My finance view

ST. LOUIS — By last April, Chris Surgener says, the writing was on the wall.

Business had slowed at the custom cabinetmaker where he worked. Paychecks had shrunk. His boss suggested he apply for unemployment. It was time.

"I decided to dive in," he said.

So at age 53, Surgener cashed out his retirement savings and borrowed some money from a good friend. And in June, in an empty old auto shop off Kingshighway in south St. Louis, he opened Gateway Custom Millwork LLC, joining what local small business counselors say is a noticeable uptick in this recession of people leaving behind big companies to set out on their own.

Surgener has spent half his life in woodworking — drafting, estimating, managing projects — and he’s worked at a half-dozen shops. He’s held titles like senior project manager and vice president. But he’d never been the boss. Now he is.

At times, his old 50-hour workweek sprawls to 80. And making cabinets is the easy part. He’s the designer, the estimator, business development and collections. He’s got to manage payroll for himself and the contractors he hires when he’s got work. And he keeps track of the books.

"One thing I’ve learned," he said. "I’m really not an accountant."

Not long after Surgener dived in, the economy dived off a cliff. He still gets jobs — on hospitals and medical office buildings and from people he knows in the construction business. But there are fewer opportunities these days and more competition. Eight or nine other shops might bid for the same work, and he’s a little guy, sometimes lacking the equipment to do a job most efficiently.

Like a line boring machine. It drills the holes for the pins that hold up cabinet shelves. Surgener doesn’t have one. So he must do this by hand. It takes a lot longer, so he has to charge more. That makes it tougher to compete.

"You need machinery to get jobs, and to get the machinery, you need money," he said.

And money is even tougher to come by these days than work. Surgener has looked around for lenders who will help out a small startup, but they are few these days. Most seem to want you to burn through your own money first. But he’s had a little luck. On Thursday, he learned he will be getting $3,500 through Justine Petersen, a St. Louis nonprofit group that issues "micro-loans" of a few thousand dollars to small businesses. That will buy his line borer.

"It’s enormous," Surgener said cash advance payday loans.

There are a lot of people in Surgener’s boat right now, said Galen Gondolfi, a senior loan counselor with Justine Petersen. Bank lending’s harder than ever, and many entrepreneurs can’t tap home equity, either. People are looking for whatever help they can get.

"We’re just seeing unabated demand," he said. "More people are asking and, at the moment, we have less money."

Meanwhile, Surgener saves where he can. As he showed off his shop one morning recently, it was noticeably chilly. He keeps the heat down low. Most mornings he works from home to save on electricity. He takes no benefits and plows his paycheck back into the business — in his first six months, Surgener brought home $10,000. His wife started baby-sitting for extra cash and now does pretty much everything around the house, he said.

And most every weekend he closes up shop Friday evening, gets in his pickup, and drives — to Kentucky, Wisconsin, wherever — for his new second job helping run clearance sales at failed department stores.

It’s work he picked up a few months ago from a nephew who works at a liquidation company. They’re busy these days. It’s Surgener’s job to hire people out of homeless shelters and job centers, the guys who stand on the corner with signs touting "60 percent off." He meets a lot of people worse off than he is, and who keep working.

"Most people adapt," he said. "You do what you need to do to put food on the table."

Still, all the work takes a toll. Surgener has two kids at home and he’s missed a lot of basketball games and drum corps shows. He’s paying down two mortgages — one on his home in Brentwood and a second on a house he rents out in south St. Louis. Selling that second place would help a lot, but that’s tough these days, too.

Surgener remains an optimist. It’s fun having his own place, he says, and things will pick up. But it hasn’t been easy.

"Would I recommend doing this?" he said. "I think it would be great if everybody were to try running their own business once."

Would he recommend starting now? He chuckles.

"Maybe not."

tlogan@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8291

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