Entrepreneurial state of mind

Popcorn, rollerblades and the Baha’i faith are all part of Payam Towfigh’s story.

Born in Iran, the 59-year-old is the president and CEO of the State Group, a collection of three companies all headquartered under the same roof in Winnipeg.

They include State Industries Ltd., the manufacturer of polyurethane parts where Towfigh started his career in 1989 while completing an engineering degree at the University of Manitoba. He purchased the company from founder Stan Baldwin three years later.

“I really wasn’t planning to take over State Industries,” Towfigh says, before adding with a smile: “My kids tell me that I’m not very employable since I’ve only had one job in my life.”

Towfigh has made the most out of working at the same place his entire adult life.

In 2000, he founded StateMix Ltd., which manufactures a variety of polyurethane dispensers and ancillary equipment serving markets around the world. About 10 years later, he started StateCraft in response to a niche market demand for custom architectural fabrication.

Towfigh has been interested in entrepreneurship ever since he was a boy.

The youngest of five children born to a banker and stay-at-home mom in Tehran, he recalls banding together with some friends to sell popcorn on a street corner in the summertime when he was 12 or 13 years old.

At that time, hawking wares on the street was considered a lower-class pursuit, and not something people from middle-class families, like Towfigh’s, did. His father discovered what he was up to while out for a walk.

“Eventually, he passed by and saw me and my friends selling (popcorn) on the street corner and, of course, he was disappointed,” Towfigh says, chuckling at the memory. “But my mom intervened and I guess brought him around. So, with some trepidation, he accepted my entrepreneurial hope and actions.”

Towfigh sold stickers at school and eventually raised fish in an aquarium at home to sell to classmates.

“The concept of making money was very exciting,” he says. “But also I’m very curious, so technically I really get interested in a lot of different aspects of learning how things work. I (like) learning new things.”

Towfigh grew up in the Baha’i faith. Baha’is are Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority, and they have faced systematic, state-sponsored persecution since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Towfigh escaped to Pakistan when he was 17, and lived there for a year before coming to Winnipeg as a refugee in the mid-1980s. He enrolled at the U of M to study electrical engineering and Baldwin offered him a summer job at State Industries in 1989.

“As a student I couldn’t say no. Any job was appreciated and it was really interesting.”

After graduating, Towfigh stayed with the company.

Baldwin had founded the business with a focus on manufacturing polyurethane parts for the Canadian mining industry. Recognizing the increasing demand for durable cast polyurethane elastomer products (rubber-like solids with elastic properties), the company expanded its offerings to serve the agriculture, automotive and military sectors.

When Towfigh took over the operation, State Industries established a joint venture with Rollerblade Inc. — headquartered at that time in Minnesota — to manufacture in-line skate wheels for international markets. State Industries became a major manufacturer of wheels in North America, and built a fully automated factory in Winnipeg that produced 5,000 to 10,000 wheels a day.

Meanwhile, the industrial division of State Industries grew rapidly and developed new techniques and methods to produce more complex parts for many applications. After State Industries had produced several million skate wheels, Rollerblade Inc. moved the bulk of its wheel production offshore in the late 1990s. At that point, Towfigh started StateMix.

Today, StateMix manufactures and sells machines that blend hard-to-mix polymers. The company’s customers include American businesses such as 3M, Boeing and Dupont, but its reach is global — as evidenced by a display on the back wall of the company’s office.

A world map covers the wall, with flags pinned in each place where StateMix has sold one of its products.

It’s a display Paulo Branquinho, production manager at StateMix, takes great pride in. The flags represent more than sales, he says.

“To me, each flag is a relationship that we’ve built over 30 years of experience,” Branquinho says. “And most of our business is repeat customers.

“They trust us. They’ve heard of us and the amazing things that we can do, so they actually come from all over the world to StateMix.”

At the other end of the 40,000-square-foot building on Church Avenue, StateCraft employees are working on that company’s latest project. Founded around 15 years ago, it uses state-of-the-art waterjet technology to cut precise designs and intricate shapes into almost any material.

The company does work throughout Canada and the United States.

Winnipeggers might recognize StateCraft’s contribution to the Zü apartment building on Osborne Street: the company fabricated more than 115 walk-out balconies using galvanized steel frames and composite deck boards inset within the frame.

Around six years ago, StateCraft also completed an artwork entitled Education is the New Bison, in collaboration with artist Val Vint and the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation. The 3.5-metre-tall sculpture, which stands at The Forks, is composed of more than 200 steel books and articles by Indigenous authors stacked together in the shape of a bison.

Towfigh runs State Industries, StateMix and StateCraft as separate companies. Each has their own managers and teams. All told, the companies employ around 60 people.

“I’m really proud of our staff … because together we have come a long way,” Towfigh says. “(I’m) thankful for the employees that we’ve had over the years.”

Aside from State Group, the entrepreneur is heavily involved in community-building activities, such as serving on the board of directors for the Manitoba Multifaith Council.

He points to an artwork beside his office that StateCraft employees fabricated. It depicts a global map combined with a tree, each branch connected to a different continent.

Above the tree are the words, “Let your vision be world embracing,” which Towfigh says is both the State Group’s vision statement and one of his personal mantras.

“In the Baha’i faith, it’s through service that you can consider yourself a person of faith,” he says. “I’m somebody who’s committed, through the Baha’i faith, to the betterment of our community here in Winnipeg.”

aaron.epp@winnipegfreepress.com