Photos by Ella Manthey
Walking through Seyer Industries‘ manufacturing floor in St. Peters, it’s easy to get distracted by the machines.
They range in scale and scope, some enormous ones, humming behind safety barriers, precisely cutting metal into shapes that can eventually find their way onto an aircraft. There are rows of computerized equipment and high-tech inspection systems. And then there are the machines that look almost quaint by comparison — vintage Bridgeport manual mills that date back to when the company was just getting started.
Yet even those early machines are still used today, partly because some jobs are better suited to them. Partly because they remain useful training tools for apprentices. And partly because they serve as a physical reminder of just how far Seyer Industries has come.
Nearly 70 years ago, the company was a small machine shop founded by Lou Seyer and Harold Buckner. Before founding the company, Lou had made his entrepreneurial mark with an unlikely invention: the Easy Egg Cracker, a device inspired by watching his wife burn her hands while retrieving boiled eggs in their kitchen.
Today, Seyer Industries is a vertically integrated aerospace manufacturer serving some of the biggest names in the industry, including Northrop Grumman, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Bell, and SpaceX.
The company has grown in scale and sophistication, and its work has moved from “making almost anything for almost anybody” to producing highly complex components and assemblies for aircraft and spacecraft.
But for brothers Mark and Chris Seyer, who now run the family business, the most important part of the company is simple: the people.
“We’ve always invested in people,” Mark says. “People are ultimately who are going to make it happen. As Chris and I have taken over and we’ve gotten larger, there’s really been a concerted effort to really invest back into the individuals. And not just at the operator level with training and cross training; it’s soft skills and how do we develop people to be more leads or supervisors. We want to enhance that and give them the tools they need to be successful.”
That philosophy, combined with a willingness to make big bets before the payoff is guaranteed, has carried Seyer through three generations of change.
And now, with a fourth generation growing up in the family, the brothers are thinking about what comes next.
It All Started with an Egg
The Easy Egg Cracker might seem like an unusual origin story for an aerospace manufacturer, but it says a lot about the man who founded the company.
Lou Seyer saw a small problem in his own home, and rather than simply accepting the inconvenience, he devised a solution and then did something equally challenging and important: He figured out how to sell it.
That willingness to move an idea from the workbench into the marketplace became part of the family’s DNA.
“He wasn’t afraid to take risks,” Mark says. “It shows the entrepreneurial spirit that he had. And I think we carry that through today. We want to manage the business the right way, but we’re also not afraid to take certain risks to help propel the company forward.”
In 1957, Lou and Buckner purchased machinery from a machine shop and started what would become Seyer Industries. The early business was anything but specialized: For the first couple of decades, the company made whatever it could for whoever needed it. That flexibility eventually pointed the company toward a much bigger opportunity.
Following the Opportunity
In the 1980s, the St. Louis region’s aerospace industry was expanding, buoyed by increased defense spending and the work happening at McDonnell Douglas.
Seyer was already doing some work for the company, alongside jobs for mining, railroad, and other customers. Then the Seyers made a decision that would change the trajectory of the business: If aerospace was where the opportunity was, they would focus on aerospace.
The company eventually carved out an even narrower niche: support equipment used to build, maintain, and service aircrafts. It was a smart place to establish a foothold, but it was still only a small slice of the aerospace market. The much bigger opportunity was the aircraft itself.
Around 2010, Seyer began pushing into what the brothers call “flying parts” — components that go onto aircrafts. It wasn’t an easy transition.
“We knew we could make the parts,” Mark says. “But we didn’t really know how to price it. We didn’t fully understand what the customer expectations were.”
The company learned as it progressed into the space. That leap ultimately opened the door to a much larger market, Chris says, and helped set Seyer on its current course.
Today, the company specializes in complex aerospace manufacturing, particularly complicated geometries and difficult-to-machine materials such as titanium and stainless steel.
