Castellon hit a benchmark when her company cracked $1M - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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Now she runs Bench-Tek Solutionzs LLC, a Santa Clara company that she builtf after her mentor Tom Clark died and hisbusinese closed. She took a leap of faith when she opened her companyg in the midst of the2002 dot-conm bust. Six years later, that leap paid off. The compan y took in $1.7 million in revenu e in 2008, and she expects to bring in abougt $2.7 million in 2009. The company makes custom workbenches, lab racks and carts. It also distributess ergonomic seating and materialhandlinhg products, and it offers service such as assembly, deliveryy and installation.
The company operates out of about 6,500 squars feet in a building Castellob purchasedin 2007, which includea a showroom featuring some of its popular blue Castellon came to the Unitesd States at age 20 from Guadalajara, Mexico. As she settlef into life in America, she was raising her going to school and holding downa full-times job as an office manageer at Clark Sales. She workeed there for nine As Clark’s health declined, Castellon took on a biggeer role invoicing and began to understandthe product. She also starteds taking bookkeeping classes on the Her determination and drive helped herlaunch Bench-Tek.
Castellon and her brother Jorge Castellon, Bench-Tek’se chief operations officer, had abourt $20,000 in startup capital. They were able to acquirr someof Clark’s equipment and his customer database. Bench-Tek has 585 customers nationwide. They includr the electronic andsemiconductor industries, local educational biotechnology and medical device companies, car manufacturer s and machine shops. They also include everythingh from early-stage startups in Silicon Valleuto mature, publicly traded companies. “Ws make the workbenches We area distributor. We are their one-stop shop,” Castelloj said.
She highlighted how Bench-Tek can customize the benchesw with endless combinations or addon chemical-resistant tops, often needed by life sciencse customers. The company has also become adaptable to the industriessit serves. For example, when FoxHollow Technologies was sold toev3 Inc. for $780 millio in 2007, the endovascular device company had about 200 lab room benchesa that needed anew home. Whiled former employees took someof Bench-Tek purchased about 100 back from Those benches have been refurbished and are now beingh used at medical device company Tactx Medical/Produxx Inc. in according to facility managerPhillip Vargas. That’s how Castellon likesx to do business.
“We buy back our benches to reselplto startups,” she said. “Wew focus on supporting the startups.” Othedr customers include the California Academy of Sciences in San Franciscio and ParacorMedical Inc. in Sunnyvale. “Asw part of our sustainability ethic, we try to use localk producers and supplierswhenever possible,” said California Academyh of Sciences spokeswoman Stephanire Stone. Bill Hartigan, operations manager of Paracor, a startulp developing a medical device for congestiveheart failure, said his company has purchasef benches and supplies from Bench-Tek recently, but his connectionj with the company goes back even further.
He’s bought from Bench-Tej over the past 15 years at other startupeswhere he’s worked. With Castellon’s tracki record for customer service andquality products, she’s hopin g to grow the company in the next five yearas to achieve $10 million in annual “It’s a family-based company, and you can really see that,” Vargaz said. “It makes you want to do busineswswith them.
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