140 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 10 to start a (personal) succession plan, which I did do, officially back in 2016, knowing that gave me approximately 10 years.” In the machine shop/fabrication shop industry, Blow adds, owners are notorious for selling their businesses behind the scenes and giving their employees a short-shrift wish for good luck and a quick goodbye. He didn’t want to do that. “I wanted everybody to be part of it,” says Blow, adding that he also wanted “the people who got us to where we are today to have a bite of the apple, if you will.” “We began researching ESOP’s, what they were, and how they worked, and we arrived at an altruistic conclusion: We wanted this beneficial plan for the entire Astro Machine Works company. It would mean not only looking out for Astro’s people but also the long-term well-being of the company itself.” “It set up everybody for a very stellar future,” he continues, “for many, many years to come.” Blow reveals that in 2006, Astro joined up with a local private equity group. All options were put on the table and thoroughly checked out and discussed, and the one everyone kept coming back to was the ESOP model. Going with an ESOP would give all of Astro’s employees a piece of the action. A variety of services Astro Machine Works does a lot, says Blow. It performs CNC (or computer numerical control) machining. This is the automated control of machining tools—such as drills, lathes, mills, grinders, routers, and threedimensional printers—via computerized means. A CNC machine processes a piece of material—which may be as varied as metal, plastic or a composite—to meet specifications by following coded programmed instructions and without a manual operator directly controlling this operation. Astro also does
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