HOUSTON—While the name on the building is Eutsler Technical Products Inc., the firm seems to have turned into a Borski family business, with three generations working for the company.
Ernie Eutsler started the custom rubber shop in 1964 and hired Bernie Borski as his first employee, concentrating on tooling design. Ernie Eutsler died in the early 1990s, and his widow, Ann, who still maintains majority ownership, named Bernie Borski president. He now is semi-retired and holds the title of senior president.
His son, Mike Borski, came to work at Eutsler in 1985 and now serves as president. He said he worked for almost 10 years in international freight exporting when the company where he was employed went bankrupt. “I was just trying to get my dad to open up some doors, and I wound up being offered a job to come work here,” Mike said. “I worked my way through the shop and up and was named president of the company when dad retired.”
His brother, Jeff Borski, came on board in the mid-1990s. As vice president of operations, he is the “fix-it guy,” working on setting up the shop and repurposing machinery, among many other tasks. “I cover a wide gamut because I do a lot of the capital improvements,” Jeff said.
His background is in mechanical and electrical, having worked in facilities management. “I bring a lot of that over, along with trying to update where we're acquiring information and using that information to go back to molding the cycles that we need, at the correct temperatures and pressure.”
Their other brother, Ken Borski, serves as sales manager, having joined Eutsler about seven years ago after a 28-year career in a restaurant-related business. He never envisioned being part of the firm, but took a job there after persuasion from his brother, Mike, and Ann Eutsler.
“I worked here in high school,” Ken said. “Every now and then dad would send me out to mix rubber, and I'd get blacker than the ace of spades. Then I'd have to go wash with Lava soap. After about the third day of that, I said, "OK, I'm going to college. I'm not doing this.' “
The fifth Borski representing the third generation is Joe, Mike's son, the firm's tooling designer. He worked there summers when he was a teenager and has been working there full time for about 11 years.
After working in shipping and receiving, Joe took after his grandfather and became interested in tool and design. That led to taking night courses and eventually earning a mechanical engineering technology degree from the University of Houston. While Bernie used to do his drawing on a drafting board, Joe does his using computer-aided design and Solidworks software.
“You basically take a customer's part and you have to kind of reverse engineer it, add your shrinkages for your compounds, and you build your tooling around it to where it can be molded in the equipment out in the shop,” Joe said.
Bernie never envisioned there someday would be five total family members spanning three generations working at the Houston-based firm. “It all just happened by chance, really,” he said, adding they all work together well. “I haven't seen any fistfights.”