Lea Ave was more of the same that was going on at Wallace but larger at about 2500 s/f. We now powder coated in-house, we got a CNC machine for full suspension (which we never got off the ground) and hired a couple employees. This was when we started to build for other brands. With increasing overhead we found that while contract building wasn’t very profitable it really helped even out the cash flow so we could keep bills and employees paid. During this time Dave Kirk (www.kirkframeworks.com) formerly of Serotta moved to town and stopped by to introduce himself. We became fast friends and remain so to this day. He started to work for us part-time and over the years eventually became a full time employee. It was through Dave’s contact with Dave Halstead that we hooked up with Ibis LLC. Scot Nicol the founder of Ibis had just sold the company but was still working with the new owners to keep them on track. We started to build all their steel frames in addition to our own and several other brands. We were still having a lot fun. We had some great employees at the time like Matt Calanchini “The Head” and Isaac Strout “Shop Boy Superstar”. We had annual open houses and road like crazy. It was also really cool to hook up with and industry icon like Ibis.

Soon between our own growing sales, Ibis work and the work from all the other brands we ran out of room and production capacity. The new owners of Ibis LLC, Eric and Roger decided there was no point in having an empty shop in Santa Rosa so we figured out a way to move their tools and equipment to Bozeman in order to increase production. So we moved once again to a shop in an old flower mill that was about 5000 s/f.