Rhino extends its range.

• Author: Bailey, David
• Position: RUNNER-UP - Company overview

RHINO ASSEMBLY CORP.

Headquarters: Charlotte

President: Dan Brooks

Employees: 19

Founded: 2000

Projected 2011 revenue: $9.5 million

Business: Specialty industrial distributor

The world turned upside down in late 2008," says Dan Brooks, president of Rhino Assembly Corp. "All of a sudden, every manufacturer was saying, They've cut my budget. I'm not allowed to spend at all.'" Rhino, which specializes in providing customized tools for auto and aircraft manufacturers, was losing $50,000 to $100,000 a month. To survive, Brooks says, "we knew cutbacks had to be made, but we were not willing to cut employees." Co-owners Brooks, 46, and Leif Anderson, 41, believed that keeping their sales staff intact was essential to future success. So in early 2009, they called their eight salesmen into their company's small conference room. "We are in a dire situation right now," Brooks told them. "We could potentially lose the company. Something has to change."

And so it did. Brooks, Anderson and the sales team scrambled to find new sources of demand and, in the process, turned little Rhino into an international trader. The company exported $1 million of goods in 2010, up from just $10,000 a year earlier, proving that globalization isn't just for multinationals. Small businesses, if they're sawy, can benefit, too. In March 2010, President Barack Obama cited Rhino as a success story for its exports to Brazil, which has Latin America's biggest economy.

But diversifying domestic sales is really what saved the business. Rhino's niche is finding the precise, sometimes customized, tool to increase a manufacturer's productivity or safety--an automated lifter, say, that quickly picks up and positions a heavy part so it easily can be bolted down. "Dan and Leif believe that engineers are looking for educated problem solvers and not order takers," says Robert Arthur, vice president of Michigan Pneumatic Tool Inc., a Rhino supplier.

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From 2002 through 2007, Rhino boomed as its main market, the Southeast, grew. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Caterpillar and automotive-related manufacturers were expanding...