On the Rise: SRC, Chase and BriteCore growing in Springfield

Chad Myers expects to occupy SRC Heavy Duty’s $4.5M expansion by November.

Phil Reynolds: Companies can’t be afraid to pivot, such as making a name change.

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Fresh off hitting sales of $100 million in 2018, Springfield ReManufacturing Corp. is set to expand its northwest Springfield campus before year’s end.

It’s a project that signals growth for the SRC Holdings Corp. subsidiary. Two other companies operating in Springfield, Chase Card Services and Springfield-based software company BriteCore Holdings Inc., are also flourishing or on the verge of it.

Chase is hiring by the hundreds, while BriteCore – formerly Intuitive Web Solutions LLC – is managing a rapid rise in revenue up 196 percent since 2016.

At Springfield ReManufacturing, aka SRC Heavy Duty, construction of a 95,000-square foot addition is likely to start this month, said General Manager Chad Myers. The new building would increase the 160,000-square-foot plant at 650 N. Broadview Place. The $4.5 million project is expected to be complete by November, he said.

“We had plenty of room to be able to expand on this site and add parking,” Myers said.

Rich Kramer Construction Inc. is the general contractor, while BRP Architects is the project architect.

SRC Heavy Duty remanufactures and assembles diesel engines, turbochargers, engine components, whole goods and generator sets. Additional assembly lines will be included in the new building, Myers said, noting the extra space will allow its disassembly, cleaning, machining and salvage work to be separated from the rest of its assembly, shipping, painting and packing operations.

“There’s just a lot of activity in that shop today,” he said, noting Heavy Duty’s workforce doubled in the past 18 months to 402 employees, spread across its buildings on Broadview and East Kearney Street. “We need to spread out and grow just a little bit more.”

It’s part of companywide growth for SRC Holdings Corp., which reached $600 million and 1,800 employees across its 10 subsidiaries in 2018.

Chasing staff
Chase Card Services is anticipating a big jump in its Springfield workforce.

The subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) held a job fair March 6 at its 303 E. Republic Road operations center as part of its goal to add 400 jobs in 2019, said David Elliott, site coordinator.

Currently employing 1,300 workers in its nearly 270,000-square-foot center, Elliott said Chase doesn’t hold local job fairs very often – typically once every year or two. The center opened in January 1998.

“It will look different at year’s end,” Elliott said of the expected boost in employees.

Elliott said low unemployment rates make it more of a challenge to find available workers but hiring new staff is a priority. It added a retail customer department last summer that assists Chase customers with banking services, joining its existing credit card customer service staff.

Looking ‘Brite’
Bolstering employment is nothing new at BriteCore, which officially changed its name from Intuitive Web Solutions nine months ago, said Phil Reynolds, CEO and co-founder.

The company just doubled its revenue.

Reynolds said sales reached $13.6 million in 2018, up from $7.2 million in 2017 and $4.6 million in 2016.

Total employee count, which includes roughly 100 international team members, is about 254, Phil Reynolds said. It ended 2018 with 231 employees, he added, while a decade prior it had around a dozen – a 1,825 percent increase.

The company, formed in 2004, has been doing business as BriteCore since 2012.

BriteCore services 57 insurers with its software, he said, noting Workers Compensation Fund of Utah is its largest publicly disclosed company among them, with a nearly $400 million annual premium. 

“There’s some much, much larger insurers in our pipeline right now,” he said, declining to disclose names.

“Much larger insurance agencies are interested in our platform now, and that’s driving our growth.”

Should its clientele continue to increase, Reynolds expects the company will hit the $20 million mark and be pushing 300 workers by year’s end.

Hitting goals
At SRC Heavy Duty, while 2018 revenue represented a $10 million increase from the year prior, the 2017 total was 67 percent above the $53 million projected for the year, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

Myers said the company in 2016 set a multiyear goal to reach $100 million in revenue, and eclipsed it a year ahead of projection.

Myers credits growth in real gross domestic product as the biggest driver for the company, noting GDP was between 1.5-1.8 percent for several years but began improving in 2016 and 2017. Real GDP increased by 2.9 percent in 2018, compared with 2.2 percent in 2017, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

“A lot of that company growth was driven by the GDP and some new product launches,” he said, adding later version engines were among the new items introduced for remanufacturing.
 
“We had a lot of people killing themselves trying to do what was right,” said Darin Bridges, SRC’s vice president of business development, of the effort in recent years to boost productivity. “All of a sudden, it clicked, and everybody started working toward a common goal.”
 
Managing growth
Myers likens the current confidence level at SRC to a basketball shooter on a hot streak who doesn’t want to stop taking shots until they miss.

“The confidence level in the entire group is building momentum,” he said.  

At Chase, Elliott said the company’s intent to add 400 employees over the course of the year rather than all at once is part of a strategic plan.

“Sometimes, growing too fast can be detrimental,” he said, noting the strategy allows the employees to be phased in and provide ample time for training.

With consistently rising revenue and employee totals, BriteCore’s CEO said companies can’t be afraid to change – even its name. 

“Pivoting is critical to success,” Reynolds said, adding businesses also should think globally about its talent pool.

“Always be innovating,” he said. “If you ever look at your company and you’re doing the same things you were doing two years ago, it’s already over for you and you don’t even know it yet.”