[piano intro] - [Announcer] This program was made possible by- - [Presenter] Heart of NC is dedicated to lifting up cultural experiences in Randolph County, like hearing homegrown bluegrass music at the Sunset or Liberty Theaters, taking home pottery from internationally renowned artists in Seagrove, the pottery capital of the country, learning NASCAR's legacy at the Petty Museum, and feeding giraffes at the largest natural habitat zoo in the world.

Heart of NC wants you to know all Randolph County has to offer.

Experience Randolph, the heart of North Carolina.

- [Narrator] You may have noticed some exciting new changes downtown.

That's thanks to our hardworking community with help from us at Downtown Asheboro Inc.

Here at Downtown Asheboro Inc., we strive to promote a vibrant downtown environment while preserving the history of our unique architecture.

From advising historic building owners on safe and effective development practices, to working with City Hall to update regulations that support future growth, Downtown Asheboro Inc., growing Asheboro from its roots.

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] - I was 28 when I started my first kayak company, 40 years old when I sold it, 43 years old when I left it running it, I left running it.

Took five years off to play and travel and rock climb and kayak, and did a little bit of stuff in between.

And then came back five years later.

So it was about 48, 49, and I started my second kayak company.

That lasted...

So I started that in 2005, and we rocked it until 2008 when the Great Recession came.

And I had to lay off 75 people, which I was not good at.

A friend of mine once said, "You know, you're great at growing and you suck at maintaining," and then if you have to pull back, I'm even worse.

And then top it off, my business partner, who is a fantastic guy, an extreme whitewater kayaker, died in a tragic kayak accident.

And so between the recession and laying people off and my partner passing away, I said, it's time for a change.

- Hello and welcome to Making North Carolina, a series exploring entrepreneurs as they pursue invention, creation, an impact in their communities.

This episode features Andrew Zimmerman, or Andy as he's commonly known.

Andy grew up in northern New Jersey before moving down to North Carolina to work in his father's furniture business.

After creating and selling two successful kayak businesses, Andy turned his attention to downtown Greensboro where he has been busy buying historic buildings and transforming them into bustling coworking and maker spaces.

My name is Dr. Jonathan Thill.

Join me as I learn a bit of what keeps Andy's passions alive.

So Andy, thank you for joining me today, and I just love this space, man.

Can you tell me a little bit more about Transform GSO?

- Sure.

So Transform Greensboro, GSO is a collaborative office space.

I like to say it's where entrepreneurs have happy collisions and meet and great things happen.

One company, three guys met and they had an idea, they turned it into a product.

They went out to the tech show in Las Vegas, and a guy saw the product and ended up buying the company.

And now they have 30 employees in my other building, expanded space for Transform Greensboro.

And so it was exactly the kind of stories that we want to happen here, meet here, form a company, hire more people, go out and rent more space locally.

And it's a win-win situation.

- Absolutely.

So, tell me a little bit about where you want Transform GSO to go.

Like, I know this is not your full vision.

- Yeah, well, you know, we're about to expand, and so this new expanded space is gonna allow for 52 offices, new entrepreneurs, membership.

You know, we're gonna keep this location, but grow in another location to triple the size.

- [Jonathan] Oh, you're gonna keep this as well?

- We're gonna keep this.

Yeah.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

We can never let this go.

This is where we started, and the space is gonna have a different feel in the new location.

It'll be more, I call it art industrial.

And this is more old feel with the wood floors and wood ceilings and the brick walls.

- [Jonathan] So what was the history of this building?

- Well, in 1898, this side was the Lewis Wagon Company, and on the other side, where the offices are, was delivery stables in downtown.

And we actually started the Forge in the next building over, which was the first building I bought downtown.

And it was the blacksmith shop in downtown.

So this area was where the freight came in and out and where a lot of the commerce happened in downtown Greensboro.

A lot of history here.

- [Jonathan] So let's kind of take a tour around Transform GSO.

Can you show me the event space?

- Sure.

So we've actually occupied this whole room during certain events here.

We'll put up the garage doors.

When the garage doors are down and the middle garage door's down, there's two conference rooms there, but we have our coffee bar area here.

Beer is served to our members and our tenants of our community.

And then we have a lot of open and common space here in this room.

And a lot of our local companies like to come down here and get out of their four walls and come down here and use our conference rooms or use this, you know, have events in this room here.

And then being able to walk to all the restaurants and other things that are going on down here after work.

- Very cool.

And you guys have a garden out back?

- Oh man.

You want to come see the garden?

- Let's see the garden.

- So this was a dog lot when I first bought this property.

And just a lot of junk had collected here.

