INVEST

Veridian continues to grow in Spencer

Veridian Limited has been in Spencer since 1997 – and some people still don’t even know the company is here.

“It’s not uncommon at all for me to meet people in the community or to hear stories from people that are like, ‘What? We didn’t even know Veridian was out there,’” said Veridian President Bill Van Lent. “Obviously, I’m very proud of the business, as the owner, but I’m also very proud of the people that make up Veridian in northwest Iowa.”

While Veridian may have a low profile, the impact the company makes deserves attention.

Veridian makes protective fire gear for firefighters in the US and internationally. Its Spencer manufacturing facility, located at 3710 W. Milwaukee Street, is the company’s flagship facility. There are also manufacturing locations in Des Moines and Quitman, Arkansas.

Among the three locations, Veridian has about 125 employees, with about 60 in Spencer.

“That is our landmark facility,” Van Lent said of the Spencer location. “That’s where we started and that’s (responsible for) the real growth in our company. That’s also where a lot of our more sophisticated and more complex products are manufactured.”

Veridian moves to Spencer

Veridian hasn’t always been in Spencer. The company was founded in Kentucky in 1992 as a joint venture between a manufacturer there and an Iowa-based international sales company.

In 1997, the partnership fell apart and Van Lent bought the company.

“My background is in the financial services, investments and capital markets arena,” Van Lent said. “Having spent a number of years in that industry, I was always intrigued and interested in manufacturing, particularly US-based manufacturing.”

He found an opportunity with Veridian.

“It was very small at the time,” Van Lent said. “It only had about six employees total. I saw a real opportunity for this to be a growth business.

At the time, the company was only selling its products to other countries that used US-style firefighting gear. Van Lent changed that. Now, about 70-75% of the company’s sales volume comes from the US.

With that shift, Veridian began to rapidly outgrow its Kentucky location.

President Bill Van Lent

Van Lent, who would commute from his home in West Des Moines to Kentucky, began searching for a location in that state. But then one of his Iowa contacts, Rand Fisher with the Iowa Area Development Group, told him that Aalfs Manufacturing, a maker of denim garments, had moved out of Spencer. Not only was the building a good fit, but also the employees that needed jobs had the right skills.

“It just worked out with a kind of serendipity that I was able to move the business much closer to my home in West Des Moines and that we had fantastic facilities, as well as really skilled people that had experience in cut-and-sew in the Spencer area,” Van Lent said.

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Growth year after year

Veridian has grown virtually every year since 1997 and has in many of those years grown over 100% compared to the previous year.

While part of that is the market – there are about 1.3 million firefighters in the US with about 300,000 being full-time – the other part that Van Lent credits is its employees.

Van Lent said the quality of the workforce and the general work ethic that comes with folks in Northwest Iowa plays a huge role.

“We have really dedicated and hardworking people that are very creative,” he said. “I think all factory-type work takes a certain amount of skill and capability, but in this case, it takes a very specific skill set and training to be able to contribute quality into the construction of the garments.”

Van Lent added that he’s proud his company is part of the Spencer community and is grateful for support from the community and the Spencer Chamber of Commerce.

In addition to assisting Veridian specifically, Van Lent said the Chamber puts on great networking events, which he added encourage collaboration among Spencer businesses.

“I know there are a lot of outstanding businesses up in northwest Iowa, particularly in the Spencer area, and we’re just proud to be one of them.”

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