Tresca Design aims to make outsourced mechanical engineering easy.
For Dan Buckmaster, president and founder, that’s translated to putting relationships first and thinking flexibly and creatively.
“The more nimble you are, the more easily you’re able to adapt to and overcome the failures that are inevitable in this journey,” he said.
His firm, which does mechanical engineering design and prototyping, product development and turnkey manufacturing, employs eight and is headquartered at Tri-Main Center on Main Street in Buffalo.
He founded the company in 2017 when he was 21. Since then, the firm has grown revenue from $38,000 in 2018 to $1.38 million in 2022.
Here are some of the main business strategies that have led to his company’s growth.
Put relationships first.
Some businesses might have short-term relationships with clients because the transactions are focused on dollars and cents. Tresca has long-term relationships with its customers, which from a business perspective means recurring revenue.
As a small firm, Buckmaster’s business can think differently and customize. It’s not just a standard terms and conditions sheet, and if a client wants to change a contract, they can call him, not his attorney.
While a client might get assigned a Tresca point person, the whole team is working behind the scenes collaborating on challenges.
Buckmaster said he likes to offer insights a little outside the scope of a given project to, for example, help a company understand its product road map. They’re not services the firm quotes or charges for. Rather, they add value, which builds relationships and gives Tresca almost an advisory role for future work with that given customer.
“At the end of the day, we’re completely reliant on our clients,” he said. “That’s what our business is so we have to keep them happy. I will never throw away a relationship for a couple bucks.”
Be flexible.
Multiple times over the past few years, Buckmaster and his director of operations have changed roles, sometimes for the foreseeable future and sometimes temporarily.
It allows the founder to focus on what he needs to and accommodate clients who propose different arrangements than the firm is used to.
Another case in point: Tresca has raised a little under $1 million in private investment. It’s not a standard practice for an engineering firm and it certainly wasn’t part of Buckmaster’s original business plan. But during the pandemic when he had more business than he knew what to do with, Tresca had to grow quickly.
“I was able to show (investors) I need this investment to grow quicker than a traditional firm would but that would come at a benefit of having sustainable jobs here,” he said.
As a leader, don’t overthink it.
Yes, building a good company culture is important. But entrepreneurs starting out shouldn’t get overwhelmed by all the options they could give employees, such as team lunches and workshops.
“At the end of the day, if you focus on respecting employees, building trust and loyalty and just being kind, everything else seems to fall into place,” he said.
It sounds simple, but it can take intentional actions. Buckmaster said his team used to have one hour-long Monday meetings but he shortened them to half an hour so the first 30 minutes could be spent talking about how employees' weekends. It’s a nice way to ease back into work, he said.
He also tries to make sure employees know they can speak up when there’s a disagreement. He’s accessible, whether it’s a worker coming into his office or calling him after work hours.
“You don’t have to agree, but as a manager you absolutely have to understand it,” he said.
