Oct. 12, 2009
Phil Norvold, founder, owner and president of Max-Bilt, will hold an open house from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Friday, Oct. 16, in room 132A of the Applied Arts Building, on the University of Wisconsin-Stout campus in Menomonie.
Max-Bilt is a local company that recently moved into UW-Stout’s business incubator. Max-Bilt specializes in total Jeep restorations, customizations, fabricated specialty products and used Jeep parts.
The open house will showcase new products and display the current product line. Participants will learn how students, faculty members and businesses benefit from working together in the incubator. A special guest from JP Magazine will be in attendance.
Max-Bilt began in 2005 as a Jeep restoration project when Norvold, then 23 years old, restored his dad’s ’85 CJ-7. Norvold founded the company after realizing there was a need for modern features in a center console like lights, auxiliary switches, and a 12-volt power socket. He hopes his participation in UW-Stout’s incubator helps his company enter the off-road aftermarket industry. His participation already has expanded Max-Bilt from a 1,000-square-foot garage to a 6,000-square-foot manufacturing facility at UW-Stout. Max-Bilt corporate offices are located at E9893 408th Avenue, Eau Claire. For more information, visit http://www.maxbilt.com, e-mail sales@maxbilt.com or call 715-210-0256.
UW-Stout’s Technology and Business Incubator, which is part of the Stout Technology Transfer Institute and the Discovery Center, fosters technical businesses through close relationships with faculty, students, industry and the UW-Stout community to better enable Wisconsin to compete in the global economy.
The UW-Stout incubator eases the way into the private sector to promote further economic development in west central Wisconsin. New businesses receive affordable facilities, services and professional support in areas that include marketing, packaging, product development and plant layout. Some start-up costs are deferred until graduation.
The incubator has created more than 100 new jobs in the region with more than 70 percent of the incubator clients operating successful businesses today. Data collected in a survey of current and former incubator clients reported 393 employees, more than $73 million in annual sales and an excess of $15 million in investments.
The unusually high success rate for start-up businesses is due in part to the quality of services provided by the incubator staff and the numerous resources provided by UW-Stout students and faculty. Criteria for acceptance into the incubator also help to ensure the success of new businesses.
UW-Stout is currently the most active campus in invention disclosures, according to the WiSys Technology Foundation. The university had 35 disclosures from June 2000 through
June 2009.
For more information about the incubator, visit http://stti.uwstout.edu/centers/incubator.asp.
