Originally organized as Oxbow Holdings, by Tim Baldwin, Pat Sherman and Ben Eastep, Bluffstone, LLC is the parent company of "The Villas" brand of off-campus student housing. With nearly $100MM in student housing assets, spanning a 500 mile radius of its corporate offices in Davenport, IA, Bluffstone and The Villas brand have quickly become the premier provider of student housing properties throughout the Midwest. With a focus on small universities and community colleges in secondary & tertiary markets, Bluffstone focuses on the development, design, construction, management and long-term ownership of amenity-rich, student-centric communities. Bluffstone strives to enhance the higher education experience through better living environments.

Sometime in late 2014, Tim was approached by a friend in the real estate business about a potential opportunity to acquire a building and lease it to a new, startup brewery. After many months of discussions about potential locations, it was decided that the new brewery would be located on the first floor of the Bluffstone building in downtown Davenport. Tim and Brewmaster, Matt Engelhaupt, became friends during this year of discussions regarding locations, and instead of just being the real estate side of the business relationship, Tim and his business partner Pat Sherman would become partners in the new brewery endeavor, with Matt Engelhaupt and his business partner, Nathan Sobotka. The Bluffstone building happens to be located adjacent to Front Street Brewery, which has been in the same location since its founding in 1992, and holds the title of "Oldest Brewpub in the State of Iowa". Discussions with Front Street's owner about sourcing food for the new brewery began immediately, and everyone agreed there would be synergy in a new brewery opening up next door, along with the proximity of another local brewery, just down the street. One thing led to another, and plans for the new brewery were scrapped, and instead, an offer was made to acquire Front Street Brewery.The acquisition was only just completed on April 7, 2016. An equipment order was placed immediately to increase production output of the brewery from a maximum of 2,250 barrels of beer per year, to over 4,500 barrels, or 9,000 kegs per year. The brewery upgrades are expected to be complete by June 15, 2016, and 150 barrels of beer are expected to be kegged by July 1. Contracts are in place with regional beer distributors, and every drop of beer that is not consumed internally has been committed to distribution.

Shooting Sports is a 25+ year old full-service, federally licensed firearms retailer, indoor shooting range and firearms training facility located in downtown Moline, IL. Tim and his business partner, Pat Sherman, acquired Shooting Sports in December of 2012, from its original founder, Jim Bartels. Shooting Sports is the ONLY indoor shooting range and full-service training facility located in the Illinois Quad Cities. The store is packed with firearms inventory and staffed with the areas most knowledgeable firearms experts and instructors.

Tim was elected to the Riverdale School District #100 board of education in the April 2015 election. Tim currently has two children attending Riverdale, and a Senior who just graduated from Riverdale.

Oxbow Holdings was a commercial developer, originally organized by Tim Baldwin, Pat Sherman and Ben Eastep. Oxbow generally developed commercial & retail properties, along with some single and multi-family products throughout Iowa and Illinois, and still holds some commercial assets today. However, when Oxbow developed its first student-housing project in 2006/2007, the company's focus shifted almost exclusively to student housing. This is when Bluffstone was born. Today, Oxbow is simply a holding company for legacy commercial properties still owned by the partners.

Gobosh, LLC (GOBigOrStayHome) was originally conceived by Tim Baldwin and Dave Graham, while working together at Symphony Aircraft. Tim and Dave saw an opportunity in the niche Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) market, and headed to central Europe to identity aircraft suitable to importation and re-branding, to be sold into the US Light Sport Aircraft market under the Gobosh brand. At the onset of this emerging market niche, Gobosh quickly gained its place in the top 10 purveyors of Light Sport Aircraft, with its two offerings; the Gobosh G700 and G800 lines of aircraft. The Gobosh G700 is a Polish aircraft known throughout Europe as the Aero AT-3, slightly modified to meet the requirements of the LSA market here in America. The Gobosh G800 is a Czech aircraft known as the VL-3 (which holds the title of the World's Fastest UL Aircraft), also with minor modification to meet the American requirements. Both aircraft underwent an "Americanization" process, before being re-branded, which made the airplanes much more appealing to the American buyer.As was the case with many of the early importers & manufacturers, stiff competition and a flood of new product, forced Gobosh out of the import & distribution business. Today, Gobosh is wholly owned by Dave Graham, and is in the aircraft brokering business.

