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From the Desk of...

Vietnam Vet Changes Biz Plan
To Keep Up With Changing Times

WHO: Roger E. Avie
WHAT Supply Team LLC ~ A new service-disabled, veteran-owned small business that offers a wide range of specialty coatings
HOW MANY EMPLOYEES: 5
LOCATION: Farmington Hills, MI
PHONE: (248) 476-5400
E-Mail: Roger Avie ( rogeravie@gmail.com )

Roger Avie

In his own words: "You've got to move on. You've got to jump."

Over more than two decades, Roger E. Avie built two successful businesses. But when those began to falter due to changing market conditions, Avie decided to create a new business and go in an entirely new direction.

Originally, Avie started and ran a business that sold computers and offered computer training and education. His other business created video productions.

Clients included Lawrence Technological University, Tower Automotive and other auto industry suppliers, as well as a whole range of other big, well-known companies.

At one point, Avie's two companies had 20 employees, operating out of a 5,000-square-foot office that Avie built in Farmington Hills.

Not bad for a former Army specialist and Vietnam veteran.

The companies were Visual Specialties, the video production company, and Specialty Products Inc., which offered computers and related training. Both companies later were merged in a single business called Vi-Spec.

Then, about four years ago, Avie said, he began to notice that business was slowing.

Rather than buying computers from his company, a growing number of his clients were buying their computers directly from Dell and other big retailers. And, as technology improved and prices came down, more clients were buying their own video gear and creating their own videos.

"Technology put us in business and it pretty much put us out of business," Avie said during a recent interview in his office.

About that time, Avie's business partner, Ray Malover, an Air Force veteran, suggested an entirely new business venture, one involving the application of protective coatings and linings of water pipes, sewer lines, holding tanks, bridges -- everything from municipal infrastructures to manufacturing equipment to chemical plants.

"We realized we were on to something," said Avie, who graduated from Lawrence Technological University and went on to do post-graduate work at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan.

The special polyurea compound can protect whatever it coats from chemicals, rust, corrosion, dirt, air, and a wide array of other substances, giving the coated objects many more years of use.

For example, pipes coated with the material can last another 30 years, Avie said.

He said his company also found and now offers other unique products, like full-heat transfer materials, fire-suppressant materials, heat blockers, products that can bond with biohazards, oil, acid and even a product that can repel zebra mussels and barnacles.

"So we have all of these unique coatings and applications and we are in the mode of starting to market them,"Avie said.

They are offering all of these products under a newly formed company, Supply Team LLC. Like the old company, it will be based in Farmington Hill, but in a smaller, 700-square-foot building. The staff includes Avie and four others.

Projections call for the company to do more business in the first quarter of this year than in all of last year, he said.

The key to staying afloat in these tough economic times is to be flexible and adaptable and to know when it's time to move on, he said.

"You've got to move on. You've got to jump," he says.

Carl Stoddard
Maj. MIARNG (Ret.)

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