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June 15, 2026
KAUKAUNA – Gerard Machine, LLC – a Kaukauna-based precision manufacturer specializing in Swiss CNC machining – is under new ownership.
Local business owners Ben Bertram and Eric Stankevitz said they officially acquired the company from founders Nick Gerard and Dan Wynboom April 27.
As part of the transition, Bertram said Nick will remain with the company and continue overseeing daily operations, while Co-founder Wynboom has retired after helping build the business from the ground up.
“We are excited to continue building on the foundation Nick and Dan created,” Bertram said. “Gerard Machine has earned a great reputation through hard work, technical ability and a commitment to doing things the right way. Our goal is to support the team, invest in the future and continue providing customers with the same quality and service they have come to expect.”
Describing him as “the brains behind everything,” Bertram said he can’t say enough good things about Nick.
“He’s pretty incredible,” he said. “We’re glad he’s still on the team.”
Bertram said Nick’s continued oversight of daily operations ensures continuity for customers as new ownership seeks growth opportunities while maintaining the company’s focus on precision, reliability and responsive service.
Bertram + Stankevitz = business partners
Bertram said he and his wife, Amy, own and operate Fiberglass Solutions, LLC and Performance Insulation of Wisconsin, LLC – both based in Green Bay.
Meanwhile, Bertram said Stankevitz owns Lena-based Next Phase Excavation, LLC.
So, how did two business owners from two different industries end up acquiring a matching company together?
Bertram said the partnership stemmed from a friendship that began in an unlikely way.
“About seven years ago, he came into my fiberglass company looking for some gel coat to fix his fishing boat,” he said. “I’d originally told him we don’t work on fishing boats. He said that was fine, and to just get him the gel coat, and he’d take care of it himself.”
Though initially providing the items at no charge, Bertram said Stankevitz came back later, “threw some cash on the table and said, ‘Make sure you buy your guys some lunch.’”
“I thought, ‘Wow, this is a nice guy,’” he said. “We just kind of hit it off because we had a lot of the same philosophies on life and how to treat people and everything else. We’ve been good friends ever since.”
Since then, Bertram said they have partnered on industrial real estate projects, and when the opportunity arose to purchase the machining company, they mutually decided to move forward together.
Despite not having a background in the machining industry and bringing different business and operational styles, Bertram said it was not viewed as a hindrance.
“We all have strengths and all have weaknesses,” he said. “One of my strengths is being able to jump into something and learn quickly, on the job. I was project manager for different places in my career, as well as a plant manager, and in all of those jobs I had to learn on the fly, and on the job as most people do.”
Bertram said Stankevitz is seen as a doer who moves quickly and gets things done, often without spending much time overthinking decisions.
“I’m kind of the opposite,” he said. “I’ll sit and think about something for a bit before I jump in and start. So, we’re kind of a complement to each other that way.”
Though the business was outside their area of expertise, Bertram said the approach has worked in their other ventures, and he expects it will continue to serve them well at Gerard.
“When my wife and I bought our fiberglass business about eight years ago, we had zero experience in that industry, but we told ourselves we’d just have to learn and figure it out as we went,” he said. “And we’re very successful in doing so.”
Bertram said the same approach applied when they bought an insulation business a few years later, entering without experience but confident they could learn the business.
“It had a good setup, and we figured if we could just take some efficiencies to it and apply some of our learning from the past, we thought we’d be very successful,” he said. “And that’s gone very well for us, too.”
Bertram said the same is true for Stankevitz, who knew nothing about excavating when he and his brother started an excavating company in 2017.
The company became so successful that Bertram said they recently started a second one.
Enter April 2026, he said, when he and Stankevitz teamed up to acquire Gerard Machine, a business outside their area of expertise, confident in their ability to apply their business experience to operate and grow it.
“I’ve always been very intrigued by machining in general,” he said. “I think because Northeast Wisconsin is such a manufacturing hub, the possibilities are endless. And when you get into something like precision machining, specifically Swiss precision machining, there are tons of companies in the local area and throughout the world, really, [that need this kind of service].”
Bertram said he finds it interesting to see all the small parts and components that make up everyday products, and how rarely people consider where they come from or how they are made.