That is intentional. Aluminum may be easier and less expensive to machine, but increasingly sophisticated aircraft demand materials that can withstand tremendous forces. Seyer decided to invest where the work was harder, and where fewer competitors were willing to go.
“There’s a lot of baggage that comes along with the hard-metal stuff we do,” Chris says. “You go through cutting tools a heck of a lot more. You wear out your machines faster. You have a lot more expense to build those types of parts. So over time, we’ve kind of directed our capital investments to machines and processes that serve that complexity market and the hard metals market.”
“And that has really served us well strategically, and the growth of our business, because just the way the market has gone, when you go faster, when you do more intense aero maneuvers, something like hypersonic, for instance, they have to withstand a lot of stress. And so that means hard metals, because aluminum will fail.”
No Risk, No Reward
The company’s willingness to make calculated risks is perhaps most visible in the machinery that fills its factories.
One of the most dramatic examples was a roughly $6 million investment in a Swiss-made high-precision machine.
There was just one problem: Seyer didn’t have orders for it yet.
The company had heard enough from customers to believe the demand was coming, though. So, it bought the machine first and committed to finding the work to fill it.
The bet paid off, as the machine was successfully utilized for its first two years, and Seyer is now ordering another.
That kind of decision is not unusual for a company that has spent generations trying to anticipate where aerospace manufacturing is headed.
The brothers compare the Swiss machine to a Ferrari. “It’s going to do things that a Chevy can’t do,” Chris said.
But Seyer doesn’t need a Ferrari for every job, Chris adds. Its factory contains an assortment of machines, each suited to different applications. The goal isn’t to buy the most expensive equipment, but to buy the right equipment.
“We look at it from an accuracy and precision standpoint and the best machine we can do to provide our customers value,” Mark says.
That emphasis on precision is not just about producing a high-quality part. In aerospace, the consequences of getting it wrong can be catastrophic.
“When you’re flying on an airplane, you don’t want your part failing,” Chris says. “It has to be perfect.”
Chris adds that the company’s machines can produce tolerances measured in thousandths of an inch. A tiny variation can turn a finished part into scrap.
Even something as mundane as the temperature inside the factory can affect whether a part meets specifications. And despite all the technology surrounding the process, the people who make that technology run remain essential.
“This isn’t something where you just hit a button and the machine spits out a whole bunch of parts,” Chris says. “There’s another level of scrutiny, another level of precision involved with our parts from a just pure safety perspective.”
The Advantage of Doing More
Precision machining is only one piece of the work Seyer does. The company’s evolution into a vertically integrated manufacturer has given it another competitive advantage.
Rather than simply machining a part and sending it somewhere else for finishing, Seyer can handle numerous complex steps under one roof, from machining and welding to chemical processing, painting, and assembly. That means an aerospace customer can hand Seyer a complicated project and receive a finished part instead of managing a long chain of suppliers.
Chris shares the example of an aircraft assembly containing numerous individual components: A manufacturer could theoretically send each part to a different machine shop, then bring everything back in-house and put it together.
Seyer can do much of that work itself.
“We can machine 20 parts and then put them together, paint them, whatever we have to do, and then ship it as an assembly,” he says. “A lot of our competitors don’t want to do that.”
It is the kind of work that can seem obvious from the outside — bolts, rivets, painting, assembly — but it is precisely the work Seyer has found valuable in the marketplace.
A Family Business in an Age of Consolidation
Chris and Mark are the third generation to lead Seyer. Their grandfather worked at the company he founded until the early 1990s, when he sold the company to his five children. Chris and Mark’s father eventually bought out his siblings and became the sole owner.
That transition, Chris says, ultimately made the next generation’s succession much simpler. By the time Chris and Mark took over day-to-day operations in 2018, the ownership structure was straightforward.
And today, so are the division of responsibilities. Mark focuses more on operations, while Chris gravitates toward finance, accounting, and sales.
Through smiles and with a laugh, they readily admit that they don’t agree on everything. But they say they are aligned on the big things: how much risk to take, where the company should be headed, and how employees should be treated.
