2015-02-03_PR Comm Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Quady met Blue Rhino co-founder Dave Leak while the two men were working for a local museum services company in the late 1990s. Although they loved the work they were doing, Quady said, that company eventually outgrew them. "I was a small part of a very, very big machine," Quady said. He and Leak left and started Blue Rhino Studio. GROWING WITH THE TIMES At first, they weren't picky about the projects they took on. The fledgling company's first job was a small replica of the Split Rock Lighthouse for an MSP Airport bar, which Quady built in his garage. A month or so later, they leased an inexpensive 6,200-square-foot space in Bloomington. From their new workshop in the early 2000s, Quady and Leak worked on projects for mini- golf courses, water parks, restaurants, movie theaters and what was then Camp Snoopy in Mall of America. "When we started out, we were all things to all people," Quady said. "At the time, I was happy to do anything that kept the lights on." And keeping the lights on was one of the few expenses they had --the partners kept their overhead low. "We were very cautious, very careful," Quady said. Within a year, he and Leak hired their first employee. Jim Burt, who studied art at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, came on full-time as Quady's assistant. He is now Blue Rhino's lead sculptor. "It's a dream job," Burt said. "It's the type of job I never thought existed when I was in school." Burt's first project for the company was an exhibit on the Wannagan Creek paleontological site for the Science Museum of Minnesota --one of Blue Rhino's first major museum dioramas. They have since done work for the Minnesota Historical Society, the Boston Children's Museum and the American Museum of Natural History, among several others. COMMITMENT TO MISSION It didn't take long for the company to outgrow its Bloomington home. In 2007, Quady and Leak moved Blue Rhino --then 16 employees --into its 16,750-square-foot space in Eagan. But the recession hit the company hard. Quady and Leak lost employees to layoffs and attrition.