What started as a side hustle for Rob Broker has become a quest for quality and craftsmanship in powder coatings.
Rob and Tammy Broker operate Adrenaline Customs in Minneapolis, Minnesota.The owner of Adrenaline Customs in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Broker has grown the business from a start-up in a garage in 2007 to a full-service coating operation in a 10,000-square-foot space with in-house sandblasting and a 5-stage wash system.
He has brought on his wife, Tammy, to help manage business operations and oversee HR, but Broker now says he is at a pivotal point most small coaters face: go big or go home.
His penchant for delivering high-performance powder coating, sandblasting, and patina finishes for the industrial, commercial, and powersports markets has forced him to decide which way he wants his business to go to grow the company in the coming years.
“We are going through the growth period that all business owners go through, which is unloading responsibility onto somebody else,” Broker says. “I'm busting my ass every day for 10 hours a day, and I can't do this forever. We're going to implement more people, and that's going to be our biggest challenge in the next three or four years; bring in quality employees who care, and find somebody who wants to stick around that will want to run the show.”
Growing in Sales and Space
Broker has grown the business from a start-up in a garage to a 10,000-square-foot space.Over the past several years, Broker has invested considerable time and money in growing his business as he takes over adjacent space in the White Bear Lake industrial park. The expansions usually mean he pays the relocation costs for the existing tenants in those spaces, which he has done three times in the past 10 years as Adrenaline Customs has outgrown its space.
“Unfortunately, I'm in my own way a lot and need to learn to unload responsibilities, which is hard as an owner/operator,” Broker says. “But we intend to grow and fill key positions. Our short-term growth goal is to continue to add people and expand our Patina finishes, which we feel is a new, untapped opportunity.”
Broker’s path to the industrial coatings market began almost two decades ago, when he first picked up Eastwood’s Guide to Powder Coating after being inspired by hot rod shows on the Discovery Channel. At the time, he was living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with a degree in printing and publishing and working in a job he didn’t like.
“I was pretty bored at about 19 or 20 years old, and I really wanted to paint cars,” says Broker, who began pursuing an auto body repair certification, but quickly realized the industry required years of grinding through prep work before reaching the spray booth.
Move to Minneapolis Proves Fruitful
“We made gloss black look like a mirror every time,” Broker says.He moved to Minneapolis and rented a house with a large garage. Soon, he had purchased some tools that would allow him to powder coat parts in the garage, spending about $10,000 that he had saved up over the years. With Frankenstein equipment and a free cure oven someone was giving away on Craigslist, he was ready for commercial work.
“I had a full-time day job working at a corporate gig,” Broker says. “But as I got a little more steam in the powder coating, I basically slapped a sign in my front yard and called myself an expert and then made a website.”
That gamble paid off when local Harley-Davidson motorcycle enthusiasts saw his sign and offered him his first paying job.
“I literally had sprayed about half a dozen parts of my own, and I’d never sprayed anything else,” Broker says. “But I made myself look like the expert to these guys, and so they gave me a shot.”
Word spread quickly, and by 2013, he was earning as much in the garage as at his corporate day job. A corporate decision to cut 401(k) matches — while the company reported $600 million in cash reserves — was the final straw for Broker to quit his job and dive headfirst into his powder coating business.
“That was like the light bulb moment for me, and I thought ‘I gotta get out of here,’” he said.
Rapid Growth and Doubling Space
The expansion boosted throughput by 50% to 70%.The shop’s growth was rapid. By 2014, Broker moved into a small 2,200-square-foot industrial bay, then doubled his footprint to 4,500 square feet in 2017. In 2024, Adrenaline Customs expanded again, taking over two more bays to reach 10,000 square feet.
“We put in a 20-foot oven, a 24-foot blast room with a full recovery system as well as a matching wash bay with 5-stage washing capability,” Broker says. “It was a utilities logistical nightmare. Every single piece of equipment in the shop was moved in the latest expansion. Gas lines, new electrical service lines, air lines, and exhaust venting all had to move. It was very expensive, but it was the necessary evil to grow and produce a better quality product for our customers.”
