Ahlborn Equipment co-owner Woody Ahlborn and his daughter Abby meet with suppliers from India at a trade show in Germany.
Wholesaler’s success builds on shovel-ready designation
Ahlborn Equipment co-owner Woody Ahlborn (third from left) and his daughter Abby meet with suppliers from India at a trade show in Germany.
Gene and Evelyn Ahlborn’s decision to start a wholesale chainsaw business in an unwanted boathouse they moved into the Wisconsin Northwoods town of Sayner more than 60 years ago led to a distributorship that thrives today, after significant evolution of the business.
The latest chapter in that evolution is the expansion of Ahlborn Equipment on a 27-acre Certified Site in Eagle River. Today that family business, which employs about 50 people, is owned by two of the Ahlborns’ sons, Woody and Tracey.
“We’re growing rapidly and we’re selling to more mass merchants,” says Woody Ahlborn, whose firm has grown to include garden and garden accessories, chainsaw safety gear, and high-visibility apparel. “We needed more room, and we do a lot of our own in-house packaging. Expansion was the answer.”
Nature gives the project a push
In April 2023, a snowstorm walloped the Sayner area and the firm lost about 45,000 square feet of warehouse space in a roof collapse. “By then, we knew we had to do something drastic, and find a new site,” says Ahlborn. “And we felt that if we could move closer to a bigger city, we could attract more employees.”
On the daily commute from his Eagle River home to Sayner, Ahlborn spotted a parcel of land that was up for sale. The owner was Carl Ruedebusch, CEO of Madison’s Ruedebusch Development and Construction and former head of the Vilas County Economic Development Corporation. Ruedebusch had obtained certification for the property through WEDC’s Certified In Wisconsin Program to ensure it would be shovel-ready for a buyer. That appealed to Ahlborn, who needed to develop on a quick timetable.
The certification provides due-diligence studies and removes many of the ambiguities, pitfalls, and delays that can confront developers during the siting and planning process. For site selectors and developers, Certified Site designation serves as a pre-qualification, indicating that a property’s title is clear, that it possesses sufficient utilities and other infrastructure for industrial use, and that it is properly zoned and has adequate transportation access for such uses, among other criteria.
Kyle Adams, project specialist at Ruedebusch Development and Construction, said the certification added value and marketability to the land investment. The firm also had 56 acres in the Fitchburg Technology Park certified for other developments.
“It’s a big benefit when people start to look at the site, because all of the research and documentation is in one package,” says Adams. “It saves us time. It saves them time. The due-diligence reports are done, and the buyer would have to do them anyway.”
Expansion leads to hiring
Woody Ahlborn, Co-Owner, Ahlborn Equipment
Because Ahlborn Equipment needed immediate warehouse space, it built a facility on land it owned in Sayner. The Eagle River site will feature two warehouse facilities, plus a pair of houses built by the Northland Pines High School building and trades class. The houses will serve as offices for sales and administrative staff and an in-house print shop. The Certified Site will be home to about 20 new Ahlborn employees. “That’s a lot of jobs with good benefits and good pay,” says Ahlborn.
The certification was crucial to making those jobs happen. “Some of the things I would’ve had to do were already done, because the site is certified,” says Ahlborn. “It was shovel-ready. It was streamlined. It made it so much simpler and easier for me. I didn’t have to jump through hoops to get these buildings going.”
