When mold maker Jeremy Sheldon got laid off from his job at a Carson City, NV plastic company, he knew he had to change directions, but he wasn’t certain which way to turn.

“That was about 1999, and I was in my early twenties,” he says. “I had just spent the past six years going through a five-year mold making apprenticeship, working in machine shops, and fi nally building and repairing molds for a plastic company in the Carson Valley. When I got laid off from that last job, I sat down and took a hard look at things.”