In some respects, Ted Schultz is back where he started 20 years ago.
He launched his business building cabinets and furniture in a woodworking incubator in North Pier surrounded by master carpenters and designers who provided advice and an occasional job.
Now Schultz , the owner of Hylan Design Ltd., a firm that specializes in building wood furniture, cabinets and media centers costing anywhere from $3,500 to $150,000, is running his own incubator. He is providing two woodworkers the same opportunity he was given two decades ago.
And David Alan Robbins, 50, a designer and the person who invited him to join the North Pier incubator, has returned to work with Schultz, not as the master, but as a tenant in the 5,500-square-foot woodworking shop Schultz operates.
“We’re the old guys now. It’s a cool thing to me,” said Schultz, 47, a graduate of the University of Illinois.
For many start-ups, an incubator can make the difference between survival and failure. Typically, incubators provide essential services and equipment to help get businesses started.
While many organizations throughout the six-county region focus on helping small-business owners develop business plans and marketing ideas, there are fewer than a dozen successful incubators, including the 100-firm Fulton-Carroll incubator, one of the area’s first.
Nationally there are 950 business incubators, up from 587 only six years ago, according to the National Business Incubation Association. Non-profits operate 84 percent of them. Since 1980, 500,000 full-time jobs have been created by incubator clients and graduates, according to the association.
Schultz credits his wife, Beth, who handles much of the office work, with the idea of turning the shop on the 7th floor of a former South Loop factory into an incubator.
“Why don’t you get someone to rent all this space? There were all these machines just sitting there,” she recalled telling him.
With only a limited amount of space, Schultz, who has a staff of five woodworkers, decided he could accommodate only a couple of outsiders.
Rather than charge the woodworkers rent for the space they use, Schultz decided to charge fees to use the sophisticated tools needed to operate their businesses.
Schultz’s first try in 2002 at securing a tenant didn’t work out. The person’s business failed less than a year later.
Now “there is a waiting list of guys wanting to join us,” Schultz said.
The mainstays are Seth Deysach, owner of Lagomorph Design Inc., and Mateo Panzica, owner of Mateo Inc., who Schultz said is hoping to open his own workshop.
The tool rental fees they pay has helped Schultz ride out the economic downturn, which has crimped corporate spending on office renovations and furniture. Deysach pays $750 per month, while Panzica pays $1,000 per month, Schultz said.
For Robbins, a designer who has worked in corporate offices in New York for the past seven years, the return to the incubator is a chance to be rejuvenated, to be around like-minded people.
“When I started out, the economy was part of the reason [for starting in an incubator] but it also was because you are not isolated like in an office,” he said.
“I wanted people around to share the energy,” said Robbins, who expects that result working at Schultz’s incubator.
The other end of the spectrum is reflected with Deysach. Schultz’s decision to open his shop to woodworkers trying to get a start was the difference between having enough money “to pay the rent and eat out,” Deysach said.
Deysach, 33, a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, hopes the incubator will help him secure a foothold in the custom-built-furniture market. He moved into the Hylan woodworking shop in December.
“I was working out of a basement in my apartment building. It was about the most inappropriate space you could find,” he said.
“There is nothing like this in the city that I had heard or seen that isn’t connected with a school,” Deysach said. “I don’t know how I could be successful without access to these kinds of tools.”
They include a sliding table saw, a Powermatic table saw, a vertical panel saw, a veneer press and a wide belt sander, in addition to the typical planers, joiners, band saws and drill presses.
Deysach said the environment already is helping his work.
“It’s really nice to work around people who know more than me,” said Deysach, who says he is not afraid to seek advice. “I don’t think this gets any better than this.”
