5/28/2008

By Ron Wilson, director, Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.
    

Three, two, one, ignition - we have liftoff. The ground shakes as the rocket thunders from the Kennedy Space Center launch pad, carrying the space shuttle skyward on its way to another successful mission.  Those rocket boosters must be very strong and powerful. They were heat treated using a system designed and built by a company in rural
Kansas. It sounds like science fiction, but it´s today´s Kansas Profile.
    
Larry Grimsley is the owner of GS Incorporated. GS Inc. is the company that produces high-powered heating elements which helped prepare the space shuttle booster rockets and more.
    
Our story begins where Larry Grimsley grew up, three miles east of Americus in Lyon County, north of Emporia. He worked as a machinist while going to school at Emporia State and then took a job with a manufacturing company in charge of their heating element work. He enjoyed the work, but after his division of the company was sold and
resold, he decided to go out on his own.
    
In 1989, Larry and his parents Jack and Joyce started GS Incorporated to work in industrial heating products. But it takes a lot of courage to be an entrepreneur.
    
Larry says, "Frankly, I was scared to death. I thought maybe I´d sell two elements a year to go in somebody´s toaster."
    
But he rented a building back in his hometown of Americus and went to work. The business grew. In 1991, they built a new building in Americus.
    
This company´s specialty is building products for the high end of the heat processing industry. By high end, I mean the type of equipment which can heat a product up to 1,000 to 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. That´s a long way beyond toasters.
    
GS Incorporated designs and builds the heating elements, insulation, and support structure for these products. It is a true specialty. There is no other company like this in Kansas and only a handful in the entire nation.
    
Larry says, "Most products go through some sort of heat processing."
    
His company´s products are used in manufacturing, petrochemical, and automotive applications.
    
He says, "We tend to respond to the current happenings in the marketplace. Fifteen years ago, we were working on heat treating the space shuttle booster rockets. Then the automakers switched from steel to magnesium castings to get better gas mileage so we made elements for furnaces for that. Now the processing of titanium is big
and that has to be heated to 2,000 degrees. Right now we´re making systems that harden the gears on wind turbines."
    
The applications of his products are closer than you might think - perhaps in your good china cabinet or under the hood of your car.
    
Larry says, "Our products go into the electric kilns which are used to fire Lennox china.  And most all the engine valves on Ford and General Motors vehicles go through carburizing furnaces using our products."
    
"Since we´ve started," he said, "we´ve probably shipped products to most every state, especially the northwestern U.S. and the East Coast."
    
Sales are up tenfold from two years ago.  They´re even shipping products as far away as Argentina and Korea.
    
Yet this remains a family business in a rural setting. Larry´s father runs the shop and Larry´s mom worked in the office until she retired, only to be replaced by Larry´s wife Wanda.  Other family members have been known to step in when there´s a big project to be finished.
    
That´s what life is like in a rural town like Americus, Kansas, population 931 people.  Now, that´s rural. Americus is located on a county road - not even on a state highway, but GS Inc. has been able to have global success in this rural setting.
    
The space shuttle is approaching re-entry. Now we know that its mission was successfully completed thanks to a rural Kansas company.
    
We commend Larry and Wanda Grimsley, Jack and Joyce Grimsley, and the people of GS Inc. for making a difference with their entrepreneurship and innovation. I´m glad to see that this company has been able to take off and bring the benefits back to earth.