Co-founders Bevin and John Clay offer a salve for supply chain and workforce woes in the form of industrial automation.
It may not seem like building furniture in your garage could lead to a business opportunity to make high-tech automation and control systems, but that’s exactly how it happened for Endpoint Industrial Controls.
The couple were living in Houston at the time. Bevin was working at Chevron, and John had a position at Dow Chemical. They couldn’t find anything they liked to furnish their home, so they started building it themselves, ultimately expanding into a 3,000-square-foot warehouse — while keeping their full-time jobs.
Then, a former business partner needed help with an automation control project, and the Clays built it in their home office, which led to a new partnership and the couple moving to Loveland so John could be part of Endpoint.
“We were both unhappy trying to climb the corporate ladder,” says Bevin, the company’s COO. “John always wanted to have his own business, and when they split ways, I took over that part of the business.”
Endpoint has built its reputation on solving problems for companies and delivering its products quickly at a time when supply chain disruptions have been challenging. It’s able to do that because it’s built strong relationships with suppliers such as Allen-Bradley, a factory automation equipment supplier that provides Endpoint with programmable logic controllers (PLCs).
“We often get customers that come to us and say, ‘We have to do the following, but we have no idea how we’re going to do it — can you help us solve this problem, can you help us find the parts, can you get to it as soon as possible?'” says John, Endpoint’s CEO. “Everyone is looking for the pain of supply chain to be eased. If they don’t have these systems, it’s a negative impact to their business.”
When evaluating its vendors, Endpoint looks for quality and industry recognition. “We partnered with Allen-Bradley because they’re the leading industry standard and a platform you can count on,” Bevin says. “Allen-Bradley is one of the top five PLC manufacturers in the world.”
Endpoint is a UL508A and UL698A control system manufacturer that can make panels from the smallest junction box to large, multiple-bay systems. It is Allen-Bradley’s only OEM Gold partner between Colorado and California.
“We’ve been very successful in growing the company extremely quickly,” John says. “We achieved the OEM Gold partnership in 2.5 years — that’s a very prestigious thing.”
Challenges: As with most businesses, the supply chain continues to be an issue. But by being flexible with its engineering and design, Endpoint has been able to engineer around it and create a solution to deliver its products quickly. “We make any pivots we can make to get all the parts within a day,” John says.
Bevin adds, “We’ve also tried to position ourselves with the equipment and machinery to be as efficient and self-sufficient as we can so we don’t have to rely on other people.”
Opportunities: Endpoint’s ability to make systems quickly helps the company stand out from its competitors. “We have opportunities that are exciting and terrifying at the same time,” John says. “And we’ve moved from a small, regional focus to looking at opportunities across the country. We’re adding more manufacturing capabilities so we can do larger-scale production.”
He adds, “We’ve created a reputation that if anybody can do it, it’s Endpoint.”
Needs: Endpoint needs more people, more space and more machinery. The company recently added 15,000 square feet to its facility, bringing the total to about 25,000 square feet. “We thought by adding this 15,000 square feet, we’d be good for a while,” says Bevin. “We were out of space within the first month of being in the facility.”
