November 2012
| Business World Magazine | 125
and market development.
Fred Deuschle – Halliday’s business
partner and friend – also studied engineering,
and was equally gifted with creativity at an
early age. As a young metallurgist he worked
for a steel mill, where he was put in charge of
quality control. After a decade of experience in
that role, he joined the same steel mill where
Halliday worked. After Deuschle advanced
into management, the pair worked closely to-
gether and their blend of knowledge resulted
in the “ultimate creative, technically compe-
tent problem solving machine.”
Shortly after Deuschle and Halliday
started working together, it became readily
apparent how similar their thought processes
were. The pair was quick to offer different per-
spectives and inclined to evaluate alternative
solutions. In recognition of their “maverick
ways,” Halliday says, they were dubbed the
“
Contrarian Brothers” by their department
head. They wore that moniker like a badge of
honor.
Later, in 2000, Halliday and Deuschle
were working on commercializing a low-glare
stainless steel flat rolled product the compa-
ny had developed. It was a good, sustainable
product, Halliday says, but the company had
no infrastructure in place to effectively bring
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