FARGO — Matt Faul started his business, Red E, in 2012 as an ag engineering services company that contracted out its skills to other companies.
His twin brother, Jesse, soon joined him in the business and the brothers decided to start designing and making their own products and dealing with customers face to face.
Making high-performance replacement parts for things like air seeding equipment is a big part of what they do and their stated goal is simple: keep farmers farming by keeping machines running longer, thereby delaying the day when a farmer has to buy expensive new equipment.
However, the business ran into financial trouble when a customer wasn’t paying their very sizable bill and the brothers resorted to borrowing from relatives to keep the business going.
“We were desperate, we just needed some cash to cover us,” Matt Faul said, recalling that anxious time.
That’s when the U.S. Small Business Administration entered the picture.
Alyssa Goelzer/The Forum
Thanks to the agency, Red E was able to secure an SBA-backed loan in 2017 and today the company that started with four employees 12 years ago has grown to employ 40 workers.
And there are plans to hire 10 to 15 additional employees as the company expands into other markets elsewhere in the United States and around the world, including Australia and South Africa.
The SBA-backed loan wasn’t the only thing that saved Red E, but it was a huge part of it, Matt Faul said as he and his brother waited on a recent afternoon for the arrival of Isabel Guzman, the administrator of the SBA and the voice in President Joe Biden’s cabinet for America’s more than 33 million small businesses.
Alyssa Goelzer/The Forum
Guzman soon arrived at
and toured Red E as part of her nationwide Small Business Boom tour.
She said the tour was an opportunity for her to spread the word that under the Biden Administration America is experiencing a small business boom, with more than 18 million new business applications nationwide, including more than 28,000 in North Dakota.
It wasn’t the first time Red E and the Faul brothers received attention from the SBA.
In 2023, the twins were named the SBA’s small business persons of the year for North Dakota.
During Guzman’s recent visit to the company, Matt Faul thanked the agency for helping Red E make it through a tough stretch.
“We grew out of that situation and look at us now. We’re doing really well thanks, in part, to the SBA,” Faul said.