Both buildings, well, all these buildings were not occupied and I renovated them all, but I've got a fish pond right up here, a cistern that helped collect the rain and waters the gardens.

And I share these gardens with surrounding people downtown here and allow them to utilize 'em and grow stuff in the gardens here.

You'll see a common theme of all my properties.

I have gardens at every- - Do you really?

- Every building I own.

- That is awesome.

That's awesome.

[bright music] Yeah.

This is awesome.

So tell me a little bit about how'd you get started in building projects?

Like I know the kayak background, but- - Yeah.

Well, when I sold my interest in my second kayak company, I went to my buddy who has a farm, and he actually makes dirt.

He composts leaves and manure, and I said, you know, "I'm not sure.

I just sold my interest in my kayak company.

I'm not sure what my next steps are.

So would you let me get on your tractor and turn dirt?

You don't have to pay me.

I just wanna think about, you know, what my next moves are anyway."

A friend of mine called me and said, "Would you come take a look at a building downtown?

I'm thinking of buying."

And I said, "Sure.

Let me, you know, wait till lunch."

I got off with a tractor and came downtown to the end of Lewis Street here where now SouthEnd Brewery is.

And he said, "What do you think?"

I looked around, I said, "I think it's cool, you know, it's gonna take a lot of money to fix it up."

And he said, "How much do you think it's gonna take?"

I said, "Probably a million dollars."

He said, "Well, I'm out."

And I looked at him and said, "You mind if I buy it?"

And I mean, it just happened that way.

That was the first of many buildings that I've bought, you know, old historic buildings downtown Greensboro.

- [Jonathan] So, tell me, how many properties do you own downtown?

- [Andy] Gosh.

- [Jonathan] Shouldn't ask?

- I think 18 buildings.

You know, I'm very impulsive.

I used to tell people my favorite saying is, "Ready, fire, aim."

I'm aiming a lot more before I'm firing now.

But yeah, I go by my gut a lot.

You know, if it feels right, looks right, then I want to do it.

And we're coming up on the first building that I bought in downtown Greensboro where now the Greensboro Distillery is, but that was the original location of the Forge.

And then we grew out of there.

And then SouthEnd Brewery attached.

But yeah, this used to be the blacksmith shop in downtown Greensboro.

The Forge is now occupying the whole building as of a couple of months ago.

It's 12,000 square feet.

And I tell people, "Well, every city needs a makerspace, and if I had a building that was 24,000 square feet, I'd fill it all up."

It's just an incredible model for helping small entrepreneurs start their companies, making things, private people just, hobbyists.

Yeah, the Forge made this railing.

I have them do a lot of the work on my buildings.

Planters over there, this railing, the fencing, as you can see, I don't like using chain link fence, so something creative, something different.

A lot of the equipment is donated here.

You know, if cities were just to go out and knock on doors and see all the idle equipment sitting there, they could probably fill a building up pretty fast with donated equipment.

[bright music] Yeah.

So welcome to the Forge.

Again, we're membership based, but community supported makerspace.

We have about 220 paying members, and then we have a lot of volunteers who like to teach people.

We do a lot of programs for the youth.

Like during the summer, summer camps, kids will come through here and we'll let 'em make a key fob or something on the laser engraver, something that they won't get hurt on.

- Right.

- And we've got everything from 3D printing to laser engraving to a woodworking shop, a metalworking shop.

But yeah, we'll take a walk around.

- Sure.

- As you can see, 3D printers kind of spread out.

Probably one of our busiest departments is 3D printing and also laser engraving.

- Yes.

- Inside here we've got a little bit of sewing, some ladies do some repair.

- Yeah.

- [Andy] Sewing repair.

But then also new ideas are come up with in here and we've got a little screen printing shop in there.

- [Jonathan] Wow.

And so this is all accessible for members.

- [Andy] 24/7 access to the space.

- So that's huge for small business.

That's huge.

- Yeah.

- That's huge.

- And, you know, an individual membership, it's $54 for a month, for air conditioning, heating, bathrooms, all the equipment.

- [Jonathan] Yeah.

Awesome.

Well, let's look at the 3D printing stuff.

- Yeah, I mean, I've seen all kinds of projects on the laser engravers and the 3D printers from signs to this little robot that was printed here.

- [Jonathan] Oh wow.

- [Andy] And lots of samples on that shelf of what people make here.

But we have a gentleman that started a company called Fusion 3 out of the Forge here.

He now employs about 28 people making his own 3D printers.

And in the beginning he used a lot of these printers to make parts for his 3D printers.

- [Jonathan] That's awesome.

So what else do we have back here?

- So, back here we got laser engravers, and they are usually the busiest part of the shop here.

