Customer Trust Helps Grow Metal Chem Finishing Shop

It’s a sunny Wednesday morning, and Guillermo Aguilera is as excited as he’s ever been running Metal Chem, his finishing company in Chatsworth, California.

He’s been at this for 34 years, and it seems Aguilera still can’t believe he’s where he is in life, with his Nadcap shop that employs just over 50 people.

“ We were started by two immigrants, Carlos Pongo and myself, with a lot of ideas,” Aguilera says. “We had a bag full of dreams, and we wanted to make a Metal Chem a success. It’s been hard, and it’s been a long time, but we did it.”

Pongo passed away in 2017, but Aguilera has kept Metal Chem on track as it continues to flourish, offering electroplating, powder coatings, liquid coatings, and more to a variety of industries, primarily the aerospace and defense markets.

Chem Film, Passivate, Anodizing, Electroless Nickel, Zinc, and More

Guillermo Aguilera and Brenda Tapia outside of the Chatsworth, California, Metal Chem shop, where extensive growth has taken place for the Nadcap facility.The facility offers chem film, passivation, anodizing, electroless nickel, zinc, and phosphate conversion on the plating side, as well as Mil-Specs, urethanes, epoxy, and polyester hybrids on the powder coating side, in addition to liquid coatings.

Metal Chem also provides conformal coatings for printed circuit board assemblies, potting or encapsulation finishes in filling an electronic assembly, and dry film lubricants, too.

Since 2022, Aguilera says Metal Chem has seen its business by more than 35%.

“Customers are trusting us more with their product and with their contracts,” he says. “We are at about 60% capacity, so we can grow even more. But we’re doing very good.”

Metal Chem performs Type II and III anodizing as well as boric acid anodizing. Along with zinc and cadmium plating and electroless nickel, the company's robust painting capabilities, which include both powder and liquid coatings, as well as lubricants, conformal coatings for circuit boards, conductive paints for plastics, and Mil-Spec painting, have made the shop highly sought after by manufacturers.

Aguilera borrowed money from his mother to invest in the new company, and the three partners opened a roughly 1,000-square-foot operation with a couple of tanks.

“Even though we're small, everything is being done under one umbrella,” Aguilera says. “We try to provide customers with the service just like going to the store: you want milk, but there's no bread. So you go to a place where they have bread and milk and everything; we want to make it accessible to our customers and to provide a service to them.”

Roots from Small Shop Started in 1991

Metal Chem offers electroplating, powder coatings, liquid coatings, and more to a variety of industries, primarily the aerospace and defense markets.Metal Chem, which has 9,000 square feet of space, was founded in 1991, but not in the typical way most successful companies establish their roots.

Aguilera, an immigrant from Mexico who earned his U.S. citizenship status along with his wife 15 years ago, was working in the machining industry as a quality inspector for a company after graduating from California State University-Northridge with a degree in Quality Management Assurance.

Pongo also worked for the same company as a Production Manager, and he and Aguilera became very good friends. One day, Pongo asked Aguilera what he knew about the plating industry because that was part of Aguilera’s responsibility to inspect parts before they were sent to the finishing company.

“All I truly knew was that I sent them out, and they came back very nice and shiny,” he says. “I knew that was not the right answer, so I started looking into what plating was. This was before Google, but I realized it was a nonconductive service, and it reduced corruption.”

“Carlos and I looked at each other like, ‘What the heck are we going do now? We don’t know anything about this business.’”

In the meantime, Aguilera and Pongo befriended an electroplater who worked at a shop. He approached them with the idea of opening up a plating business. Aguilera and Pongo had no expertise and no money, but they were convinced to leave their jobs and start their own business. Their friend would run the plating side, Pongo would handle production, and Aguilera would oversee quality.

Aguilera borrowed money from his mother to invest in the new company, and the three partners opened a roughly 1,000-square-foot operation with a couple of tanks.

From ‘What Are We Gonna Do?’ to Growth and Sustainability

Metal Chem also provides conformal coatings for printed circuit board assemblies, potting or encapsulation finishes in filling an electronic assembly, and dry film lubricants, too.The business started slower than expected, but Aguilera and Pongo found themselves working seven days a week and sometimes 12-hour days to fill the limited orders they could get. After three months of operation, the third partner walked in the door one morning to deliver a bombshell.

“He said, ‘Listen, here's no future here, and I just found another job; I'm leaving,’” Aguilera recalls. “I said, ‘Wait a minute; we started this because of you. What are we gonna do?’ He said, ‘I don't know guys. I thought we were going make money.’ It had only been three months, and he left us.”

That left Aguilera and Pongo to pick up the pieces, which weren’t many to pick up.

“Carlos and I looked at each other like, ‘What the heck are we going do now? We don’t know anything about this business,’” Aguilera says.

Fortunately, one of their chemical suppliers felt sorry for them and sent over their most experienced chemist to help Metal Chem keep the business open as Aguilera and Pongo tried to learn as much as they could about electroplating.

“He was an older man, probably mid-80s,” Aguilera says. “He would come to my place and teach me the basics, such as to mix this with this, mix this with that. And that’s how everything started for us.”

Working Non-Stop to Grow the Business

Their Nadcap accreditation has enabled them to meet the metal application needs of top technology pioneers in the aerospace, military, and naval industries, resulting in further growth for the company.Aguilera and Pongo spent the next several years working non-stop to grow the business and learn even more about the plating process. There were many nights when they would sleep at the shop overnight to help run the lines. Still, the business steadily grew, with Pongo leading production and Aguilera overseeing the quality aspects of the business.

