Jaeger Fabrication’s new facility in Eastanollee, Ga., has 45,000 sq. ft. of space, providing it much more elbow room than its previous 12,000-sq.-ft. home. Jaeger Fabrication

Jason Bramblett’s second act as an owner of a metal fabricating company has turned into an impressive performance.

Bramblett has been involved in the metal fabricating industry since the late 1980s, and in 1999 he started a fab shop with a couple of college friends. After almost 20 years of being one voice of three trying to manage a manufacturing business and also experiencing the death of his best friend, one of the co-owners, Bramblett wanted to strike out on his own. It just so happened that he knew of a shop that had been put on the market.

At the time, Jaeger Fabrication was a seven-employee shop in a 12,000-sq.-ft. facility. It was profitable and had a loyal customer base, but the owner hadn’t upgraded any equipment in a long time. He obviously had been looking toward retirement, and making expensive investments in a business he intended to sell really didn’t make sense.

But the sale made sense for Bramblett. He was going to get his shot to call all of the shots.

“This was one of the beauties of going out on my own. I could do it my way,” Bramblett said.

Bramblett took over full ownership in 2019. At that time, Jaeger Fabrication had almost $1 million in revenues. In 2024, the shop is on pace to reach $4 million. This is how the company has made the transition from a small shop to a growing metal fabrication business with plans and capacity to continue its recent success.

Step 1: Quick Turnaround

Bramblett has a straightforward philosophy for the metal fabricating business: Provide good-quality work with shorter lead times than the competition, supported with good communication along the way.

“If you think about it, it’s like taking your car to get worked on. You want the work done right. You want the price to be fair. And you want your car back quickly,” he said.

At the time of the purchase, Jaeger Fabrication only had a heavily used punching machine, which the new owner described as “limited at best.” To deliver on the goal of much shorter lead times than nearby service centers with fabricating services, the shop needed better cutting capabilities than the old punch press could offer.

With more than 30 years of metal fabricating experience, Bramblett knew he needed a laser. He had worked with the technology since the mid-1990s, but most of his experience was with CO₂ lasers. That’s why he was considering a used laser cutting machine until he met with a representative from Automated Solutions, a distributor for BesCutter/Han’s Songu laser cutting machines.

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Mark Williamson, president of the machine tool distributor, used to stop in occasionally at Jaeger Fabrication during the previous owner’s tenure. He decided to follow up with Bramblett, and his visit turned out to be perfectly timed.

Familiar with his budget, Williamson suggested the BesCutter 3-kW Space Saver model with a 5- by 10-ft. bed. Bramblett needed a couple of weeks to think about it, but he later reconnected with Williamson, giving him the thumbs up on the deal. Several weeks after that, the laser cutting machine was delivered in December 2020.

Immediately, the laser cutting machine made a significant difference in the business. Bramblett said that he was awed by the machine’s cutting speed and the lack of operator involvement necessary to get it prepped for a cutting job when compared to the older CO₂ machines. He didn’t have to worry about downtime associated with manually adjusting the laser cutting torch, for example, because this machine had autofocusing, making it able to jump from one job to another with different material thicknesses.

Customers took note as well. It wasn’t long before the shop was running two shifts just to keep up with the laser cutting orders. They were calling because they knew that Jaeger Fabrication could deliver laser-cut material much more quickly than other laser cutting service providers in the area.

Only a few months after adding laser cutting, Bramblett was approached by a customer about adding tube cutting capabilities. That led Jaeger Fabrication to buy a BesCutter 2-kW Hytube laser cutting machine for the task in July 2022.

The demand for laser cutting services didn’t slow down, so the shop kept adding machines. This time, however, it was focused on implementing the latest in laser cutting capabilities with a slight twist to maximize material requests.

The shop added a BesCutter 12-kW Fly 4020 machine with a 6- by 12-ft. cutting bed in December 2022 and followed that up with a BesCutter 12-kW Mach Speed 3015 with a 5- by 10-ft. cutting bed in fall 2023.

“Our business model is built around lead times, so every time we saw capacity go down, which could affect our lead times, we just made the decision to purchase another machine,” Bramblett said.

Jaeger Fabrication uses cranes to handle loading of sheet metal. Two gantry cranes take care of material handling on the two 12-kW machines. A jib crane handles the sheet on the smaller laser cutting machine.

The increase in laser-cut parts also forced Bramblett to invest in the company’s bending department. Jaeger Fabrication had a 200-ton Accurpress press brake with a 14-ft. bed, and Bramblett elected to keep it for heavy-duty jobs. He ditched two older mechanical brakes, however, and replaced them with two 130-ton press brakes with 10-ft. beds.

