After starting out with just a table saw and an old press break crammed into an 800-square-foot business incubator in Owatonna, Scott Bongers never imagined where B&B Manufacturing & Assembly would be today.
The Bongers family, his dozens of employees and partners at Met-Con gathered under a tent in celebration of the steel manufacturer’s 20th anniversary Thursday, backdropped by the current Faribault facility, which is more than 60 times the size of where it began.
“I think at 20, you get to a point where we aren’t afraid of taking a few small chances,” Bongers said. “You’re established, so you can enjoy it. At 10 years, you’re still wondering if you’re going to make it. I can’t imagine 20 years from now, and you wonder if I’ll even be there. It’s hard to think 20 years ago, where we were at and what we had.”
Bongers worked alongside his former business partner at a different steel manufacturer before starting B&B, but a hard-hitting trend was sweeping the nation.
“The company we were working for was starting, at the time, to offshore more and more stuff,” he said. “We felt the need to keep things here.”
After some time working out of his garage, he and his former partner cashed out their 401ks, rented the small space in Owatonna and brought in some of their rudimentary equipment.
“We were broke for the first five years,” he laughed. “I remember many times going without a paycheck so everybody else can get paid.”
About two years in, Bongers’ daughter, Samantha Candy, came in to help out with general operations in the office and help with some accounting things.
“Samantha and I, for 10 years, were doing pretty much everything,” Bongers said.
Years later, around the time his business partner was approaching retirement, Met-Con Companies was looking to get into the fabrication industry. B&B leased the building they’re in now, and became partners with Met-Con.
“They actually have services — IT services, HR services — that they share between all the companies,” Bongers said. “So sharing resources is a lot of the benefit. Trying to grow a company without that, I mean, you’re doing it all yourself.”
As they grew, Candy became less of an office person and more of a project person. She also went to South Central College in Faribault to study accounting and Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall to study business management.
Today, she’s the project manager for the multimillion-dollar company, while Met-Con takes care of the day-to-day accounting.
“I do a lot of the project management, like quoting and purchasing,” she said.
They made it through the pandemic without issue, never needing to shut down or having any sickness spread around the office. In fact, Candy said they were doing quite well.
“During COVID, we were having huge, record sales,” she said. “Whereas most people were hurting, we were not.”
Bongers explained another big reason for their pandemic-era success was the work they were doing, constructing the plexiglass protectors that many businesses put between the customers and cash registers and other protective gear.
After COVID, the success hasn’t gone away. That’s especially been true since high-level politics is heavily focused on bringing back American manufacturing.
“We’re pretty well diversified, so that helps us out,” he said. “A lot of talk right now about onshoring things again, the tariffs and all that. We’re seeing the activity out there. A lot of companies are trying to shore up their suppliers, and that’s great for us.”
Having recently been approved for a patent on an ice-fishing box and becoming ISO 9001 certified, a standards-tracking process, things are only looking up. Bongers said he expects to expand the building further in the next year or two, bringing assembly closer to shipping and moving the paint line toward the manufacturing equipment.
Met-Con Owner and Founder Randy McDonough even asked B&B Manufacturing to make the beams for a new pergola going up at the entrance of Met-Con’s main building.
“Scott and Kerry (Bongers, Scott’s wife and the B&B office manager) are doing a really good job with this company,” McDonough said. “They’ve really raised the bar. They’re doing very well, and they’ve brought this company to the next level.”
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