Craftsman follows grandfather’s lead

MARK — Brandon Mennie is following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Hubert “H.J.” Mennie, as a craftsman and will run his own small, personalized machine shop.

Brandon, 27, a man of many talents, has been working in his family’s larger, factory-like Mennie Machine Co. in Mark for more than a decade. And this winter, he completed the purchase of Taylor Made Machining Inc., also in his hometown of Mark.

“I wanted to venture off and do my own thing,” Brandon said. “Mennie’s is thousands to millions of parts. What we do is smaller quantity. A job shop.

“It’s a dying art.”

In recent weeks, he completed his purchase of Taylor Made from former founder Frank Niewinski and Bill Skowronski. Brandon said he has the blessing of his father, Bill, who is Mennie Machine Co. president. His business and the larger Mennie’s business are complementary, and serve different markets.

“We take on new, different jobs every day, and fix broken things and make new things. Every job’s a little different,” he said. “Instead of making one, five and 10 parts, they started making 1,000, 5,000, 10,000.”

While a majority of the equipment in Taylor Made Machine has automated or programmable controls, Taylor Made craftsmen and equipment have manual abilities to create and fabricate whatever might be needed, whether it’s fixing a broken part from an old tractor or doing the tool-and-die work to be able to complete a job.

“What we do here is what H.J. started doing in the 1970s,” Brandon said.

Niewinski said he and everyone else who has been at the shop for many years are staying on to help the company and Brandon. Niewinski started Taylor Made Machining Inc. in August 1993 in his father’s garage. He had worked for H.J. Mennie at Mennie Machine Co. starting in high school, and when the economy became a bit slow, he had pursued another line of employment.

Niewinski had been working at Motor Wheel in Mendota and then returned to Mennie’s, and some customers urged him to “go out on my own” for smaller jobs.

“We were just doing general machining. It was all custom machining. We made little jigs, die tooling, fixturing blocks,” Niewinski said.

“We’re a niche operation. We do a lot of emergency work and repairs, and we build a lot of new tooling for local manufacturing (plants),” Niewinski said.

Why did Niewinski want to sell, but also keep working and mentoring for a while?

“Basically, getting a little bit older and wanting the business to continue on in the direction it’s been going for the last 27 years,” he said. “I’m working with (Brandon Mennie) in the transition for as long as we can.”

The 12 full-time employees are staying on, and that includes Niewinski, in estimating and purchasing.

“The key is, as far as our customers are concerned, nothing is changing. Everybody’s still here. They’re doing the same jobs they’ve had,” Niewinski said.

Brandon said he bought the business because of his experience, his desire to help customers, and his love for the tool room.

“What I’m learning about this business is keeping the jobs going and keeping the customers satisfied,” he said.

Sometimes that means making a house call to a manufacturer or customer. “This morning I was just at a factory in Mendota,” he said. He drove there to see what the customer needed. He brought back some of the items to work on, and the manufacturer will deliver some items to the shop.

In addition to enjoying his craft and business, for which he studied at Illinois Valley Community College and Bradley University (bachelor’s degree in manufacturing engineering technology), he has several hobbies, ranging from flying airplanes to playing competitive hockey.

He and his wife, Katie, live in Mark.