“I remember bringing my mom, my wife — even bringing my brothers — to help,” Aguilera says. “Two years went by, and everybody around me kept telling me, ‘Just give it up. And Carlos and I said that said no. It is like trying to cross the river, and we're in the middle of it; what are we gonna do, come back? We decided to move forward, and either we were going to drown, or we were going to make it. And we made it.”

Aguilera says it was more than just him and Pongo who helped build the shop, which is something he is keenly aware of every day.

“It is 2025, and we are still here,” he says. “I thank the customers first, but I wouldn't be able to do it without my team. I have a nice team behind us.”

“The physical work of running this company is just me and Brenda. She deserved to own something. I didn't want to lose her.”

Pongo’s son, Jorge, inherited his father’s share of the company and is the vice president. The other officer of the company, Chief Executive Officer Brenda Tapia, has a more circuitous route to her position, having been hired as the front desk receptionist 16 years ago.

After a few years as the first point of contact, someone to speak to when they called Metal Chem or walked through the front door, Aguilera and Pongo promoted her to lead other departments in the production and quality areas.

Losing One Partner and Gaining a New One

Guillermo Aguilera decided to not only promote Brenda Tapia to the CEO position but also to give the former receptionist a stake in the company.When Pongo passed away in 2021, Aguilera made a significant decision as he tried to overcome the loss of his friend, confidante, and co-worker. Knowing he needed more help running the business — since it was just him and Pongo for most of the last 30+ years — Aguilera decided to not only promote Tapia to the CEO position but also to give the former receptionist a stake in the company.

“We promoted her, and we gave equity in the company, so she is now an owner, too,” Aguilera says. ”We're a small business, and when you have someone working with you hard side-by-side and they give it all to you, there's something that you have to do sometimes and give something back.”

He says Tapia’s assistance when Pongo passed was instrumental in keeping things in a busy finishing operation on track. While Jorge Pongo handles all the financial work from another state and works remotely, Aguilera says Tapia stepped up to take on extra duties, keeping processes flowing and maintaining extremely high-quality output.

“The physical work of running this company is just me and Brenda,” Aguilera says. “She deserved to own something. I didn't want to lose her.”

The timing was perfect, as Tapia was contemplating taking a break from her job at Metal Chem to become a full-time mother while also helping her husband run his business.

She started at Metal Chem in 2008 as a receptionist, but over time, added accounting and purchasing to her responsibilities. In 2017, Tapia moved to production, where she became more involved with specs, parts, and processes. But by 2020, she was ready to leave the company for her family’s needs.

That is when Aguilera made her the offer to stay with the company.

‘Completely Changed My Plans’ Leads to Improvements

“I was not expecting that,” she says. ”It completely changed my plans because I was already heading to stay home and help around the house and my husband’s business. It changed everything, obviously, and Guillermo gave me a very good opportunity. He believed in me, and I couldn't say no.”

Tapia says the company's success lies with its employees, many of whom have been with Metal Chem for 10 to 20 years. Since working in a finishing operation isn’t always the most pleasant — with the physical requirements of the job along with the heat that sometimes comes from working near tanks — she credits the staff with their fortitude in making the company as successful as it has been.

And since Tapia herself has spent a considerable amount of time on the production floor, she says she is always on the lookout to make things more enjoyable for the Metal Chem employees.

That is in addition to her major responsibilities of keeping tabs on customer lead times, managing production, and overseeing safety programs, purchasing, financials, and permits.

”My approach was that I wanted to make this better for our team,” Tapia says. “Better conditions for them, better ventilation, or better handling with chemicals. When I took on more responsibility, that's one of the things I wanted to implement, too, was how I can make things better.”

Sharing the Wealth With Employees

Aguilera says rewarding his employees helps with improving quality, and that “Quality is something that we work on every single morning.”Metal Chem is flexible with its staff when the Southern California weather gets hotter, allowing them to come in earlier to avoid the late afternoon heat. However, one of the biggest benefits the company has introduced for its workers is to share in the profit and wealth that Metal Chem is generating.

Last year, they made their first profit-sharing distribution to employees, a pleasant surprise for those who have been with the company for several decades.

“ I cannot tell you how surprised and thankful they were,” Tapia says. “The company has been doing very well, so Guillermo and I spoke, and we wanted them to share our profits as an incentive for the staff and to motivate them. This year has been another good year, and it has worked out well. It’s a very positive thing not only for the company but for them, too.”

Aguilera says the secret to success is asking a simple question every day: What do my customers need from us?

“We rarely lose customers, and they consistently love us. We provide them with quality, a good turnaround, and competitive pricing. And that works for us.”

“It’s about making my customer’s lives easier,” he says. “ Quality is something that we work on every single morning; we meet each morning, and I remind my team about quality, the importance of quality, and how it is the key.”

With approximately 90% of its customer base centered on military and aerospace companies, Metal Chem recognizes that quality is what has earned them the work, and it is that continuing quality that is necessary to maintain those customers.

”We train our people every single day to think about quality customer service,” Aguilera says. “We work on our schedule daily. I hate being late, and if we think something's going to be late, we call the customer in advance. We're all humans, and we'll make mistakes, but communication is the key, too.”

After more than 30 years, Aguilera and the Metal Chem know what made them successful — the hard work and quality — and they don’t take anything for granted.

”We started with just one customer, and we were just a mom-and-pop little shop,” he says. “Even today, I don't have any salespeople or sales reps. Many of the customers we were able to attract here came through referrals and word of mouth. We rarely lose customers, and they consistently love us. We provide them with quality, a good turnaround, and competitive pricing. And that works for us.”

Visit https://www.metalcheminc.com.