Paul Springer was fresh out of college in the early 1970s and enjoying a career at Diamond Shamrock, where he helped create Dacromet, one of the first products that used a zinc and chromium coating application.

“I had a pretty good job there,” he says. “I enjoyed what I was doing.”

But his tennis party in those days, George Kappas Sr. from Erieview Metal Treating in Cleveland, kept telling Springer he didn’t seem that happy in his work. He encouraged him to look for a change of scenery and maybe even strike out on his own as an owner of a finishing and coating operation.

“I thought he was crazy,” says Springer, the owner of SpringCo Metal Coating. “I was in the lab. I didn’t even know what a business owner did.”

Forty-five years later, SpringCo provides several coating services, including electrocoating, powder coating, rack zinc plating, and phosphating on a sprawling 11-acre site with a 250,000-square-foot facility in Cleveland.