Corridor developing an atmosphere to support startups

During the 28 years she worked for restaurants, Pam McGrew dreaded moving heavy kitchen equipment for cleaning.

McGrew, owner of Vernon Bar & Grill, 3025 Mount Vernon Rd. SE in Cedar Rapids, was unable to find anything on the Internet that would make her 1-ton stove slide easily on tile kitchen floors. That's when necessity became the mother of an invention - Stoveshoes.

“I went to Menards and bought a pipe flange with a hole in it,” McGrew said. “I took a rubber sink stopper and Super-Glued it to the bottom of the pipe flange.

“I knew that it had to have a hole in it to keep a leg from sliding out of it.”

After making two prototypes and determining they worked on the stove, McGrew and her husband, Allen, took the next step.

“I had a friend in school who is married to a guy who works at Bentley Manufacturing and Machine Shop in Marion,” she said. “I went to him with my prototype and he came up with the material to make it and the final design.”

Stoveshoes are machined at Bentley Manufacturing, sell for $18 on www.stoveshoes.com and are guaranteed for the life of the equipment. The black coasters can withstand pressure up to 4,000 pounds per square inch.

“They are more cost-effective than casters,” Pam said.

“Casters tend to break over time or attract things like the string from a mop that will cause them to stop turning. You wind up with a wheel that pivots, which makes moving equipment like pushing a shopping cart with a bad wheel.”

Allen McGrew said the Entrepreneurial Development Center in Cedar Rapids offered a wealth of resources when he and Pam were preparing a business plan, lining up financing and taking their product to market.

Stoveshoes has been an industry hit, receiving the 2011 Kitchen Innovations award from the National Restaurant Association.

Allen, who spends a lot of time calling on restaurant chains and kitchen equipment distributors, said the couple did not have to go outside the Corridor for anything except a low-interest loan from the state of Iowa.

“That was very important to us because we value local customers eating at our restaurant,” he said.

While Iowa City is sometimes seen as more conducive to forming a startup business, the Corridor as a whole is developing an “entrepreneurial ecosystem,” according to Andy Stoll, co-owner of Seed Here, an organization focused on building a stronger community of entrepreneurs and creatives.

“Entrepreneurship does not happen within a vacuum,” Stoll said. “You are more likely to succeed with the entrepreneurial process if you are connected and surrounded with resources, people and ideas that can help you grow your business.

“The barriers to entrepreneurship have fallen dramatically in recent years because of the Internet. A person with a big idea, an Internet connection and a cellphone can launch a business with very little capital.”

Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, he added, are “the ying and the yang” of entrepreneurship because each has its own strengths.

“Iowa City has a giant university that generates unbelievable talent and big ideas,” he said. “Cedar Rapids offers a stronger, more robust business environment with more mature talent and a larger number of banks.

“You have more large companies in Cedar Rapids like Rockwell Collins that spawn spinoff ventures.”

When Michal Eynon-Lynch and her husband, Riley Eynon-Lynch, left their teaching positions at Scattergood Friends School in West Branch to develop ActiveGrade, an online standards-based grade book, they found plenty of resources in the Corridor educational community.

“The expertise that we didn't have was starting a business,” Michal Eynon-Lynch said. “Between the Entrepreneurial Development Center, the Iowa City Area Development Group and Andy Stoll and Amanda Styron of Seed Here, what we've learned in the last year about starting a business has been phenomenal.”

Sometimes a startup business is not able to access all the resources it needs in the Corridor.

Joey and Sarah Svejda, owners of JoSa Enterprises in Atkins, were looking for an Iowa company to produce Power-Block, a device that monitors engine block heaters on diesel trucks. They ended up inking a deal with a Pennsylvania business.

“I wanted to stay around here, but a lot of the companies wanted $100,000 up front just to talk with me about it,” Joey Svejda said. “I called the company in Pennsylvania, we had a couple of meetings, and they were glad to be working with me.”

The Power-Block, which monitors the power going into the heater, also provides a readout of how many watts it is consuming. If the number is too low or much higher than normal, it can help prevent a dead heater in the future.

“If the heater isn't working in cold-weather months, the diesel fuel gels and a truck will not start,” said Svejda, a 12-year diesel technician. “That can involve a charge for a technician to come out and start it or have it towed into a garage where it will warm up.”

Svejda said the patent-pending device, which sells for $199, is attracting the attention of truck fleet owners, school districts owning diesel-powered buses and farmers with stock tank heaters.

While he wasn't able to get the Power-Block produced in the Corridor, he credited Al Beach, director of the Kirkwood Small Business Development Center in Cedar Rapids, with helping him craft his business plan.

He also was able to secure a personal loan from a local bank to finance the initial run of 1,000 units.