Die-Tech Industries has been a growing business in Carrollton for more than 22 years, and the company is poised to keep expanding despite the economy.

Last year was a difficult year – the worst in four years, said Tom Wysoczynski, president of Die-Tech. The business is tied to the automotive industry — probably 65 to 70 percent of the work it does is for that industry. With the struggles of the auto industry it was a difficult economic climate for Die-Tech to navigate. The company put new press equipment purchases on hold and had to lay off about 30 percent of its work force to conserve money.

But things are picking up. Die-Tech has called back nearly all the laid-off employees and is looking at hiring in the future to fill the orders it is expecting.

“This is all our new work right here,” Wysoczynski said, sliding a report across his desk with orders lining its pages. “I just know that the numbers are there, we’re selling again.”

Sales still aren’t back to where they were, but the company is picking up orders again, including new orders as new products are designed and need to be tested. The company is now working on parts for a new car design set to be released in 2011.

The company also makes dies and parts for high-end metal office furniture, grills and garage doors. That diversity of product has helped the company survive the automobile industry’s difficulties.

Die-Tech was born shortly after Wysoczynski moved from Grand Rapids, Mich., to Carrollton in 1986 to be closer to his parents. Once he got here, he found the area ripe for new business. In 1987, he and his brother Jerry took out a loan and started a tool-and-die shop on the side while they worked their day jobs.

“It was running us ragged,” Tom Wysoczynski said. “That was back when a fax machine was big technology. So, I got call-forwarding on my phone at the shop, and my wife would answer the phone when I went on the road for business or had a sales call.”

He remembers the first die they ever built as Die-Tech Industries, a piece to crimp some climbing ropes together, for Blue Water Ropes Inc.

At the time, the Southeast was an under-served area as far as tool-and-die manufacturing was concerned. The business took off quickly. After six months, they had built up enough business to go into their own shop full time. But Wysoczynski still didn’t get a lot of time off. He worked seven days a week for three years getting the company established. The business expanded from the old Firestone Building on Bankhead Highway near Big Lots to a building on Lovvorn Road. The Lovvorn Road building was expanded three times by 1997 when the company moved to its current location on Automation Drive.

“Having a tool-and-die operation in a community where there’s other industries obviously makes it easier for them,” said Daniel Jackson, president and CEO of Carroll Tomorrow and the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce. “They’re an important cog in the manufacturing world locally, to be able to support the local manufacturers and make what they need.”

Still, Wysoczynski never expected Die-Tech to expand into the business it has.

“I just thought I was going to be a one-man shop,” he said.

Today, the company employs 90 people and processes a couple of million pounds of steel a month. It serves companies within about a 250-mile radius.

The Wysoczynski brothers worked as tool-and-die makers for years before going into business for themselves. It is a highly skilled manufacturing career that requires a four-year apprenticeship. Tom Wysoczynski did his up north, but his brother moved to Carrollton in 1977 with their parents and did his here. It was in their blood.

“My brother served his apprenticeship working for my dad,” Tom Wysoczynski said. “I was third generation. My dad was a second generation tool-and-die maker.”

After Tom Wysoczynski moved here, the brothers worked together at U.S. Machine and Tool in Atlanta. Just a year later, they went into business for themselves.

Since the business started 23 years ago, tool-and-die shops have popped up in the area, especially in Alabama, he said. The company has had to stay competitive to stay in business.

“You do whatever you have to do to make sure you keep the customer happy,” Tom Wysoczynski said. “We have to deliver on time. You can’t ever miss a delivery, ever.”

Die-Tech expanded into stamping about 10 years ago. The company makes the dies, tools used to cut metal parts, from steel, and now runs the metal through a press to create the piece the die was created to form.

“See, one side, we’re building dies, and then the other side we’re running them,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that are running the dies and supplying these parts, but our niche is we’ve usually got the dies they couldn’t run or didn’t want to run. We figure a way to make it work and that’s how we got into this business, the stamping business.”

Die-Tech created its own software to keep track of its product. Everything is bar-coded, from the operation to the material to the dies on the machines. That allows them to keep track of every part, who made it, when it was made, what material was used. If a die is not working properly, the last person records it and the next time employees try to make that part they know before they spend hours setting it up and start working that the die is not available.

That is one thing that has made them efficient and kept them profitable. Tom Wysoczynski will go so far as to say the software system is one of the reasons the company has been able to stay open.

Die-Tech has become part of the infrastructure the county can use to draw industries into the area.

“Die-Tech happens to have a really strong reputation for doing very good quality work,” said Daniel Jackson, president and chief executive of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce and Carroll Tomorrow. “They’ve become an important player in the local economy.”