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SALT LAKE CITY — The deck appears stacked against family-owned businesses. The Family Business Institute has found less than one-third make it past the founder's generation.
However, one family business in Utah beat those odds with a passion for neon.
At Brimley Neon, Ryan Eastlyn crafts neon signs that will light up Utah businesses.
"There are only a couple of other glass shops in town," he said. "Shops come and go pretty quick."
Eastlyn is surrounded by glass and fire.
"You can't just throw the glass into the fire," he said. "It'll break."
He uses a combination of flames to heat up neon tubes until they're pliable enough to bend into whatever shape or letter he needs. It's a delicate process that can go wrong quickly.
He's constantly breathing air into heated tubes as he bends them. Eastlyn said it's so they'll keep their original diameter.
"When it gets nice and hot and molten, I'll blow into it just slightly. If I don't, it would collapse," he said.
"It does take a lot of effort," said David Brimley, who taught Eastlyn. "I believe Ryan is the best-known neon bender in the country, as far as I know."
Brimley is a third-generation neon bender and co-owner of Brimley Neon.
"Grandpa went to Chicago, bought some equipment, drove it back on a flatbed trailer and taught himself to bend neon," he said.
That's how the original Brimley Brothers sign company added neon to its repertoire in the early 1930s.
"Every sign, up and down on Main Street, was neon, neon and light bulbs. It's just spectacular. It looks like Broadway in New York," he said. "But we had a city beautification program that ended all that."
Demand for neon is lighting up again. Orders for new signs, restoration work and even TV and movie productions keep Eastlyn and Brimley busy.
Brimley's daughter Emily, a fourth generation, handles the shop's business side.
"It's always been there. It's that glow," she said. "There's something that's warmer about it than a light bulb."
Emily, another co-owner of the company, is married to Eastlyn.
"He met me and was kind of, 'Oh my gosh, what is this neon stuff?'" she said. "He tried his hand at it and he got it."
Brimley compares neon to the northern lights captured in a tube.
"It happens in the earth's atmosphere by the magnetic poles, exciting the gasses in the atmosphere," he said. "So we're just exciting the gasses we have trapped in the tube with electrical energy."
"Totally efficient, totally green, cold light source. Uses hardly any energy at all," Emily Eastlyn said.
But what keeps drawing people to the neon light?
"It's like it's alive," Brimley said. "It's a living thing inside a tube. I think people are fascinated by the colors and the vibrancy, all the excitement of neon."
Brimley Neon uses LED as well as neon, depending on the application, location and other variables.
Brimley has five grandchildren, so there's hope that the love of neon will extend through a fifth generation.
