High Speed Welding
6820-B3 Market St., Wilmington

Top local official: Stuart Foreman, owner and CEO

No. of employees: 20

Year founded: 2005

Company description: Custom aluminum fabrication and manufacturing

Description of products made locally: T-tops for boats, ladder racks for pickup trucks, handrails for commercial and residential and recently began fabricating all of its canvas and upholstery in-house

Places of product distribution: Over 60 percent of the company’s products are delivered to clients across the U.S. About 40 percent stays local.

What made the company decide to make its goods locally? Foreman: “[I] moved to Wilmington in 2005 to study entrepreneurship at UNCW. The business was started during freshman year of college, and by graduation, High Speed Welding had two full-time employees. We’ve averaged an annual revenue growth of 58 percent since HSW was founded, and we just recently ranked on the Inc. 5000 list with a combined revenue growth of 155 percent between 2014 and 2017.”

What’s your target market? Foreman: “On the marine side we target boat manufacturers, boat dealers and boat owners. On the truck rack side, we target truck accessory distributors, truck dealers/ upfitters and contractors/builders.”

What’s planned next? Foreman: “We just signed a new lease near the airport for a 20,000-square-foot building. It will be a large increase from our current 14,000-square-foot location. With current growth from our new and existing clients, we should be at capacity soon after. The 20,000-square-foot area is Phase 1, and we plan to initiate Phase 2 within three to six months from moving in. The new RyderRack Bolt has been a great product for us. We just picked up two very large clients that have distribution networks across the country. All three of our major boat manufacturing clients are currently expanding their locations, so we plan to focus a lot of attention towards their increasing demands as well.”

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