Reaching for the Sky

Written by Tracie Grimes

It started as a simple repair to the old Mojave Liquor Store sign back in the early ‘80s. A relatively small fix to a defect in the fiberglass that most larger, well-established fiberglass companies would have balked at, but a job that sent Marie Walker, co-founder of the newly-formed Fiberset Incorporated, over the moon.

“I felt like we were on our way and reaching for the sky!” exclaims Walker as she looks back on 1983, the year she and her business partner (and future husband), Jim, decided to launch their own venture out of the Mojave Air and Space Port.

Working with fiberglass was practically second nature to the budding entrepreneurs as they began pulling on the skills they both had honed in the area of fiberglass while working at the same small Mojave glider shop. Walker felt her future with Jim and Fiberset looked pretty bright, but it took some convincing to get Jim on board.

“I’m the kind of person who doesn’t mind getting in there, getting my hands dirty and working hard, and loved working for the glider company, but I kept thinking that there was another direction I should be taking, another direction God wanted me to go. So when I met this young man [Jim], I worked up the nerve to ask him to go to a local pub. ‘Let me buy you a beer after work and run something by you,’ I said, and then asked him how he would feel about starting our own business. He looked at me and said, ‘No.’

“Now I’ve always been the kind of person who wins more than loses when I go out on a limb or take the kind of risk I took when I asked Jim if he wanted to start a business with me, and his answer really bothered me. I just kept thinking, ‘Why doesn’t he want to do this?’ And I realized I was so flustered when he said no that I didn’t even ask him why.

“So, a while later I approached him again and said, ‘Hey Jim, let me buy you another beer after work today.’ So back to the pub we went and I jumped right in and asked him why he said no.

“ ‘I hate paperwork,’ was his answer.

“ ‘That was it?’ I thought. This was something I could handle!

“ ‘I’m the queen of paperwork!’ I said, telling him how I’d spent several summers working for the school district dealing with mountains of paperwork relating to programs designed for the economically-depressed kids in the Mojave area and could handle any paperwork that came our way. I sorted, filed, filled-out, dittoed, mimeographed [remember those?]—I assured him that I could manage the paperwork just fine.”

And although she was true to her word and handled all the paperwork that came their way, there were many problems Walker could never have anticipated.

“Although we were known in the area, jobs were few and far between. And we needed to buy supplies, materials, to pay rent...expenses were mounting. I took a job working in NASA’s public affairs department, handling press questions and answers regarding the space shuttle program’s flights and landings—that’s when they were still routinely landing at Edwards Air Force Base. Something kept telling me that God was up to something when He provided me with this opportunity, I just didn’t know what it was.”

She soon found out. Walker’s gig with NASA not only provided funding for the resin and other stock items Fiberset so desperately needed to stay in business, her connections provided her with the opportunity to bid on projects. Fiberset landed their first three-year contract with the Dryden Flight Research Center to manufacture components used in flight tests.

“And the Dryden contract opened the door for future contracts with NASA as well as opportunities to work with companies like Boeing, Northrop, Honda, Scaled Composites, Raytheon, Chevron, UCLA, Borax, and Maglev Wind Turbine Technologies, Inc., just to name a few,” she says, with the relief she felt back then audible as she spoke.

And with the doors opening in such a wide diversity of businesses, Fiberset’s “menu” of products and services began to diversify, Walker adds.

“When you first start out in business, you may think you know how it’s going to work and what you’re going to provide, but the reality is if you don’t keep open to diversifying and providing customers with what they need, not just with what you have, you’ll never make it,” she emphasizes.

Fiberset quickly grew into a thriving business that performed repairs and modifications on wind turbines, developing and manufacturing camera housing for helicopters, even dabbling in the making components used in the movie industry.

Then things changed in 2003.

“Jim left and we divorced, which was hard enough, but then a manager who’d been with us for ten years left and started taking all the leads it had taken us 20 years to build. I didn’t know he [the former Fiberset manager] was luring away my customers for a while, I just knew business took a sharp turn downward.

“Things went from bad to worse in 2004. I remember so well the day that Burt Rutan won the X Prize; everybody was celebrating, there was a big party, and I was so thrilled that my sons and I were a front-row witness to this history-making event in Mojave. And then I walk back into my Fiberset trailer to find out that I’m behind in rent, had to pay $7,000 immediately to keep our ISO Certification fee or they’d come and take it—like having the stripes ripped off of your sleeves in the military—and we wouldn’t be able to bid on any jobs. I was crying out to the Lord, ‘How am I going to survive this?’ I felt there was just too much risk and was worn out. I was ready to close, pull up stakes, and move me and the boys in with my mom.

“But then I just felt inside that something was telling me, ‘Marie, you are going to be OK.’ I had hope.”

With her eyes on this glimmer of hope, Walker started asking for advice.

“An attorney advised me to file bankruptcy and start another company, but I just couldn’t do it. I just felt this wasn’t the answer. I kept searching, but kinda feeling my way in the dark because I didn’t want people to know how close I was to failing. One day I just decided to open myself up and ask for help. I went to my pastor, I asked my Bible study group for their prayers.”

That’s when Walker said things started to happen at Fiberset.

“Within ten days, $110,000 worth of business came in. I felt like we had been pulled out of the fire,” she recalls.

But most blessings don’t come without challenges, and this influx of business meant Fiberset would have a whole new set of risks to deal with.

“We had to adapt to a new way of doing business and a new set of clients. We had to get fifty percent up front and the rest after the completion of the project, and this was new for us. But the biggest change was in the new direction we found ourselves going.”

Body armor was the newest addition to the Fiberset menu, and something Walker could have never predicted.

“In 2005 we were asked to be the secondary supplier for body armor and work on some research and development to come up with a new generation of flexible body armor. We tried a couple of times with no success. I thought the customer was going to reach over the table, grab the contract, and say ‘thanks, but no thanks!’ Then, on the third try, we got it right. They asked us to produce 15,000 discs per week. It was incredible! This is something we did ourselves! No engineering consults, just us. And now we have a fully dedicated facility just for body armor and our project became a benchmark for the military. It was the most challenging, fun thing we’ve ever done.”

Walker had so much fun with the R&D aspect of this project she decided the youth of the Mojave community needed a way to “cut their teeth” on science; to get in on the excitement of exploring, inventing, and creating. So Walker created the Intermediate Space Challenge, a project in which fourth, fifth, and sixth grade kids design and build rockets modeled after the X Prize.

A launch is held every year at the Mojave Air and Space Port. “We have over 1,000 kids participating now and Kevin McCarthy introduced a resolution [H.Res 411] to support the Intermediate Space Challenge,” she proudly notes. And as of late May, NASA has spearheaded the curriculum development for the program in addition to raising more funds overall.

So from small-time repairs on fiberglass shop signs to composite tooling for the X-38 International Space Station Crew Return Vehicle and full-scale production of the next generation of flexible body armor, Marie Walker’s willingness to “get her hands dirty” and “let go and let God” jettisoned Fiberset into a new century. The ride may have been a bit bumpy, but Walker feels that “Fiberset is ready to reach for the stars!”

Article appeared in our 27-2 Issue - June 2010