Step 2: Good Quality

In December 2022, Jaeger Fabrication earned its ISO 9001 certification. While not a guarantee of product quality, the certification suggests that the processes and documentation are in place to produce parts that consistently meet customers’ quality expectations.

“I suppose this is proof that you are going to do what you say you’re going to do,” Bramblett said. “It’s kind of a checks-and-balance type of thing. If you maintain this certification, you demonstrate to customers that you do certain things at a certain level.

“It’s actually opened up some doors with potential customers for sure.”

Bramblett added that the process to attain the ISO certification wasn’t as “overwhelming” as he thought it might be. Because the company maintains heavy documentation for each of the jobs coming through the shop, a lot of the necessary information about quality specifications, special instructions, and other job details were already available to those in the front office and the shop floor.

Bramblett credits the company’s ERP software, ProfitFab, with helping to pull all this information together and keeping schedules organized even as the business has grown at such a rapid rate. Additionally, the software has been useful in estimating and quoting, particularly as Bramblett has tried to delegate more responsibilities instead of trying to do everything himself as he did in the early days of his company ownership.

“Really the only thing we had to address was more documentation about training and some big picture type of things [like operating performance]. We’ve since implemented that documentation process, and we’re doing pretty well,” Bramblett said.

Processes are only as good as the people who are required to support them. Bramblett said that the Jaeger Fabrication team has really stepped up in terms of embracing not only the new ways of producing parts, but also the technology used. Given that the average age of the employees when he first purchased the business was around 40 years old, he’s been surprised at how everyone has been OK with the changes.

“We had a much older crew, but they were real receptive to the new technology and learning it,” Bramblett said. “Sometimes, that’s not the case.”

Step 3: Constant Communication

When a call is made to Jaeger Fabrication, that call is forwarded to Bramblett’s mobile phone. Also, all customers are provided with his mobile phone number. He wants to be available to the shop’s customers as much as he can.

“Communication is key,” he said. “If someone sends a request for a quote, it’s our philosophy that it needs to be turned around in 24 hours. When someone sends an order, the acknowledgement needs to be sent within 24 hours. If we’re not going to hit a target date for delivery, that needs to be communicated as soon as possible.

“Constant communication is important because the best ability is availability.”

That commitment to communication can’t be limited to phone calls, however. Bramblett said he and his team can’t be so rigid that they don’t evolve with their customers, who increasingly prefer texting.

That seems laughable for someone that came of age in the metal fabricating industry in the 1990s or even the 2000s, but teenagers who witnessed the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 are now in their 30s, with key roles in all types of companies. They’ve grown up with texting as a primary means of communication and get spooked if someone might actually call their phones.

Bramblett said that he now regularly gets texts from buyers. That’s what they prefer, and he wants to be as accommodating as possible.

Step 4: Smart Personnel Decisions

Answering most calls—and texts—can be a time-consuming endeavor for Jaeger Fabrication. Bramblett admits that he needs to get more people experienced in some of these tasks to not only remove some of the responsibilities from his plate, but also to start building up a leadership team.

“I’ve always believed in promoting from within. If you can take someone that’s earned the right to better themselves from within the company, that’s good. It’s just a matter of some training to allow them to take on more responsibilities,” he said.

Looking for leaders from within has proven to be a winning strategy for many metal fabricating companies, particularly since the pandemic. Finding employees, experienced or not, is truly a challenge for companies in all industry sectors, not just manufacturing.

Bramblett sees it as a major concern for all of the manufacturing industry, not just his shop. In the meantime, he’s going to spend more of his upcoming time trying to make sure the right people grow into the right roles.

“That’s the job of management. The people are the job, not making the parts and not running the equipment,” Bramblett said.

Step 5: Right Location

In December 2023, Jaeger Fabrication moved into its new facility in Eastanollee, Ga. The 45,000-sq.-ft. facility gives the shop enough room to accommodate all of its current fabricating capabilities and additional space for further growth.

The new location is a bit further northeast from Atlanta than the company’s original location in Braselton, Ga., but it’s still within a couple of hours’ drive to the state capital. The move down I-85, however, got it a bit closer to Greenville, S.C., and that’s been helpful in attracting the attention of new customers.

Looking back at the last five years, Bramblett is pleased with where the company is. It now has 23 employees and continues to grow at a rapid pace. Even with the dramatic growth, it has been able to maintain a diverse customer portfolio, preventing one customer from representing more than 15% of overall sales.

“I was just hoping to maintain what they were doing,” Bramblett said.

Jaeger Fabrication is doing much more than that. But that’s also part of the plan.

“If you’re not trying to grow or improve, you’re probably going to go backwards,” he said.

The transformation of Jaeger Fabrication is a story that won’t have an ending any time soon.