About half the company's 50 workers have ownership in the Englewood, Colo.-based maker of RAM modules. The owners are managers, salespeople and technical staffers, while the non-owners are hourly employees. Long-term staffers eventually get the option of becoming partial owners, said Shiflett, and they become "intricately" involved in company decisions and the bottom line.
The owners restructured and diversified Mushkin after the computer component market "took a dramatic turn south in 2005," he said. "Because of this, the company regrouped, reformulated and became much more efficient with overhead and parts sourcing."
As a result, the company's profits grew this year, despite the recession, and that bodes well for the owners, Shiflett said. "One of the advantages is our profit sharing," he said.
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