It takes a lot of creativity to turn something as Rust Beltesque as tool & die manufacturing into a Silicon Valley-style Internet start-up. The type of creativity that comes from the people at Speedraft.

The downtown Ann Arbor-based start-up streamlines the traditionally arduous task of manufacturers ordering manufacturing dies. It accomplishes this by putting the whole process on an Internet interface, allowing customers to lock down orders in a fraction of the time and money it used to take.

"Nobody has ever done what we do," says Tim Stephens, the founder and CEO of Speedraft. "We're the first."

Stephens has 23 years of experience in the custom tool & die industry and started Speedraft seven years ago as ToolPax. Today it employs seven people and two interns through Ann Arbor SPARK. Most of that growth came in the last year or two as the start-up started to gain traction in the industry.

The company is in the process of trying to raise more capital for expansion. If it can accomplish that it will go on a bit of a hiring spree, bringing on up to a dozen people later this year. Most of those jobs will be in software development.

"If I can get what's in the pipeline done now, we'll explode," Stephens says.

Source: Tim Stephens, founder and CEO of Speedraft
Writer: Jon Zemke