An aerial view of Evanston. Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
On the floor of a plant on Main Street in Evanston’s West End, coils of brass ribbon feed metal stamping presses that turn out small parts for other manufacturers. Ward Manufacturing, a family-owned stamping company that traces its roots to 1943, employed 47 people full time at its 2222 Main St. facility at the end of 2012.
From a moonlighting tool-and-die maker to a plant on Main Street
The company began with Michael Ward, a tool-and-die maker who, during World War II, got permission from his employer to build dies after hours. The side work grew into a business on Southport Avenue in Chicago. Customers who bought his dies soon wanted the parts the dies produced, so he began stamping and stocking those too.
The business later settled in Evanston, first in a two-story building in an alley behind Emerson Street. Tom Ward, who now runs the company with his brother Michael Jr. as the third generation of the family, remembered the early shop as a hand operation: about a dozen workers, a tool room upstairs and no forklift.
Ward outgrew the alley, moved to a larger building on Emerson Street, and in the 1990s relocated to the West End, where the City of Evanston and Northwestern University were developing the Evanston Research Park. The city held a pie-shaped former railroad parcel jointly with Zera Construction, and its Economic Development Committee helped negotiate the move. The company’s 23,000-square-foot headquarters was built there in 1995.
The expansion next door
The most recent expansion began with equipment. Ward had started taking on work that needed presses with more tonnage than it owned, and a new machine meant more floor space. The vacant building next door, a former skateboard warehouse, was the obvious candidate. The Wards and their architect checked with the city and learned the parcel was zoned for manufacturing.
The city then made $750,000 in tax increment financing money available toward buying and converting the building, on the condition that Ward remain in Evanston for 12 years. The converted space has solar tubes that bring in daylight and a polished concrete floor.
Tom Ward described the company’s financial approach as conservative: grow steadily from existing and contracted business, keep debt about equal to a month’s expenses and hold enough cash to buy equipment when an opportunity appears. The family’s shorthand for that is an old saying about keeping your powder dry, one he attributed to his father, who was still active in the business.
He also said Ward had seen customers bring production back to the United States from overseas, a trend often called reshoring, though some took a decade to reach that conclusion.
The profile was contributed by Evanston resident Linda Hansen of Wild Crow Communications.
Daniel Okafor covers business, startups and the Innovators section for The Evanston Edge.
