Reduced the number of machining steps.
Moved the stress point.
Margaret listened even though she understood only part of the engineering.
When he finished, she asked the question Daniel would remember for the rest of his life.
“Can anyone else use it?”
He looked at her.
“What?”
“If your plant needs that part, other plants probably do too.”
That question became Mercer Industrial Supply.
Not immediately.
Nothing important happened immediately in Daniel’s life.
He built the first prototype through a local machine shop.
The plant tested it.
It lasted longer than the replacement part from the established supplier.
A neighboring manufacturer heard about it.
Then another.
Daniel began taking orders in the evenings.
He used a folding table in the garage as a desk because there was no room anywhere else.
Margaret kept invoices in a metal cash box.
Their son Thomas, eleven at the time, folded packing slips after school.
Their daughter Clare put address labels on envelopes and complained that Thomas got easier jobs.
When orders began exceeding what Daniel could manage from the garage, he rented a warehouse barely large enough for one delivery truck and a row of metal shelves.
The heater worked only when it felt like it.
The office had one phone.
The roof leaked near the loading door.
Mercer Industrial Supply was officially in business.
Financing nearly killed it before competition had a chance.
Daniel borrowed from a credit union after three banks declined him.
Margaret sold her old sedan to help cover equipment costs.
Daniel protested.
She handed him the check.
“We have your truck.”
“You hate my truck.”
“I hate losing the house more.”
They did not lose the house.
They nearly lost everything else several times.
The first year, Daniel drove deliveries in the morning, handled sales calls in the afternoon, and did paperwork at night.
He cleaned the warehouse bathroom on Fridays because there was nobody else to do it.
When the company hired its first employee, Daniel interviewed her personally.