But right now we've got somebody on the pottery wheels, it looks like, and the pottery has become real popular for us.

And it's just been a great addition.

And we're into the metal shop now.

And a lot of what goes on in here, in addition to just people making things themselves are we teach a lot of classes in here.

And so we teach old school tool and dye.

Welding is a big class for us.

Yeah, this is a CNC machine that we were able to purchase through the city grant and we're looking for some larger machines.

We also want a, when you cut out metal, what is that machine called?

- Plasma cutter?

- Plasma cutter.

So, we're looking to get a plasma cutter, but you know, we've got planers and saws and band saws and some carving machines that we do some wood turning classes, people making bowls and other things in here.

I've seen so many great products and great ideas come outta here.

I'm sure that some people would start their ideas without the Forge, but a lot of 'em wouldn't.

Again, just the accessibility, the cost for them, the place, the brain trust of other people that can show 'em and help 'em.

I mean, if I had a Forge when I started my kayak company, I could have saved a lot of time and a lot of money.

- Sure, sure.

And so I'm really curious, are you a multi-track kind of person?

Do you do several major things at one time?

Or do you almost have chapters in your life, phases that you've gone through?

- [Andy] I think both.

What do you call it?

Organized chaos.

- [Jonathan] Yes.

- And then definitely chapters, you know, I mean, the first chapter of my life was getting my education through my father's business, because I'm a high school dropout.

And I learned about business from my dad.

And then my second phase was my kayak business, and I had two go arounds of that.

And then my third chapter is development and community work.

- Yeah.

Do you have an idea what the next one's gonna be?

The next chapter?

- Play.

- Nice.

- A lot of play.

- [Jonathan] After our tour of a few of Andy's downtown spaces, we took a short drive over to his home to see his kayak museum, a real behind the scenes of Mr. Zimmerman.

All right, Andy, so tell me where we're at now.

- We're in the man cave, the toy collection, the kayak museum, the cave that I get away.

- That's awesome.

Let's check it out, man.

- Come on in.

Come on in.

- So I am in, no pun intended, out of my depths here, because I see so many different kinds of kayaks.

But before we get to some of this, can you tell me a little bit about where you're from?

- Born in New Jersey, Northern New Jersey.

It was dairy farms when I was growing up there initially, but still yet, 15 minutes from New York City without traffic.

So it was always at least an hour drive for a 15-minute drive.

But I tell people when I moved to North Carolina, it saved my life.

- Really?

- Yeah.

I was a street kid, you know, it's part of my history, not that I'm proud of it.

I didn't go to school.

School was not for me.

I was not a traditional learner, and very dyslexic and ADD, so learning challenges.

And so, yeah, I was in the streets or in the woods.

- Sure.

- I was mostly skipping school in the woods so nobody would see me.

And that's where I kind of started my love for the outdoors.

But then, my dad was in the furniture business.

When I left high school, I went to work for him immediately.

And that's where I got my real education from, was working for him.

But my dad had his furniture business in New Jersey and quickly realized if he was gonna be successful, he needed to move it down here.

So right at 18 years old, I moved here to North Carolina, and I met a friend of mine, who eventually became my business partner in the first kayak business that we started.

It was a hobby that we turned into business, but on weekends we were weekend warriors going to find a new river to paddle or a new mountain to climb.

- That's awesome.

That's awesome.

Show me around and tell me some of what you got in here.

- Well, let's look at boat number one, which is the boat on the left up there on top.

That was a whitewater trick kayak called a squirt boat.

- [Jonathan] Really?

- And as we like to say, we got into other dimensions with that boat, and it was made to go underwater.

It's so thin, people say, "How do you get your feet in there?"

And I'd tell 'em, with great pain.

[Jonathan chuckles] But great pleasure.

- Sure.

- Because the fun that was had.

But, yeah, we used to make whitewater kayaks exclusively when I started the business.

And again, it was a hobby-turned-business.

My buddy and I made boats for ourselves and then our friend said, "Hey, would you make me one?"

And the light bulb kind of went off after like boat number five or six, that maybe we can make a business out of this.

We built a great name and brand for ourselves, but I knew that we'd never be making money off of one boat at a time in custom.

We need to mass produce these boats.

And it was a lot the right place at the right time.

We found an investor and we built an oven and made molds, bought molds for plastic production.

I mean, just to give you an idea, our fiberglass business in the hayday, we made a little more than 1,000 boats a year.

And in our plastic production, we made it our peak 60,000 boats a year.

- Wow!

- So, you know, we started to make money when we made plastic boats.

- [Jonathan] Absolutely.

- But the big thing that really put us on the map was recreational kayaks.

