In 2022, Brainerd-based Stern Co. Inc. rebranded its manufacturing arm as Revolv Manufacturing, a name that alludes to the rotating molds the company uses to make everything from kayaks to giant fuel tanks to delivery robots at its three locations across Minnesota. The clarifying name change coincided with a shift in the company’s core value statements as well as the increasing role of the next generation of company leadership.
“We had things like ‘integrity’ as core values,” says Julie Henne, the company’s director of human resources, “but shouldn’t we always have integrity? So, we asked ourselves, ‘Honestly, what are our core values?’” The company’s leadership, which includes owner Shawn Hunstad and his two sons, Cole, now the company’s vice president, and Jordan, director of operations, came up with three statements: We Show Up. We See the Possibilities. We Make It Happen. — the most important of which is “We Show Up.” The mantra goes beyond just being on the job and paying attention to your work, says Jordan Hunstad. “It’s being engaged with continuous improvement, looking at the processes we have, and seeing what we can do better,” he says. “That’s a big thing for our operators and secondary operators to be fully engaged in what it means to be here.”
An engaged and efficient workforce is crucial as the company realigns after a period of expansion and aspires to double its revenues in the next 10 years. Revolv and its sister company and sales arm, AxisNorth Solutions, are the vision of Shawn Hunstad, who is CEO of both companies. He began as a broker and small manufacturer in the plastic and rubber business, starting in 1995, and has grown it to a company with joint sales of $42 million. Son Jordan joined the firm in 2012, working in almost every capacity on the production floor before being named director of operations in 2025. Cole Hunstad started in 2015 on the floor as well but soon moved into sales. He currently runs AxisNorth and is vice president of Revolv, with the plan that he will eventually move into the president’s chair. With a goal of growing the joint business to $100 million in 10 years, Hunstad has acquired the equipment, spaces, and employees from two other rotational molders who left the area. Five years after the last acquisition, the company must figure out how to merge those operations more fully and create an aligned, excited workforce.
How it grew
In 2017, Hunstad acquired the equipment and empty 35,000-square-foot facility of Premier Plastics in Hoyt Lakes, which had left the area. Fortunately, many of Premier’s employees wanted to work with Revolv, giving the company expertise in thermoforming as well as rotational molding and a connection to OEMs in the recreational and powersports businesses. Three years later, Shawn and Jordan Hunstad went to Maple Plain to look at some rotational molding equipment that was being sold when another molder left the area. The equipment was solid, but they weren’t sure how well it would stand up during a move to Brainerd. Jordan suggested they leave it in Maple Plain and continue to lease the building where it was located. After some ups and downs in the negotiations, the Hunstads acquired the equipment, took over the lease plus a lease in another building, and ended up with two sites in Maple Plain. They also kept most of the company’s employees and — most significantly — its contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense — giving the company a new line of business.
“Within two weeks, we were able to be up and running,” Shawn Hunstad says.
Rotational molding is a niche business — you’d be lucky to find 30 vendors at conferences for rotational molders. The process starts with plastic resin pellets that are poured into a mold and heated to up to 600 degrees, then rotated along two axes to spread like lava into the mold. The process is hot, complex, and requires more manual adjustments to heating and cooling times and temperatures than other types of molding. It’s best for producing large parts and products where strength is essential. Rotational molding is not taught in technical programs. Having workers available who were experienced in rotational molding was a great benefit in the acquisitions, Hunstad says.
“They’ve already done rotational molding,” he says, “but they’ve done it the way they’ve done it. A big push for us is creating what we call the ‘Revolv Way.’ It’s about how we do things at Revolv.”
Aligning systems and building employee skills in lean manufacturing is key to Hunstad’s vision for the company’s future. “With the facilities we have now, we feel like we can grow sales to the $60 to $70 million range,” he says. “To grow another $30 million beyond that is going to be through more acquisitions.”
Until those opportunities appear, “we want all three plants operating under the same playbook,” he says. “We want everybody doing things the same way.”
The year of training
The year 2025 is the “year of training” at Revolv, says Henne. “We’re focused on cultivating leadership within our team because our growth ambitions are extremely ambitious. To get from where we are to where we want to be, we need to stay ahead and be well-prepared,” says Henne.
Funded by grants from the State of Minnesota and Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation (IRRR), the company has expanded training in all of its plants. The Hoyt Lakes plant, for example, received training on how to use a new rotary thermoforming machine, which allowed it to fulfill a large contract for consoles for Lund Boats. Two of the plants have ISO certification, with the third certification on the horizon.
This year, the company contracted with Enterprise Minnesota to provide training in both job relations and Leading Daily for Results. Everyone from line supervisor to CEO was trained in job relations, a program that emphasizes the importance of catching and addressing performance issues early, dispassionately, and honestly, says Michele Neale, the business growth consultant with Enterprise Minnesota who conducted the training. It helps employees prevent problems and conflicts from festering and gives supervisors techniques for dealing with issues like attendance, errors, and workplace conflicts in a structured, factual manner.
All three Hunstads plus Henne and other company leaders attended the training along with supervisors and plant managers. It was eye-opening for all, says Cole Hunstad. “There are things that the people on the floor and the production managers deal with that don’t always make it to management,” he says. “That’s just natural. But it was good to talk it through with them and with (Neale) to see how to deal with these issues.”
“To have the owner/CEO of the company and the HR director in the class — that speaks volumes about the investment in their people that they are making,” Neale says.
Working with Ally Johnston, an Enterprise Minnesota continuous improvement consultant, the company is implementing the Leading Daily for Results program. It’s normal for companies with more than one location to have some variations in how jobs are done, says Johnston, but systems like huddle boards and process documentation can smooth out the differences and improve efficiency.