For Chris, the family-business model carries another advantage: Before joining Seyer, he worked in finance and mergers and acquisitions, where he saw firsthand how family conflict could contribute to the sale of a family-owned company. That experience gave him a different appreciation for what his own family had built.
“I was representing family-owned businesses and kind of seeing the opportunity at our own business,” Chris recalls. “And there’s so much opportunity with this family business.”
The People Behind the Precision
If the family ownership is one of Seyer’s distinguishing characteristics, its approach to employees is another. The brothers talk about manufacturing as a people business.
That might seem counterintuitive in a facility filled with increasingly sophisticated machinery, but the more advanced the manufacturing becomes, they argue, the more important skilled workers become.
That is why Seyer launched its apprenticeship program in 2018. What started with just two apprentices has today grown to roughly 25 or 26. The need for the program came from a problem familiar to manufacturers across the country: Seyer was finding it increasingly harder to hire for key positions at the factory.
So, like their grandfather before them, when presented with a challenge, they sought out the solution.
Seyer now works with schools and technical education programs, including Southwestern Illinois College and St. Charles Community College, and brings students into the facility to show them what modern manufacturing looks like today.
The message is straightforward: Advanced manufacturing roles are technical, requiring math, geometry, and problem-solving skills.
“It’s not a job, it’s a career,” Mark says. “And there’s so many opportunities right here in our backyard. Giving tours to high school kids to say, ‘Hey, this is how you make things. This is what advanced manufacturing looks like. It’s clean, it’s precise, it’s challenging.’ And we need more people getting into it, to be honest.”
That long-term view of employees is reflected inside the company, too. Inside the factory, banners on the wall recognize employees who spent 35, 38, or 40-plus years with Seyer before retiring.
For Mark, those aren’t simply milestones: They are the point.
“We have a saying here, ‘We want to hire to retire,” Mark says. “We really try to look at it from that long-term perspective.”
The phrase captures an approach that can be increasingly difficult to find in an economy where companies and workers alike often think in shorter employment cycles. Yet at Seyer, the goal is to build relationships that last for decades.
For a company with customers around the world, Seyer has remained firmly rooted in the St. Louis area. There has never been a serious discussion about moving the company elsewhere, the brothers say.
Part of the reason is practical: The St. Louis region sits near the center of the country, offering logistical advantages. It also has an established aerospace ecosystem anchored by companies such as Boeing and Leonardo DRS, along with technical schools producing potential advanced manufacturing talent.
St. Charles County, where Seyer is based, has also provided what Chris describes as a supportive environment for business.
And then there is the fact that Seyer has been here for nearly seven decades. The company is part of the region’s manufacturing history as well as its future.
The brothers see opportunity in the aerospace industry and in the continued evolution of advanced manufacturing. “It’s one of those situations where I think the more of that you get, the better everybody else becomes,” Chris says.
“Your Name’s on the Building”
There are a few pieces of advice from Lou Seyer that still inform the work Chris and Mark do today: “Your name is on the building,” he told them, reinforcing the accountability and responsibility on the shoulders of leadership.
“Don’t take shortcuts and don’t screw it up,” Chris adds.
The company has gone from the Easy Egg Cracker to a machine shop, from a general manufacturer to an aerospace supplier, from support equipment to flight hardware. It has added buildings, employees, machines, and new job functions. It has expanded its customer base and taken on increasingly complex work.
And yet through it all, the things Mark and Chris talk about the most are the same things their grandfather valued: craftsmanship, risk-taking, education, and taking care of their people. Those values are the legacy Lou left for his family, and values Chris and Mark live daily at Seyer.
“It’s simple, but treat people with respect, understand their perspective, where they’re coming from,” Chris says. “Lean on good people and trust in what they’re doing. That’s what I look forward to with the next generation. Give them opportunity.”
Chris looks at Mark and they both smile. Then, almost in unison, they repeat their grandfather’s sage advice.
“And don’t screw it up.”