Milestone Moment: Northland Capital Breaks $1 Billion
Northland Capital’s service portfolio has surpassed $1 billion, putting the Minnesota-based company among the top independent equipment finance companies in the country. It’s a milestone founder and CEO Willis Kleinjan never imagined when he started the business 28 years ago.
“We just were focused on doing what was best for our customers and vendors and building a culture where people felt valued, wanted to work and became friends,” he said.
What’s behind the $1 billion is what matters most to Kleinjan: growing to 62 employees serving 27,000 customers. “The quality of our employees has made all the difference,” he said. “I hear it from our customers, our vendors and others in the industry. Our employees really care about our customers and our vendors.”
A foundation built on faith, integrity and service catapulted the company from a small-ticket agriculture equipment lease company to a leading partner providing customized solutions in a diverse group of industries, including construction, transportation and environmental.
“Our size and capacity have attracted the attention of some of the largest commercial banks in the country that want to partner with Northland,” said Gabe Jarnot, Senior Vice President of Business Development. “These partnerships allow Northland to continue to improve our product offering, pricing and capacity. Our core business is still serving small businesses across the U.S., but we also have the ability to serve larger enterprises and that continues to help us grow.”
Jarnot and CFO Jerry Baker were among the first few employees. They still remember the first sale. A $12,100 lease for a Oswalt mixer through a vendor partnership in Wisconsin on August 15, 1996, started it all. A $52,000 lease on a grain bin for a farmer in Southern Minnesota followed.
“We joke that we had to start preparing the documentation at about 2 pm to make sure we got them done by the end of the day to make mail,” Jarnot said. “Back then, documents were done with a typewriter sitting on a folding table.”
Over the past 28 years, Northland Capital has helped small business owners and large corporations gain the equipment they need to achieve their goals with individual transaction sizes ranging from a $775 piece of office equipment to $3.2 million to a $3.2 million fleet of harvesting equipment.
“I am 100% confident that we did this the right way, we didn’t cut corners, we brought in the right people, invested in the company infrastructure and built what has become a great company,” Baker said. “Looking forward, we can now see possibilities that were once unimaginable as we continue to operate under the same principles and values that we used when we started this in 1996.”
The Northland Capital team recently gathered at the company’s headquarters to celebrate the milestone — and live out the company’s core value of fun. They partnered with a local brewery, owned by a Northland Capital employee, to create custom beer cans with Kleinjan’s face that resembled the “1 billion” close-up in Mike Myer’s 1997 hit movie, “Austin Powers.
After cracking jokes, Kleinjan shared, “I believe God has blessed us because of our faithfulness in honoring Him in all that we do.”
