Author: GAWDA MEDIA

New Hires, Promotions, Announcements Weiler Abrasives Group Partners with Workshops for Warriors Weiler Abrasives Group, a leading provider of abrasives, power brushes and maintenance products for surface conditioning, has launched a national fundraising campaign, Leading a Warriors’ Charge, in partnership with Workshops for Warriors. Based in Cresco, Pa., the Weiler firm donated $25,000 to kick off a year-long campaign that supports machining and welding training programs at the Workshops for Warriors school that trains, certifies and helps place veterans, wounded warriors and transitioning service members into advanced manufacturing careers. “Weiler believes in the value of the Workshops for Warriors cause…

Responsive Respiratory Expands Cylinder Cart Line Responsive Respiratory, of St. Louis, Mo., has added a D/E cylinder cart to its offerings. The new Patient Six-Cylinder D/E cart features a durable powder coat paint finish, six-inch wheels for maneuverability and an adjustable height handle for ease of use. The two‐piece design allows for compact shipment and storage, significantly reducing freight costs for providers, according to the company. “The six-cylinder D/E cart is a natural expansion of our patient and office transport offering,” notes Tom Bannon, Responsive Respiratory president. “While RRI offers a warehouse version of this cart, our customer feedback initiative…

Weiler Appoints New VP of Sales, U.S. and Canada Weiler Abrasives Group has promoted Jason Conner to the position of vice president of sales for the U.S. and Canada. Conner will now oversee all sales activities in the U.S. and Canada, including independent distribution, national accounts, field sales and manufacturers’ rep groups. He will also serve as a point of contact to strengthen relationships with Weiler’s end users, distribution partners and industry associations, the company says. Conner joined Weiler in 2012 as a national accounts manager and was promoted to director of national accounts in 2015. As director of national…

By Bruce Tulgan Employers in 2018 are scrambling to adjust to a new normal of change and uncertainty driven by an environment of regular, yet unpredictable and often wild, market fluctuations. Indeed, that scramble has been picking up steam every year since 1993, when we at RainmakerThinking began tracking the current generational shift. The changes we’ve been tracking are coming to fruition, maturing everywhere we look. The worldwide business environment of perpetually high risk, constrained resources and fierce competition puts constant pressure on employers to remain lean, flexible and high performing. Despite the pressures constraining employer resources, employers are struggling…

By Mike Lorence, PH.D. You’re about to digest a very meaty article with a ton of actionable strategies regarding the hiring of superstar sales reps, but this information is not for the faint of heart. Let’s start by asking these questions:  Are  you motivated to hire superstar salespeople in your gas business?  Are you the main ‘rainmaker’ for your business?  Have you hired salespeople in the past that turned out to be duds? Do you want to extract yourself from the day-to-day selling activities in your business? If your answer is yes, read on … but first, let me introduce…

By Jennifer Briggs When a company sells to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) or a group starts a co-op, a common question is, how will this new organization be different for the employees as owners? There is the obvious and critical starting point that the employees need to understand their benefit and recognize how an ESOP or co-op works from their own financial/beneficial perspective. But, then what? A big win with employee ownership is the shared profit motive. No longer is it a single owner, small group or set of anonymous shareholders who benefit. Now, it is the trust/employees…

Newest of the GAWDA ESOPs, McDantim Inc. changed its organizational structure at the end of 2017. The successful company of 23 employees is located in Helena, Mont. Company Origins Started by Mert Fallon in 1988, McDantim specializes in on-site gas blending technologies.  The Decision  Mert’s children, Michelle, Dan and Tim, each owned a third of the company, but hadn’t been involved in its operation. When the founder-father died in 1991 Dan decided to take over the company rather than shut it down. There were just three other employees then. The logic of the decision to convert to an ESOP “was…

Toll Company was an early adopter. Started in St. Paul, Minn., in 1945, the company established its ESOP in 1975 as a retirement program for its employees only a year after federal legislation that permitted the formation of Employee Stock Ownership Plans. Company Origins Founder H.R. Toll wanted to establish a retirement plan for the employees, which led to the formation of the ESOP in 1975. Shortly after the ESOP was established, he died in a car accident in 1979. As the years transpired, the company became 100 percent employee owned. That designation is one of the company’s primary branding…

Company Origins In 1965, Philip Keeler founded Aluminum Precision Products (APP). In 1992, APP acquired Catalina Cylinders. Keeler and two of his sons, Gregory and Roark, managed APP and Catalina as family-owned businesses for the next 17 years. The Decision Philip Keeler passed away in 2009. It had been the Keeler family’s philosophy that the company should transition to the employees versus selling to a competitor or private equity firm, so the company immediately began transitioning to an ESOP. In 2015, to better align the business with the interests of the employees (90 in California and 160 in Virginia), Catalina…

The company marks its silver anniversary as an employee-owned company this year. With three Minnesota locations, the firm can service the majority of that state plus customers in western Wisconsin and the eastern Dakotas. OSC has an active ESOP Committee and advocates for ESOP ownership regularly. Company leaders attend and speak at regional and national ESOP events and conferences and make advocacy visits to Capitol Hill. Company Origins Bill Huber and Bill Lund (always known as “Bill and Bill”) started the company in 1959. They owned and operated it together for 34 years. The Decision Reaching retirement age and without…