Pulse Check! — From Sweeping Floors to Running the Factory — Mike Quinn, Acorn Products Corporation

What does it really take to run a small manufacturing company in America today?

In this conversation, Main Street Assembly founder and CEO Zahra Amanpour sits down with Mike Quinn of Acorn Products Corporation, a family-owned injection molding company with two facilities in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York.

Mike started at Acorn sweeping floors as a teenager. Today, armed with a plastics engineering degree and two young engineers he recruited himself, he's preparing to lead the company his father built into its next generation.

Their conversation captures both the promise and the pressure facing American manufacturers right now. On the promise side: a clear succession plan in an industry where most owners have none, a new generation bringing fresh skills and energy, and AI tools that are turning 20-hour projects into 30-minute ones and freeing small teams to focus on customers and growth. On the pressure side: supply chains where small manufacturers wait behind bigger buyers, a tax burden that drains money owners would rather invest in their employees and their town, and the challenge of capturing decades of hard-won knowledge before a generation of workers retires.

Running through it all is a bigger truth: companies like Acorn are the backbone of their communities. In a region still feeling the loss of another legacy manufacturing company, Mike's vision is a company where people want to work, where their kids want to work, and whose success helps lift the entire Mohawk Valley.

If you care about small business, American manufacturing, or the towns they hold together, this conversation will speak to you.