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When Mike Orazen founded Orazen Extruded Polymers in 2011, he sought the support of a loan from banker Jamie Brotherton — now Senior Relationship Manager at Farmers National Bank. This small loan allowed Mike the freedom to get back to the roots of where his career began. Jamie assessed his business plan and looked at his history in extruded polymers. As Mike says, “I trusted her and she believed in me. Jamie helped advise me.”
Through the first years, Mike did not pay himself a salary, instead reinvesting everything in his ability to build capacity. The company had no floor space, did not own its own machines, but instead was utilizing machines owned by friendly competitors. Mike recalls, “It was only me, alone, for the first year and a half — I was out drumming up business, growing relationships with suppliers and sales reps. Then I’d run production on the machines myself.”
Throughout this time, the defining financial relationship for Orazen Extruded Polymers has been Farmers National Bank. Whether Mike is looking at yearly loans for capacity building and maintenance, engaging with Treasury Management services, countering the perils of the COVID pandemic and navigating PPP loans, or experiencing the joyful moment of buying Orazen’s first building in 2019 — he has relied on Farmers’ banking services and council.
“We provide private banking, treasury management, and other services to Orazen — we were proud to work with them in 2019 through the whole process of purchasing the building they’re in today. It was wonderful to see how it enabled them to increase efficiencies and continue to grow,” Brotherton says.
To Mike, the importance of this relationship is explained by this: “Farmers core values align with ours. Core values that you can truly believe-in, building relationships, and then taking care of those relationships every day.”
