Mikey P
Administrator
Thanks for joining us this evening.
I am excited to have Thom on the Hot Seat with us tonight. I can only imagine that a guy with Thom's back ground and place in our industry has lots of great information for us all, regardless if you own one of his machines.
I want to thank Thom a lot for being the first "manufacturer" to step up to the plate here. It took some courage to be the first, that's for sure. The outcome of this interview can go either way in regards to promoting his company so I hope the members here respect the fact that he is willing to take that chance to help this Board grow.
Jim Pemberton was nice enough to write up a little biography on Thom so we'll start with that.
I've known Thom Fielding since he was "just a welder" at Prochem. Of all of the employees there, he was one of the few who would socialize with the distributors at the business meetings and social functions. He'd ask questions on how to do his job better, and what issues we had with the equipment.
As he rose up the ranks to production manager, I found that I would bypass the customer service and engineers and go right to him with complaints and problems. He was also a soft touch for anyone who was broke down and needed a part. He'd take parts off of "sold machines" and delay an order if he knew someone needed something in an emergency. I can only imagine the abuse he took from management for that behavior!
When he started his new venture, he was just supplying parts and service advice to people. Even when he began to sell machines, he and his staff continued to give service advice on the phone to people who did not own his equipment, even if they weren't placing any order.
An interesting note is that he started his machine sales in a bit of a different way: He sold himself to distributors first, not carpet cleaners. In fact, more specifically, he sold himself to the REPAIRMEN of distributors first.
When he designed his first unit, he came to the service departments that had the best reputation and the best mechanics and consulted those mechanics about what would make a unit more durable and easy to work on. He also talked to carpet cleaners, but he didn't start out trying to make it the top performing product (case in point: early heat issues), but an easier to work on, more durable, more reliable unit than most of the slide in models available at that time.
Thom was always, and still is, a very driven, task oriented person. That means he'll do what he thinks is right, no matter the consequences to himself. Like many such people, he doesn't always warm up the crowd quickly, but nearly 10 years of knowing him he has never let one of my clients down, or myself. I just wouldn't appoint him as ambassador to the UN, or ask him to guard the prisoners after a battle.
_________________
Jim Pemberton
Now lets get on with the "Pre Asked" questions...
I am excited to have Thom on the Hot Seat with us tonight. I can only imagine that a guy with Thom's back ground and place in our industry has lots of great information for us all, regardless if you own one of his machines.
I want to thank Thom a lot for being the first "manufacturer" to step up to the plate here. It took some courage to be the first, that's for sure. The outcome of this interview can go either way in regards to promoting his company so I hope the members here respect the fact that he is willing to take that chance to help this Board grow.
Jim Pemberton was nice enough to write up a little biography on Thom so we'll start with that.
I've known Thom Fielding since he was "just a welder" at Prochem. Of all of the employees there, he was one of the few who would socialize with the distributors at the business meetings and social functions. He'd ask questions on how to do his job better, and what issues we had with the equipment.
As he rose up the ranks to production manager, I found that I would bypass the customer service and engineers and go right to him with complaints and problems. He was also a soft touch for anyone who was broke down and needed a part. He'd take parts off of "sold machines" and delay an order if he knew someone needed something in an emergency. I can only imagine the abuse he took from management for that behavior!
When he started his new venture, he was just supplying parts and service advice to people. Even when he began to sell machines, he and his staff continued to give service advice on the phone to people who did not own his equipment, even if they weren't placing any order.
An interesting note is that he started his machine sales in a bit of a different way: He sold himself to distributors first, not carpet cleaners. In fact, more specifically, he sold himself to the REPAIRMEN of distributors first.
When he designed his first unit, he came to the service departments that had the best reputation and the best mechanics and consulted those mechanics about what would make a unit more durable and easy to work on. He also talked to carpet cleaners, but he didn't start out trying to make it the top performing product (case in point: early heat issues), but an easier to work on, more durable, more reliable unit than most of the slide in models available at that time.
Thom was always, and still is, a very driven, task oriented person. That means he'll do what he thinks is right, no matter the consequences to himself. Like many such people, he doesn't always warm up the crowd quickly, but nearly 10 years of knowing him he has never let one of my clients down, or myself. I just wouldn't appoint him as ambassador to the UN, or ask him to guard the prisoners after a battle.
_________________
Jim Pemberton
Now lets get on with the "Pre Asked" questions...
