WOMEN IN MANUFACTURING: Stephanie Budmen

Chief Creative Officer, Think Variant; Co-founder Budmen Industries

From head pastry chef to chief creative officer: Both involve step-by-step processes and collaboration to achieve an end result

by Mary Beth Roach

Turiosity, imagination and innovation meets manufacturing.

This is one way to describe the two companies that Stephanie Budmen has helped to establish in the last decade.

“We think completely different. We like to see problems that no one has any clue how to solve or the problems that people are saying are totally impossible [to solve] and come up with different solutions for them,” she said, in describing her Syracuse-based Budmen Industries and Think Variant Inc., located in Schroeppel.

She and her teams have created a wide range of products, with the emphasis on wide. For example, they have molded stainless steel bird beaks on signage at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo to creating a sculpture of the world’s first cyborg.

Stephanie and her husband, Isaac, started Budmen Industries in 2017, manufacturing and marketing 3D printers. But once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they had to shut down the business. Yet the couple felt compelled to help their community, Budmen said.

After researching needed personal protective equipment, they decided to use their 3D printers to design a prototype for face shields. They made 50 and provided them to a hospital. Word got out and soon they were receiving requests for quantities they couldn’t produce and from places all over the globe. The couple decided to revamp their website to act as a clearinghouse, of sorts. On part of the site, those who could produce the shields on their own 3D printers could leave their info. Another part of the site collected info from those requesting them.

The Budmens would then provide their design files for free to producers and they would match them geographically to those who needed them.

According to the Budmen website and their self-reporting, they produced more than 25,000 shields to organizations across the state and more than 3 million Budmen Face Shields were made by registered producers and industry partners.

During the pandemic, they met Harold Watkins and Scott Antonacci. Antonacci had an injection molding business and he suggested that he use the Budmens’ file to produce face shields at a much higher volume, which they did.

The four went on to co-found Think Variant in 2021, based in Schroeppel. Today, the company includes about 10 employees and a network of collaborators, Budmen said.

The name came about, in part, Budmen said, because of the different and creative ways in which they think about solving a client’s problem. Think Variant can do 3D printing, laser cutting, CNC and injection molding.

Budmen’s entry into this field was unorthodox, underscoring one of her favorite quotes, “Life is not a straight line.”

She has no formal training in engineering, having gone to Syracuse University for art history and photography. After graduating in 2012, she worked as a wedding photographer for a few years before moving to Chicago, where she went to work in a bakery. She would go on to become the head pastry chef for a Michelin-star chef.

About the move from being a pastry chef to a manufacturer might seem like a big jump, Budmen said, “I feel like I can make a bigger impact in manufacturing.”

And she sees similarities between the two. As she explained, both involve step-by-step processes and collaboration to achieve an end result.

And she hasn’t quite left her baking experience behind. Currently, she and Isaac are working on a food 3D printer, in which one can extrude chocolate, meringue or other foodstuffs to create beautiful dishes. One of her specialties is cookies.

When not creating and innovating at their companies, Budmen enjoys mentoring younger people in the areas of innovation and manufacturing. The couple also works with students, from middle-schoolers to college, at the Keenan Center for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity at LeMoyne College, helping to prepare the next generation. She said she is enabling them to “learn the skills and the strategies to follow your curiosity wherever that takes you.”

And while helping the next generation with their future, Budmen is looking forward to what’s ahead for their companies.

For the past 18 months, they have been venturing into the drone world, with manufacturing different drone parts and exploring new clients in industries they haven’t worked with prior.

“I see Think Variant staying innovative, inventing different pieces of equipment or inventing different ways of doing things, but also being on the cutting edge,” she said.