Dan Heneveld and Jeff Boyd have been friends since the 6
th grade. When Dan opened Heneveld Group in 1991, it was not long until Jeff soon joined him on this business venture. Together, the two have been operating Heneveld Industrial Group since 1993.
Originally, Heneveld Group was based on a manufacturer representatives’ model. The best friend duo worked out of their homes, visiting people both near and far. In the late 1990s, Dan and Jeff decided to shift the business to a distribution model and buy out a filter distribution company, expanding their revenue stream and better meeting the needs of their customers. To accommodate for this growth, they moved the business out of their homes into an industrial condo, where they operated for several years.
As business continued, so did the Heneveld Group’s development and growth. In the depth of the economic downturn of 2008/2009, Dan and Jeff decided to start their own industrial electrical and mechanical division, as so many of the contractors they were using were going out of business. They still had plenty of work to do, and there were numerous talented people available. Eventually, they merged their multiple divisions into one, creating Heneveld Industrial Group in 2012.
In 2018, Dan and Jeff were faced with a bigger challenge: in addition to the three industrial condo units they owned and used for office and warehouse, they rented space in a building next door for the fabrication, and service portion of the business. The space was sold, and the new owner needed the whole building, and they were left looking for a solution. After many months looking, they found a space in Zeeland that would fit their needs but needed financing to make the move affordable. It was at this point that Dan and Jeff were introduced to the SBA 504 loan program by the
Economic Development Foundation (EDF).
“The SBA 504 loan program was very beneficial for us,” explained Jeff.
“We were expecting to have to put down 20% with a traditional loan, so only having to put down 10% was a huge relief.” Due to the savings from the SBA 504 program, Dan and Jeff were able to preserve that capital and put it to work in improvements to the building instead.
“There are bells that the SBA wants you to ring, and
EDF
had a really good understanding of those bells and were able to simply explain them to us in a way we could understand. Because of the SBA 504 loan, we now have 24,000 square feet of operating space and everybody is under one roof, allowing our business to operate more efficiently.”
For more information on Heneveld and their services, visit their website at
www.heneveld.com and to read the full Heneveld Success Story click
here .
