Corridor Native Fall 2018

BeraTek creates own products,
molds other entrepreneurs
BY STEVE GRAVELLE
PHOTOS BRIAN DRAEGER
Gerald Beranek picks up a
simple plastic box from
the table in BeraTek Industries’
conference room.
When affixed to the wall
with a peel-and-stick adhesive, the simple
plastic box holds colored markers
and erasers for the room’s whiteboards.
“It came from our need,” explained
Beranek, BeraTek’s founder and CEO.
“We needed some holders in here, so
we designed one. In 10 minutes, we designed
one and 3-D printed these. We
were selling them on Amazon to prove it
out, and people were buying 10 or 20 at
a time. We thought, ‘Holy cow, we can’t
keep doing this with 3-D printing.’ We
started to make a mold and now it’s all
[injection] molded.”
That’s a typical development cycle for
products created in BeraTek Industries’
nondescript brick building on a light-industrial
backstreet in southeast Cedar Rapids.
The approach has fueled the growth of
the company, which now has 12 employees,
and helped develop a profitable niche
in bringing others’ ideas to market.
“Our contract [product development]
side last year grew 400 percent, and the
product side grew 150 percent,” Beranek
said. “Last year was just about keeping up.
This year, it might have slowed up a little
bit. We’re getting our feet back under us.”
BABY CHANGES EVERYTHING
Beranek, 33, launched BeraTek in 2014,
four years out of the University of Iowa
with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical
engineering. While working at CIVCO
in Coralville and Schneider Electric in
Cedar Rapids, Beranek bought his own
3-D printer and computer numerical
control (CNC) milling machine, and installed
them in the garage at his North
Liberty home.
BeraTek’s first big success came as Beranek
and his wife, Randi, prepared for
their first child, born in 2014.
PAGE 10: Gerald Beranek works
on a project at BeraTek Industries
in southeast Cedar Rapids.
RIGHT: A shelf holding
whiteboard markers and erasers
attached to the wall with peeland-stick
adhesive is one of
BeraTek’s inventions.
CORRIDOR NATIVE FALL 2018 11