“It’s been super interesting so far, and it’s always a fun challenge to go in and learn something new,” he said. “But no matter what business or industry we’re in, there are always things that are relevant from what we’ve learned in the past in other industries. And we can bring in those efficiencies from other businesses and replicate them in a new business model.”
How the deal unfolded
Bertram said the opportunity for him and Stankevitz to purchase Gerard came through a roundabout connection involving the company’s founders and a banker who ultimately brought the deal to his attention.
“It was kind of an off-market thing where I was told the owners might be looking for an ownership transition, and I was given Nick Gerard’s name in case I wanted to talk to him,” he said. “So, I gave him a call. We talked, and we hit it off.”
Bertram said the decision to move forward with the acquisition was driven by shared values around treating people well, delivering high-quality work and prioritizing customer care.
The opportunity, he said, surfaced in late January, with the deal closing in late April.
Bertram said because the founders of Gerard Machine did such an “exemplary job” of creating and building a strong business based on simple philosophies, he believes it will be easy to follow in their footsteps.
“Nick and Dan and their team built a business based on quick turnaround for the customers and good prices with extremely high quality,” he said. “We want to make sure we can continue to meet those quick turnarounds that people have come to expect as we grow.”
Additionally, Bertram said they built really great business relationships, which he and Stankevitz plan to honor and grow whenever possible.
“A lot of times you see in the world today where you get a lot of private equity that comes in and you lose customer service, or the culture that’s been built,” he said. “Our goal is to do just the opposite of that. We want to keep the culture of being family-oriented as well.”
Job-shop flexibility
Bertram said the company, which has specialized in Swiss machining since 2014, provides custom CNC services to customers nationwide.
He said its capabilities include turning, threading, milling, drilling, tapping, broaching and engraving, often completing multiple processes in a single step.
By consolidating operations, Bertram said the company reduces lead times and improves efficiency.
Bertram said Gerard’s machines excel in crafting small intricate parts and long, slender components with unmatched precision and speed.
With tolerances of plus or minus 0.0001 inches, Bertram said Gerard sets a benchmark for accuracy – manufacturing parts up to 1.25 inches in diameter, using materials such as aluminum, brass, copper, steel, stainless and plastic.
“Everything we do in Swiss machining is 1.25-inch round bar and smaller. It’s rare that we even do things that are 1.25-inch round bar,” he said. “We might take things that are a .25-inch round bar and turn it into a tiny, little fastener of some sort or a spacer or something like that, where it just needs very, very tight tolerances to fit within bigger components.”
Bertram said Gerard distinguishes itself from competitors by taking on orders of all sizes, from small runs to large production jobs.
“We are still very much a job shop, in the sense we will do orders as small as one, two or three pieces or prototypes,” he said. “But we can also do runs of 50,000 or 100,000 components. So, we vary greatly in that way.”
Bertram said a large part of Gerard’s customers are other machine shops and manufacturers that assemble pieces of equipment.
Though the company serves customers across the United States, he said those clients then distribute finished products to their own customers nationwide and globally.
Future of Gerard
Bertram said Gerard Machine has one location and nine employees, something he said they don’t see changing any time real soon.
Within a month of buying the business, Bertram said they purchased an additional machine – something that increased capacity by 10% overnight and have plans to purchase another in the near future.
He said the new machines match those already in operation at Gerard, helping limit upfront costs by allowing the use of existing tooling and avoiding major new equipment purchases.
Bertram said the company is also actively looking at ways to serve its existing client base in additional ways.
“As we get into this a bit more and understand our customers a bit better, we’ll be looking for other products and things we can make for them and what it would take from an equipment and capital investment standpoint to make that happen,” he said. “I think the opportunities are endless.”
Bertram said a benefit of producing very small parts and components is they can be shipped nationwide at relatively low cost.
“So, freight of products isn’t a hindrance,” he said. “There are not a lot of barriers to how far we can send them.”
Describing Gerard Machine as a “great Wisconsin manufacturing business with a skilled team and strong customer relationships,” Stankevitz said he and Bertram are proud to be part of its next chapter.
“[We] look forward to helping the company continue to grow,” Stankevitz said.
For more on Gerard Machine – located at W5051 Amy Ave., Unit 13, in Kaukauna – navigate to gerardmachine.com.