"I just want to go out on a pond, I just want to go out on a lake."

And down at the bottom there is called the Pungo.

And I think over a million of those were made.

- [Jonathan] Wow.

- And still being made, it's probably the number one recreational kayak name in the world.

- [Jonathan] Wow.

- And we had multiple molds.

We were making them 24 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week.

- [Jonathan] Wow.

I see you also have a crazy set of bikes.

And you've got a rock climbing wall outside.

Is it all things outdoor?

- Pretty much.

I mean, when it comes to adventure outdoors, I'm a back country skier, you know, I'll go to the slopes every once in a while and take a chair lift up.

But otherwise I'm putting my backpack on and climbing with skins up the mountain and skiing down or snowboarding.

I just saw a quote yesterday that I just love now, it's right on the top of my list, John Muir, "I go into the woods to lose my mind and find my soul."

So that's what the adventure does for me, takes my mind off of everything that I'm doing except for what I'm doing.

That's why I like the adrenaline and the adventure the most.

It takes my mind off of everything but what I'm doing and I find my soul.

Well, one thing I found out is, I think, the true meaning of success, and that's happiness.

You know, I was very happy when I didn't have a penny to my name.

I mean, you know, the money is great, don't get me wrong.

But remember, it's the journey, you know?

- So are among these, do you have any that's your favorite?

That stands as one that has either the biggest memory?

- Do you have kids?

- I do.

- Which one's your favorite?

[Andy laughing] - Wonderful answer.

Right.

You can't pick.

- You know, I've got sentimental attachment, the first one that was ever made, the wood inlay traditional boat.

My friend who designed those boats, he came from Holland and I met him on a beach, and we shook hands and I started making boats from, we're still great friends 40 years later.

I mean, there is a story behind most of these in here, and, you know, like your kids, that I don't have, these are my kids.

- Sure.

- And if they heard me say which one's my favorite, the next time I paddled them, they probably would sink.

[Any laughing] - Right, right.

I'm done.

Well, so when this kind of chapter was concluding for you, how did you get to the Andy Zimmerman that we have today.

- So, let's see.

I sold my interest to my partner's widow and some employees.

You know, I bought that first building and 18 buildings later.

I've just become addicted to buying old, fixing up, putting cool things and cool people there, creating cool spaces and building community.

You know, it's interesting, I never was a part of Greensboro in the kayak business.

I knew nothing of Greensboro.

I mean, I traveled all over the country, and we had distribution all over the world.

I mean, I went to Japan twice a year, Germany, England for shows, you know, as representing our company.

I was very busy and didn't know anything of Greensboro.

And I've learned about working in your own community and your own backyard, it really is a great community here in Greensboro, and you live in a great community, Asheboro.

It's what you make of it and what you wanna make of it and what sacrifices and work and money you're willing to put in to make it even greater.

In our community, as Asheboro, as High Point, as Winston-Salem, you know, rising tide.

As much as I want things to happen in Greensboro, you know, The Piedmont is our strength.

And, you know, we have a lot of people moving from other areas where the pandemic made them question about quality of life.

And The Piedmont has a quality of life and attributes that, you know, I think are right there at the top.

- Andy, thank you so much for taking the time for the tours, man, and the mentorship.

- My pleasure.

- You have been a wonderful mentor for me and definitely somebody that I aspire to be a creator as well and to be able to do this interview with you is very special and I appreciate that.

And I appreciate you joining me as I learned a bit more of what fuels the passions of this innovative entrepreneur.

I know I'm not the only one who is eager to see how far Andy's aspirations will take him.

And of course, we wish him well when he's ready for his next chapter.

- Play.

- Nice.

- A lot of play.

- [Jonathan] Join us next time for another episode of Making North Carolina, as we continue to explore the brilliant minds that live all around us.

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] - [Presenter] Heart of NC is dedicated to lifting up cultural experiences in Randolph County, like hearing homegrown bluegrass music at the Sunset or Liberty Theaters, taking home pottery from internationally renowned artists in Seagrove, the pottery capital of the country, learning NASCAR's legacy at the Petty Museum, and feeding giraffes at the largest natural habitat zoo in the world.

Heart of NC wants you to know all Randolph County has to offer.

Experience Randolph, the heart of North Carolina.

- [Presenter] You may have noticed some exciting new changes downtown.

That's thanks to our hardworking community with help from us at Downtown Asheboro Inc.

Here at Downtown Asheboro Inc., we strive to promote a vibrant downtown environment while preserving the history of our unique architecture.

From advising historic building owners on safe and effective development practices, to working with City Hall to update regulations that support future growth, Downtown Asheboro Inc., growing Asheboro from its roots.