“When you are just one small shop, you can get away with not having certain processes and documentation,” says Jordan Hunstad. “People just know what to do. We’re working to align our processes, get our supervisors talking the same language, and make sure we’re reporting the same documents.”
But it’s a challenge to make processes standard with so much variation in product and equipment as well as the different sizes of the plants. Hoyt Lakes, for instance, has only 20 employees compared to 40 at Brainerd. All of the products Revolv makes are custom. Many are large. “We ship out a lot of air,” says Jordan Hunstad. Things like Yeti coolers, parts of BOSS snowplows, the front ends of combines, and the little carts children drive around grocery stores are among their products. A new product is the pink housing for robots that deliver documents, packages, and food in some urban areas for a company called Tiny Mile. Many of the jobs also involve assembly as well. For instance, Revolv makes the housing and attaches the wheels to the Tiny Mile robots.
The company continues to look into how automation can streamline processes, though the custom-work can make those investments in automation harder to justify. It is developing its own version of the huddle board, which can be used at all plants. As part of the company’s embrace of Gino Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System, Jordan Hunstad also meets separately with plant managers and procurement managers to address production issues more thoroughly.
“We want to get to the point where everybody in the company has a number that they are trying to hit. And, those numbers relate to our yearly goals,” says Jordan Hunstad. For example, an operator might have a number related to scrap — things like percent of scrap on a project or the value of scrap. Other numbers could be sales dollars or cycle times. Tracking those individual numbers plus team goals will give the company the extra capacity it needs to grow.
“Jordan grew up on the floor,” Henne says. “He understands what is happening on the floor and what really drives our employees.”
And, the company has a reputation in its areas as a good employer, offering good benefits, profit sharing, and bonuses even when there weren’t profits and life coaching and counseling services through a local nonprofit.
Celebrating 30 years
An unusual aspect to Revolv is that its sales arm is essentially a separate company that also brokers parts and products for other manufacturers. AxisNorth Solutions is the corporate descendant of Shawn Hunstad’s original business, Stern Industries. Starting in 1995, he built relationships with suppliers who could meet the needs of OEMs for plastic or rubber parts and components. The business continues under the same model, now run by Cole Hunstad, who compares the approach to that of an insurance broker.
The broker is getting quotes from various insurances, but they are the customer’s vendor. AxisNorth buys plastic and rubber parts, owns them briefly, then sells them to their client company.
“We’re very transparent with our customers and our suppliers,” Cole Hunstad says. “Our customers know exactly who is making the product for them and they’re more than welcome to go there with us to see samples. It’s very much an open book because our suppliers have learned to trust us and grow with us.”
While that openness has occasionally led customers and suppliers to cut out the middleman, “we don’t lose sleep over it,” says the younger Hunstad. “We build strong relationships with our suppliers and sometimes their hands are tied too.”
For Revolv, having the brokerage as a sister company has been “a way to control our destiny,” says Shawn Hunstad. It’s a separate source of income, contributing $15 million to the company’s bottom line, as well as a sales representative. It also helps the company build goodwill and form relationships in this small industry.
“We want to give Revolv all the work they want,” says Cole Hunstad. “But if for whatever reason — size, material, quantity, you name it — it’s not a fit for us, then AxisNorth works with our strategic suppliers to find a better fit.”
Those suppliers may include other rotational molders as well as those who do injection molding, blow molding, extrusion, or molded rubber. The company has connections with suppliers doing all of those manufacturing processes, both in the United States and offshore.
This unique business model gives customers a more unbiased assessment of the best supplier for their jobs, Cole Hunstad says. “We’ve been doing this a long time,” he says. “The beauty of it is that we have good suppliers and a lot of them have been with us for 20-plus years.”
Family transitions
With both sons established in the company, patriarch Shawn Hunstad has begun to pull back — at least a little. He still works with chief financial officer Mike Lyonais and Henne, though both now report to Cole Hunstad. He still has the banking relationships and he’s still the visionary. But the day-to-day grind is less his worry.
“So basically, I’ve been trying to prep myself for a retirement of some sort,” he says. That’s still years down the road, but he plans to spend more time in Arizona in winter. He’s confident the company is on a good track to remain independently owned and in business.
All three have done the Kolbe A Index assessment, which highlights each person’s intuitive strengths as leaders. The elder Hunstad, not surprisingly, fits directly into the visionary category, someone with big ideas who likes to take risks. Son Jordan also fits that category, but has a quieter, more detail-oriented temperament. Cole Hunstad falls more in the integrator category, one who can bring ideas to life.
“He’s always thinking big, big, big, which is great. You need that,” says Cole Hunstad of his father. “I’m kind of, alright, let’s bring it back to reality.”
“We see things differently, all three of us, which is challenging at times,” he says. “But I think it’s good for each of us to — you know — check ourselves. With family, you tend to be more brutally honest than you would be with other people. We don’t take it too personally.”
“We’ve navigated it all thus far and we work really well together. We know what each other’s lanes are,” he says.
Shawn Hunstad’s pride in his sons’ abilities and their interest in moving the company forward is palpable. “They could be a powerful combo, those two,” he says.
“Honestly, it’s just a blessing to me that I have two sons who are so active in the business that it’s allowed me to back up a bit,” he says. “That’s somewhat different from what other owners face. When they get out, they end up selling to somebody completely new. We’ve been approached multiple times, but honestly, I don’t need a gazillion dollars. I’d rather work with the boys to transition the company and have it continue to grow and prosper.”
Return to the Summer 2025 issue of Enterprise Minnesota® magazine.
