8 minute read
Idaho Partners Demonstrate Their Metal for Making Creative and Functional Products
BY JOHN STEARNS
When Brandon Nicholls invited Colin McGrath (a friend from their high school days in Boise, Idaho, more than a decade earlier) to help him buy his late father’s powder coating business in nearby Caldwell in 2016, it launched a partnership that expanded to include a new metal fabrication company whose work has won customers far and wide.
The two are 50/50 partners in Zamco Technologies, the powder coating business, and Lost River Fabrication, the metal shop they started in 2018. Between Lost River and Zamco, they can design and make almost any metal product and then paint and protectively seal it through powder coating, a process that involves curing the coatings in a large oven.
Each business complements the other but reaching that point first required McGrath and Nicholls to rejuvenate Zamco after purchasing it. The business, acquired by Nicholls’s father in 2002, had struggled following his tragic death in 2012 when the plane he was piloting crashed in bad weather. Nicholls ran the company for about nine months before moving on to use his engineering degree designing semi-truck trailers for a Boise company. His stepmother took Zamco’s reins, but the business struggled with debt. She told Nicholls she planned to close Zamco unless he wanted to buy it.
Nicholls and McGrath, who had stayed in touch during and after college, left their respective careers and went into business together.
“We basically created a good reputation with Zamco to the point where, once we could fabricate (through Lost River), a lot of our customers wanted to move their fabrication to us and be a one-stop shop where we make stuff for them, powder coat for them and they get completely finished products,” McGrath said.
In addition to business from Lost River, Zamco powder coats parts and products from many sources. That includes items needing refinishing, from rusty patio furniture to vehicle parts like fenders, wheels, truck beds, trailers and more. Zamco has the longest powder coating oven in the state, at 48 feet, according to Nicholls.
Lost River is equipped with CNC (computer numerical control) equipment that includes a tube laser, fiber lasers, water jet, router table and press brake; a robotic welder for high-volume projects; and 3D design automation. The equipment allows the company to fabricate diverse items, including business and monument signs, staircases, railings, trailers and smaller items like decorative wildlife, patterned garden stakes, planters, fire pits and toolboxes.
A popular side business that emerged in 2020 from Lost River, called My Metal Rescue, produces metal silhouettes of multiple dog breeds, plus cats and other animals, and sends $5 from every sale to a different animal rescue organization each month. The program has generated monthly donations as high as $5,000, McGrath said.
Nicholls designs the animals, most of which are sold online through the company’s website.
The combined businesses now employ about 32 people in three adjacent buildings. Zamco had three employees when McGrath and Nicholls took over in 2016.
Creative problem-solvers
McGrath, who has college degrees in applied math and physics, and Nicholls, a licensed engineer, aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and have tapped their inner ingenuity to solve problems that may seem difficult at first—from writing their own job-tracking software to learning how to replace and repair cutting elements on their high-tech tube laser.
“They can basically build and do things internally in the company that a lot of other CNC guys or fab shop owners would have to outsource,” said Jeff Jones, who is the business’s commercial banking officer at Heritage Bank in Boise. “It’s pretty cool stuff.”
Added Jones, “They’re just of that generation where they immerse themselves in computers; they learned how to code, they learned how to write software, and it’s like they’re kind of the perfect match. And when you think of an average blue-collar business, you don’t necessarily think of some of the resources they’ve got at their disposal. They’re both just drivers; they work hard. They (also) do things like host lunch for their entire crew once a week; they bring lunch and they do safety meetings and sales meetings. They use that get-the-crew-together-for-lunch opportunity to brainstorm and just keep everyone moving in the right direction and focused on company goals and really trying to build that culture.”
Heritage financed the final construction and permanent financing on Lost River’s new building, a 35,800-square-foot structure whose construction had slowed after receiving a construction loan from a previous bank, Jones said, noting McGrath and Nicholls pushed the project along using their own funds. When their previous banker, Mike Trueba, whom McGrath and Nicholls enjoyed working with, joined Heritage to open its first Idaho office in 2023, the pair moved their business. That made them among the bank’s first commercial and industrial clients locally.
“We opened an account there and then they kind of helped us pull this building across the finish line,” McGrath said. The building opened in late 2023.
Heritage provided financing to pay off the previous bank’s construction loan and repay the partners’ out-of-pocket costs, Jones said. Heritage also financed a bridge crane inside the building that has a 10-ton capacity, plus financed a new
CNC tube laser to expand Lost River’s capacity for projects requiring special cutting capabilities. Heritage also has all the business’s core operating accounts.
McGrath said the bank has been helpful throughout and easy to work with as needs arise.
“Heritage makes it a lot easier to kind of pull that all together; they’re pretty active and helpful in that process instead of always kicking things on your plate. They help get the deal done,” he said. “And they appear to have the flexibility, too. If something logically makes sense, they can figure out how to make it work on their end.”
Business on the rise
Lost River recently hitched itself to a nice piece of business making trailers for a Pacific Northwest company. The trailers, measuring 40 feet long and 10 feet wide, form the foundation for tiny homes that Lost River’s customer later builds atop the trailers as employee housing for workers at remote jobsites. Lost River builds the frame and adds the axles, wheels and lights.
“A lot of the growth is based on things our customers see that are missing in the market,” Nicholls said. “We’re pretty adaptive and light on our feet so we can transition to all these tiny home trailers that we’re building right now.”
The customer reached out to Lost River in December about making trailers “and 12 weeks later we’re building six trailers a week,” Nicholls said. “So, we have a bunch of customers like that who are happy to work with us because we’re super adaptive and kind of hop into whatever our customers are needing at the time.”
Zamco powder coats the trailers when they’re completed.
“We’ve stepped into a bunch of different areas, like doing the
My Metal Rescue, garden stake stuff, and then we do a bunch of vegetable garden stakes and planter boxes for some local (and national) landscapers,” Nicholls said.
Lost River also makes durable toolboxes, from standard ones it stocks to sell throughout the year to custom toolboxes for certain clients.
“We’re basically like a hybrid between a fabrication job shop where we have customers bring us whatever walks through the door, and then we try to make our own products also to try and add some stability to things,” McGrath said.
Added Nicholls, “We’re always happy to scale with whatever a customer needs. Whenever a customer comes in with an idea they want, we’re happy to work with them and figure out how to get that to volume or out the door, get designs, prototypes, that kind of stuff.”
Some customers are big but most are small, he said, adding that Lost River enjoys helping entrepreneurs produce products to compete with larger companies or foreign competitors.
“We can design it, we can be very hands on in the design process, and then we’re very vertically integrated. So, a customer can come to us with a design idea and then we can flip that around and get them a finished product very quickly and then ramp up and get them at scale,” Nicholls said.
They embody ingenuity, according to Jones.
HERITAGE BANKER: JEFF JONES
Jeff is an experienced commercial banking partner who collaborates with businesses to drive profitability and growth. With over 15 years of commercial banking and relationship management experience, he takes pride in providing hands-on, personalized service.
