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March 9, 2026
DE PERE – Recognized for its innovation and craftsmanship, Robinson, Inc. – a custom metal manufacturer in De Pere – took home Wisconsin’s Manufacturer of the Year (MOTY) award in the large business category.
President Sam Thomas said Robinson – which earned the same recognition in 2019 – was one of six finalists from across the state in the large business category.
“Those other five companies are companies we hold in high regard,” he said. “We’re honored to come out of that group as a winner.”
Thomas said he credits the company’s 950 employees across its five facilities for the win.
“I put a lot of value in [winning the award] because it’s an award we’re able to share with the team and celebrate with them,” he said. “It’s an award that really digs deep and looks at all areas of the business.”
For an outsider looking in, Thomas said he feels it’s easy to admire an organization like Robinson, “but there is much more to the story.”
“It takes a lot of people who care about the company to get us where we are and to continue to perform for our customers at the level we do,” he said. “That’s all while we’re growing and expanding from a square footage standpoint and adding new employees to the organization. We want to make sure the level of quality and on-time delivery maintains or continues to improve.”
Being recognized as the MOTY while growing in square footage and employees, Thomas said, makes the achievement even more noteworthy.
“To win the award while bringing more capability and more value to our customers at the same time, I think, is what is most impressive,” he said. “We’re really excited to celebrate it.”
Though much of Robinson’s success is due to its employees, Thomas said the vendors the company works with are also “very important.”
“When you think about the infrastructure it takes for an organization of our size that has 800,000 square feet, we would not have performed the way we have without our vendors,” he said. “We wouldn’t have grown the way we have, and we certainly wouldn’t have been named the MOTY without their partnerships in the Midwest, and specifically, in Northeast Wisconsin. They are also an intricate part of our success.”
Thanks to those solid vendor relationships, Thomas said Robinson has largely avoided supply chain problems.
“It continues to be challenging – we read it every day in the news about the challenges and curveballs that come all the time,” he said. “It makes me appreciate our vendor partnerships even more.”
Continuous growth, change
After nearly a decade with the company, Thomas said he became president last June, having previously served as COO.
“Robinson is significantly different now than it was six years ago when we won MOTY in 2019, and even more so in the last 10 years,” he said. “Robinson’s revenue has grown sixfold, from $58 million in 2016 to $350 million for the current fiscal year. Next year, we’ll be more than $500 million and more than $700 million the following year.”
Driven by steady growth over the years, Thomas said Robinson expanded a single 180,000-square-foot facility to 800,000 square feet, with an additional 600,000 square feet planned soon in Iowa.
“From 2018, our biggest change is how we reworked the organization,” he said. “At our highest, we had six divisions, so we had a lot of duplication across those divisions – estimating, project management, management, sales, etc.”
At its core, Thomas said Robinson receives raw materials, processes them and ships the finished products.
“We had a lot of silos, and things were disjointed,” he said. “We didn’t have the right people in the right spots who could bring the right value to the organization through that reorganization. That was the start of us recognizing what we’re really good at, identifying distractions and then slowly honing in on what we’re good at – that’s what we are today.”
Those changes eight years ago, Thomas said, has put Robinson in the position it is today – winning MOTY awards.
“Our growth is the result of adapting modern manufacturing processes and focusing on operational excellence, financial responsibility, creating a culture of shared accountability and investing in the community through workforce development,” he said.
Originally founded as a metal fabrication company, Thomas said today, Robinson focuses on designing, building and installing custom enclosures for backup power generators, energy storage systems, pump enclosures and battery energy storage.
“These enclosures are enormous,” he said. “They’re as big as a semi-trailer, or even bigger sometimes. The engines are sent to us, but the enclosures could have automation, they have electrical and HVAC and can have plumbing – it’s sort of like a mini building.”
Thomas said the work demonstrates how Robinson’s capabilities extend well beyond basic metal fabrication.
“At Robinson, not only do we have metal fabrication, but we’ve got people who know automation, plumbing and electrical engineering,” he said.
Employees share ownership
Thomas said Robinson’s transition to an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) in 2023 has already increased employee buy-in, and he expects engagement to grow further as the company continues to mature under the ESOP structure.
“When I got here 10 years ago, Robinson already had many things ingrained into the organization,” he said. “That’s the willingness and duty we feel to perform for the customer. I think it is really hard to coach into organizations – that desire not to fail and to provide and perform for the customer.”
Thomas said employees often take greater pride in the company when it operates as an ESOP.
“When you ‘sell’ the ESOP to them and they ‘buy’ in, they can see the impact,” he said. “We continue to offer profit sharing quarterly – that’s a short-term reward for our team members. But then also, we’ve been lucky enough to go through the last three years with two share reveals, where the company’s value is growing significantly.”
Thomas said the combination of short-term rewards and the company’s long-term success has made Robinson’s employees “excited for the future.”
“The really quick results show people our immediate success, but if we continue down this path of continuous growth, this is what the big reward can look like,” he said. “It certainly helps with recruitment and retention. There has been a big buy-in since we started the ESOP, but a lot of that was there for a long time before that was started.”
Thomas said Robinson’s culture has always prioritized the organization and its team, focusing on investment in both the company and its employees.
“Expanding our business and creating an ESOP helps align the team to pull in the same direction,” he said. “With employee ownership, we all share in the outcome, which is success through innovation and exceeding our customers’ expectations.”
More growth coming
Looking ahead, Thomas said Robinson is focused on making the right decisions for the company as it navigates future growth.
“When you think about Iowa and what our customers are demanding, geographic location is important,” he said. “When you think of the size of some of the units we ship and how expensive it is to get them to where they need to be, an Iowa location is important. It’s not always that easy to ship from Northeast Wisconsin when you’re trying to hit the two coasts or the deep south.”
When considering expansion, Thomas said Altoona, Iowa, was a strong fit, citing the city’s work ethic and labor availability as key factors.
“We’re excited about the infrastructure as it relates to manufacturing in that area,” he said. “In Northeast Wisconsin, we have to consider how big we want to get and how much labor we think we can attract to Wisconsin.”
Thomas said with the future of robotics and automation, more expansion in Northeast Wisconsin “is a real possibility.”
“That would certainly allow us to expand further in Wisconsin,” he said. “That is being looked at. As we continue to grow and try to match capacities and move bottlenecks, I could see opportunities for us to expand coatings at our De Pere 2 facility to be able to handle the coatings load we would have here in Wisconsin.”
Though Robinson is expanding into Iowa, Thomas said the company remains committed to growth in Wisconsin and plans to maintain a strong presence in the state.
“We’re not looking to leave, and we’re not shrinking in Wisconsin – it’s simply an expansion into another state,” he said. “Who knows what will happen in three or four years? We’ll take a look at what our customers are asking for. That will certainly influence future decisions.”
For more information, visit robinsoninc.com.
