Dan Brockman was a college student in the late 1960s when he took a part-time job at a manufacturer who also happened to be looking for a hard chrome plater.

One of the tasks Brockman was given was to find a suitable plating operation for his employer to use, and he discovered there were not many platers to choose from.

“I went back to my college class and wrote a 70-page business plan with a few other students on how to run a hard chrome plating business,” says Brockman, who eventually used the plan to open what is now Techmetals in Dayton, one of the premier finishing operations in North America.

“I was 20 years old and thought I knew it all,” he says. “I started the business and never even went back and finished college. My first plating tank was a Rubbermaid trash bin, and we used a car battery charger as a power source. I thought I could easily fix this problem. 

Today, Brockman is mostly retired but still visits Techmetals offices frequently, where his son, Phillip, is now president and CEO.

“Phillip has continued a lot of the things that we started, which was continued training for employees and showing appreciation to the staff,” Brockman says. “You are only as good as your employees.”