Gary Michalek, GAM founder, retires after 35 years
Gary Michalek, CEO and founder, recently retired. We are grateful for his 35 years of leadership, his commitment to excellence, and the culture he created here at GAM. Craig Van den Avont, current president, will become GAM's new CEO.
“I am grateful for Gary Michalek’s friendship and leadership for the past 27 years.," said Van den Avont. "Gary’s vision, commitment to customer service, and operational-excellence has formed GAM into the best-in-class company we are today."
Gary created a real culture of family here at GAM and, while we congratulate him on his retirement, we will miss him and his friendly, positive personality!
We honored Gary's legacy by retiring his GAM shirt, signed by all of us, to hang from the rafters in the factory.
GAM founder, Gary Michalek
Gary Michalek grew up in an entrepreneurial family with its roots in precision manufacturing and assembly. He worked in virtually every department of his 300+ employee family manufacturing company, Quality Control Corporation (QCC).
In 1990, at the age of 28, Gary started GAM Enterprises because he had an opportunity to strategically align the manufacturing capabilities of QCC with a servo coupling product line from a German company, Jakob Antriebstechnik. He private labeled the product line and successfully developed the sales channel for the North American market, growing at a CAGR of more than 25% in an 8-year period.
In 1998, he jointly started GAM Gear with his current business partner, Craig Van Den Avont, and leveraged the strength of the existing sales channel and customer base while adding new suppliers and expanding the manufacturing capabilities to offer high precision gearboxes for the automation industry.