PATENTS AND INVENTIONS

FIRST TO FILE

After watching a crew paint bumper poles, Frank Venegas Jr., founder, chairman, and CEO of Ideal Group in southwest Detroit, came up with the idea for plastic cover sleeves. Today, the division, Ideal Shield, generates $75 million in annual revenue.

PATENTS AND INVENTIONS

Profit Code

Frank Venegas Jr. has built a nearly $500-million business in southwest Detroit by developing ideas that generate revenue.

BY NORM SINCLAIR

As the holder of several dozen patents for inventions that helped the Ideal Group of companies reach nearly $500 million in revenue in 2022, Frank Venegas Jr. credits two simple rules for his success.

“I tell people around here (that) when we design or patent a product, make sure we’re not making a product people don’t want,” he says. “The other thing is fail fast, fail cheap.”

The blunt-talking, down-to-earth executive’s advice to would-be inventors is to make sure a market exists for whatever it is they’re designing.

“We’re idea people; it’s how you use our ideas,” says Venegas, founder, CEO, and chairman of Ideal Group in southwest Detroit. “A lot of people ask, How many patents do you have? Well, it doesn’t matter. If I sat here and decided to write a patent a week, I could write a patent a week. But how many patents do you have that make money?”

Developing ideas into commercial bonanzas has propelled Venegas’ career from sweeping floors at a Detroit steel plant to serving as the leader of eight companies. Today, Ideal Group has 600 employees working in construction, facilities management and protection equipment, manufacturing, indirect material management, and surplus sales.

The idea for the invention that propelled Venegas’ upward trajectory more than 20 years ago came to him while working at the steel plant. “I was out there for days doing siding and I watched three guys painting bumper poles in the parking lot, day after day,” he recalls. “I thought that was the dumbest thing in the world.”

So Venegas designed a hard plastic cover sleeve and made it available in various colors. The sleeve slides over the bollard poles, eliminating the need to paint them.

“I could put my bumper pole sleeves on (in a parking lot) in three hours rather than the 80 hours it took painters to paint them. I took it to my boss and he said, ‘Frank, what would I do with my painters?’ ”

Undeterred, Venegas went on to sell his invention elsewhere. “If I’d listened to him, I wouldn’t have shared my product. I believed enough in my product that I was willing to take money out of my own pocket to make it work,” he says. “I started with banks and I would go around and install the sleeves on their bumper poles when they weren’t open, on Saturdays or Sundays,” he says.

Today, the bollard bumper cover sleeves generate $75 million in annual sales at Ideal Shield. The Ideal Group subsidiary also manufactures guard rails, handrail systems, and a plastic pyramid base for portable traffic or pedestrian signs.

“We manufacture 6 million covers a year. It’s difficult today not to find our sleeves around banks all around the country,” Venegas says. In addition to the patent for the bollard pole cover, Venegas says he holds 19 other patents for commercial inventions ranging from inventory control processes to guard rails that can stop a truck going 50 miles per hour.

Listening to his customers — another Venegas rule — added even more revenue for the company.

“Burger King was the first to ask us to put their logo on their sleeves, then Wendy’s wanted it. Some wanted ‘Keep Out’ on it,” he says. A vinyl sleeve that fits over the bollard cover also can provide Christmas décor, painted with red-and-white candy cane stripes, or promote auto dealer specials on $19.95 oil changes.

“What we did with the bumper post sleeve is something no one else had ever done, or even thought about,” he says. “I get more people come up to me and say, ‘You’re like the guy that came up with Kleenex or Q-tips’ — and we are.”

The story of how this self-made entrepreneur started his own business is a study in perseverance. In 1979, he spent $150 for a ticket to the Livingston County Builder’s Association Ball, where he hoped to meet new clients. Part of the ticket price went to a raffle on a new Cadillac Coup DeVille.

When the numbers were called, Venegas won the luxury car. He drove it home that night. Nine days later, the 27-year-old sold the car for $12,000 and put the cash toward starting his own business.

Today, the sprawling Ideal Group headquarters is located on the site of the old General Motors Cadillac plant where his life-changing Coupe DeVille was built.

Central to the Venegas story is his Mexican

heritage. His grandfather, Jesus, immigrated to the area for the $5-a-day jobs Ford Motor Co. began offering in 1914. He worked for Ford for 41 years, while Venegas’ father, Frank Sr., worked for Ford for 39 years.

As the young entrepreneur’s business prospered in Brighton, his friend, former Detroit Tigers pitcher Hank Aguirre, convinced him in 1995 to move to the Mexican-centric neighborhood in southwest Detroit where Venegas and his brother, Loren; daughter, Linzie; and son, Jesse; operate the family business.

Early on, the company became a force in quelling violence by hiring, training, and employing gang members. It also promoted the community, boosted youth education and opportunity, and became deeply involved in supporting Detroit’s Cristo Rey High School and Holy Redeemer Grade School by financing capital improvements and educational upgrades, mentoring students, and providing college scholarships.

“That goes back to being very fortunate to have the chance to make money, but more than anything else, be able to help the people in the community,” says Venegas, who sits on numerous advisory boards and is a 13-time winner of GM’s Global Supplier of the Year Award.

As part of its work in the region, Ideal Group is an important player in major development projects in Detroit. For Comerica Park, which opened in 2000, Ideal Group supplied hundreds of the standard galvanized hand-painted steel handrails for the project.

Two years later, while doing steel work on Ford Field’s construction, Venegas says he came up with a better handrail idea that he patented — stadium handrails and fittings made of aluminum, which eliminated the time-consuming welding required to install steel handrails.

Ford Field’s project manager initially balked at the higher price, but quickly relented when Venegas told him the aluminum rails would never need painting.

“So, we invented our rails, did our processes with it, and we put a little Lion logo on the ends of it, and the Ford family just loved it,” Venegas says. “The cool thing about that brushed aluminum is it’s the same color as the Lions’ uniforms. Now you look at those handrails and they look like new, and they’re happy because they never had to paint them at all. (Today), we sell them all around the country.”

The COVID-19 pandemic created more opportunities for Venegas. When General Motors Co. needed to inventory and distribute more than 500 million facemasks, Ideal Group created a way to streamline the process — a solution Venegas also supplied to the state of Michigan.

With testing and vaccine clinics popping up everywhere, health care administrators needed portable signs to direct traffic. Venegas’ now-patented answer was a hollow plastic pyramid-shaped base into which a metal pole with a sign at the top could be inserted and kept in place with sand or gravel. The lightweight plastic bases made obsolete the sign industry’s concrete model, which could weigh as much as 300 pounds.

“We sold $1 million worth of signs to Lowe’s, sold to Home Depot, Target, McDonald’s, Whole Foods, airports, special events, hospitals, and stadiums,” Venegas says.

A stand for dispensers of antibacterial products in public areas was another pandemic-inspired invention. “We have some wild, crazy machines and we can design anything on steel,” he says. “My guys made a plate for a stand with half-inch steel and wrote Lowe’s name into the steel. Lowe’s ordered $400,000 worth.”

Another Venegas rule: “The best thing you can do is don’t act like you’re smart when you design and patent products,” he says. “If you act like you’re too smart, people will think you have everything figured out. But if you’re always looking for new ideas and solutions, people will be more apt to help you.”

TEAM SHIELD

Frank Venegas Jr., far right, founded Ideal Group in 1979. Today, the multifaceted company is approaching $500 million in annual revenue. To the right of Venegas is his son, Jesse, and his daughter, Linzie, while on the far left is Venegas’ brother, Loren (glasses). Above is Venegas’ patent for the Hand Rail System.