Building a Business With Connectors

By Mike Switzer

Published October 27, 2017 at 5:30 AM EDT

You may have heard about our next guests’ company from a recent mention on this show during one of our regular interviews with John Warner, who is always talking up the entrepreneurial activity in our state. And this company certainly has one of the most unusual products we’ve come across in a while. Simple steel connectors that allow you to build just about anything using inexpensive conduit pipe.

Mike Switzer interviews Kelly and David Schlitter, founders of Maker Pipe based in Pendleton, SC.

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Mike Switzer

After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.

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