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PRODUCTS FINISHING — pfonline.com 23 IDEAL POWDER COATING SOLUTION law and accounting degrees. He is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants. Siegel entered the business world after college as an accoun- tant for a large accounting firm, and has also worked for a major investment banking firm. Turnaround and Move Brady and Siegel looked at various companies to purchase— including a watch and calculator business—before they zeroed in on iDeal. Brady says they "stalked" the bankruptcy sale and were able to purchase the company and its assets for just $1 over the liquidation price. "We didn't want to have an import business, and we didn't want to be in services," Brady says. "We wanted something that was asset-based that we could borrow against, and we also wanted to own a company that we could run on our own set of personal set of values. At the end of the day, we felt we could do that with iDeal." After the purchase, numerous pressing issues faced the new owners, most importantly that the facility they were in was not well suited for the operations they wanted to run. iDeal was headquartered in a leased 150,000-square-foot facility, which needed some major upgrades, including roof mainte- nance. They soon started looking around the area for new space, but were fully aware of the effect it would have on their 90 employees in the Deland area. But the owners had already tripled iDeal's sales by 2013, and they knew they needed to get into a new facility with new equipment or lose the momentum they had started. Several local counties in Florida region where they were based made them offers to move their plant—and its employees—before Siegel and Brady settled on a location in St. Johns County, nearly 70 miles away from their existing location. The new facility was 145,000 square feet that iDeal would own and renovate for more than $6.5 million, which included a new powder coating system the owners had decided the new facility had to have to be competitive and manufacture larger fence parts. iDeal lost a few employees who preferred not to move to travel the extra 70 miles to the new facility, but Siegel and Brady knew it had to be done. "We couldn't have stayed in the old place," Siegel says. "It didn't make sense, and we needed the new equipment to do what we wanted to do with this business." "The quality of the fnish on our products was always good. But now, it's unbelievable." Co-owner Doug Brady stands underneath a 53-foot section of fence that iDeal Aluminum Products manufactures and powder coats. iDeal chose to have Nordson Corp. install its powder coating system.