. “With Structural Coatings, we focus on big industrial and commercial. Foothills has the auto-line and smaller batch lines, so putting them together was a perfect fit for us.”
Powder Coating Larger Parts at Structural Coatings
Douglas purchased Structural Coatings in 2020 as a young father of three; he added Foothills Powder Coating in 2022 and he and his wife added another child.Structural Coatings has 30-foot long ovens that can accommodate anything from trailer decks to I-beams with ease, especially those with weights over 2,500 pounds. Douglas says they can have large production runs exceeding 750 lineal feet of fence and rail, with an attendant height of over 108 inches.
Foothills, meanwhile, is an 18,000 square-foot operation space equipped with a 580-foot automated line, allowing them to handle larger quantities. They have a 16-foot batch oven and have significant flexibility in terms of the size and proportions of the parts they can coat.
“Together, I think both shops will provide tons of value to both old and new customers,” says Douglas, who hopes the two locations will significantly reduce lead times.
“We can accommodate a wide range of projects, from large industrial jobs to Grandma’s patio furniture,” he says.
A Background in Manufacturing
Before purchasing Structural Coatings, Douglas worked at Easter-Owens, an electrical equipment manufacturer in Colorado. He used his master’s degree in engineering from Colorado State, and a master’s in business administration from the University of Denver to work 10 years in the oil and gas industry with Noble Energy, which is now Chevron.
“I had a little exposure to the coating industry when I was in the oil and gas industry,” Douglas says. “When I went to work in the power industry, we had powder coating in our manufacturing facility, so that taught me a little more about the process.”
When Douglas began to get the itch to run his own business, he turned to a broker to help him find a business that he might be interested in running. That is when he came across Structural Coatings, which was being run by a couple in their 70s who were ready for retirement.
“It was really a great match to purchase their business,” he says. “I had never owned a business, but I had always known that was the way I was wired. That was always my dream.”
Specifically, Douglas was looking for a smaller service-oriented business, and he found that in Structural Coatings, where he quickly set out to make it known to current and prospective customers that he was in business to service their needs.
He was also able to bring over a lot of his contacts from his previous manufacturing and power industry work, which quickly began to grow Structural Coatings’ workload and business operations.
From 3 Employees to 9
When Douglas took over Structural Coatings in 2020, he had three full-time employees but has grown that to five employees during the day and four more who work at night to cover the extended business that has occurred.
“I think the biggest change is that we have become partners with the companies who are bringing parts to coat,” he says. “And we really do want to partner with them to grow their business and make them successful. If they need something fast or have a definite install date, we can work with them on it. It’s saying what you will do and then doing it. That grows any business.”
The business grew steadily enough that Douglas hired a management consultant to help him keep things organized and to look for ways to grow the business even more, but without losing the values of customer service and quality.
That is also when a few powder coating vendors began mentioning to Douglas that he might want to take a look at Foothills Powder Coating as a possible acquisition since it had complementary powder coating equipment and operations.
Plus, the owners of Foothills were also looking to retire, which made an acquisition even more likely.
“The management consultant we were working with kept telling us that we were doing great work but that we needed more capacity,” Douglas says. “The goal was to capture more of the market in Denver and have an auto line that could be available to us.”
Acquiring Foothills Powder Coating
Initially, Douglas looked at buying or leasing new space and starting a second location, but that is when he was introduced to Foothills, and that triggered the acquisition talks even further.
“When a powder coater sells their business, it is a very personal thing for them,” he says. “They don’t want to just sell to anybody and get out of the business. They want someone who will come in, take care of the people working there, and take care of the customers who helped build the business.”
Douglas says that, like Structural Coatings, the Foothills operation wasn’t being aggressively marketed to manufacturers in the Denver area, so when he began to put both shops out there for customers to see, that is when the business began to grow.
Douglas is active in networking and using social media platforms such as LinkedIn to showcase the quality work his team can do and to give insight to other business owners in the Denver area on what his companies are all about.
“Because I am a bit younger than most owners, I did have some inherent technical savvy that I’ve been using to promote and grow the business,” he says. “Of course, a large portion of our success is fortunate timing. The economy in Colorado has been doing well, and a number of home builders and commercial businesses are growing, and we happened to be there when they needed us.”
Hiring a GM to Run Second Location
One of the first things Douglas had to do was find a general manager for the Foothills’ location, which he soon did when he hired Alex Tobias, who hails from New York, where his family owned one of the largest powder coating operations in the state.
“He has been involved in a wide variety of roles throughout powder coating,” Douglas says. “You could say powder coating is in his blood, but that doesn’t sound healthy.”
Having someone with a solid powder coating background will help Douglas as he now finds himself running two operations in his third year in the business and will also help him decrease the 60+ hours a week he is spending at work.
With four young children and a wife at home, he knows full well he needs to find a balance between work and play.
“My plate is full, so having someone to handle the day-to-day operations at Foothills is a big relief for me,” Douglas says. “My wife gave her blessing for this because she thought it would actually make my life easier. We were bursting at the seams at Structural Coatings, and I think the new addition will help us level load and grow more sustainably.”
Visit http://www.structuralcoatingsco.com and https://www.foothillspowdercoating.com