The expansion boosted throughput by 50% to 70% and enabled the shop to handle larger jobs that had previously been turned away.
“We definitely capitalized on the bigger operation. It is opening more doors,” Broker says, adding that from the beginning, he wanted Adrenaline Customs to build its reputation on quality. “Early on, we learned that if you can make gloss black look good, everything else is pretty easy after that.”
“I was like, ‘You’re not answering the phone?’” Tammy says. “I came from a hairstylist background, where you have to have customer service because people will move on to the next shop if you don’t answer the phone.”
Broker said of his early Harley projects that he tested 20 different powders before finding one that delivered mirror‑like gloss black finishes.
“We made gloss black look like a mirror every time,” he says. “That’s what the Harley guys wanted. It just proves that other companies might be capable of high quality, but they don’t slow down enough to prep parts right to achieve it.”
Yet convincing commercial clients of the value of quality remained a challenge. Broker says he found that price is pretty much the only thing that matters in some commercial jobs he was bidding, and that they didn’t care about the quality of the finish, a concept that bothered him tremendously.
His strategy has been to emphasize long‑term savings by convincing them to pay a little more to ensure quality finishes on the parts. They cater to companies that have gone down the cost savings route, only to find out how expensive rework/rejects are for all parties.
“We’re going to charge you 30% more, but we’re going to end up saving you money because you’re not going to have the quality issues that cause nothing but headaches. What does rejecting the load, shipping logistics, and supply chain bottlenecks truly cost you? It’s more than you think. All of those things are forgotten about when they look at the price. You’ll have fewer headaches and next to no rejects. You’re going to save money by choosing us,” he says.
Expanding the Family Business to Improve Customer Service
As the business grew, customer service became critical. Tammy Broker joined the company in 2021 after years of working as a hairstylist and school aide. She said one day her husband told her that he was too busy to even answer the phones, which alarmed her. She soon quit her job and joined Adrenaline Customs full-time.
“I was like, ‘You’re not answering the phone?’ I came from a hairstylist background, where you have to have customer service because people will move on to the next shop if you don’t answer the phone,” Tammy says.
Her presence transformed the front office, and Adrenaline Customs quickly improved its customer relations by communicating more effectively and more frequently.
“We hear all the time how great our customer service is, how they called people three times and they never answered the phone,” Tammy says. “They would email them and never hear back.”
“We’re going to stay at this size for the foreseeable future, but if the right carrot were dangled in front of me, we would definitely jump for it.”
Broker agrees that bringing Tammy on board to run the business operations has been instrumental in the steady growth they have seen.
“We definitely had to learn some lessons,” he says. “I feel like we have the best customer service of any powder coder in the area, which all comes back to quality in my mind.”
Looking Ahead with Patina Coatings
Broker has invested considerable time and money in growing his business as he takes over adjacent space in the White Bear Lake industrial park.Despite economic headwinds, Adrenaline Customs continues to thrive by focusing on quality, customer service, and smart expansion.
One unique differentiator has been licensing the Powderlux patina powder coating process, which gives Adrenaline Customs exclusive rights in the region. Powderlux offers a distressed finish that captures the beauty of aged metals while delivering the toughness of modern powder coating.
“A few years ago, this technology didn’t exist in the marketplace,” Brokere says. “Now designers and architects can call out for specific PowderLUX finishes instead of the old chemically applied patina finishes, which are unpredictable and very expensive.”
He says adding the process singles them out from a market perspective, making them different from any other local shop.
“The PowderLUX system makes Adrenaline Customs exclusive,” Broker says. “We feel that this new technology will become a large leg of the business, and we’re happy to secure the Minnesota region with our license agreement.”
The couple says they will also look for more opportunities to grow their powder coating business and might seek a partner to help them staff their growing operation and purchase additional equipment.
“We’re happy to have a much bigger shop now, that’s for sure,” Broker says. “We’re going to stay at this size for the foreseeable future, but if the right carrot were dangled in front of me, we would definitely jump for it.”