Rock Island Country Market was born out of the ashes of the Eagle Country Market bankruptcy. Tim and several partners acquired the closed, neighborhood grocery store, and in a few short week reopened as Rock Island Country Market. The business flourished for many years, when Tim and several of the partners sold out to one of the other partners. The new owner operated the store for many more years, and even acquired/open several more in the process. Unfortunately, Rock Island Country Market finally succumbed to HyVee, after they opened their new Rock Island Super-Center.

Symphony Aircraft was acquired out of bankruptcy by a Canadian investment group, along with Tim and his partners. The Moline based organization was responsible for World-Wide Sales, Marketing and Distribution of this light, two-place, German designed aircraft, while the Canadian company was responsible for manufacturing. Unfortunately, a change in Federal Aviation Regulations, opening up the new Sport Pilot license and Light Sport Aircraft category, caused the end of Symphony Aircraft. The remaining assets of the company were acquired by one of the original investors, and parts and support are still available today.

After exiting the technology business, and not yet being firmly planted in the aviation business, Tim and a group of partners bought out a 100 year-old heating and cooling company, along with a modular home building business. Ultimately, the heating & cooling business was sold to another local company, and continues to flourish today. The modular home business was sold to one of the partners.

Pomery IT Solutions from Hebron, KY acquired eServ's technology business (see eServ below for more info). As part of the acquisition, Tim was required to sign on with the company for an earn-out period. Once the earn out period was over, Tim left to pursue other opportunities.

Tim, along with five co-workers from City Blue Technologies, left City Blue after a failed attempt to acquire City Blue from the current ownership group. After many trials & tribulations with that separation, eServ was founded as a technology and engineering services company. eServ grew to over 400 employees and $50MM in revenue in a very short period of time. Although the technology side of eServ is what financed the development of the engineering services business, the writing was on the wall for the technology business due to the commoditization of the products and services eServ represented. While the market was hot at the tail end of the dot com boom, eServ's technology business was sold to Pomeroy IT Solutions from Hebron, KY. Tim maintained a portion of this ownership in eServ's engineering business, but as part of the Pomeroy acquisition, Tim, along with Pat Sherman, were required to move with the business during the earn out period. A couple years later, eServ was sold to Perot Sytems, at which time all the original founders cashed out. eServ maintained its identity for several more years, until Perot sold the eServ business to Dell, who ultimately did away with the eServ brand, to adopt their own Dell Services brand.

City Blueprint & Supply Co. was Tim's first "real" job. City Blue was a small, family-owned blueprinting services and drafting supply business, who also had a small drafting and CAD services business, servicing John Deere & Caterpillar. Tim was hired right out of school by City Blue's Peoria office, as a "CAD Jockey". With aspirations of attending Bradley University to complete a Mechanical Engineering Degree, Peoria was a good move. Tim quickly realized that sitting at a desk in front of a computer was not for him, and made a move to the sales team. Tim quickly realized he was meant to be in front of customers, which launched him into a sales & management career at City Blue, where he built their company from a small, family run business, to a large, regional player in the technology and engineering services space. Tim created the "Integrated Solutions Division" of City Blue, and operated as an independent business providing technology solutions to the regional Fortune 500 Companies. As technology improved and the drafting services business turned into an engineering services business, Tim's counterparts were hired to help propel the rest of the company to the next level. At this time, the City Blueprint name and the Integrated Solutions division name were merged into a new identity called, City Blue Technologies. After several years of operating this business on behalf of a nearly absentee ownership group, Tim and his counterparts made an offer to purchase the business. After over twelve months of negotiations didn't produce a deal, Tim, his counterparts and a fairly large group of employees left City Blue and started eServ.