Author Archive

Congratulations are once again in order for our Cleveland area distributor, Conveyer & Caster – Equipment for Industry. Jeff Stohr has written an article for the MHEDA Journal on embracing social media. Like us, they’ve been at the forefront of industrial marketers connecting with their customers through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. They mention that they haven’t seen any direct sales result from their social media efforts, but the connections they’ve forged through those efforts have been invaluable. Being seen as a “thought leader” in your industry is something that takes time to build, but can lead a huge payoff in the future. You can follow them at @ccefi on Twitter, or become a fan on their Facebook page.

Of course you can also find QC Industries on Twitter, Facebook or here on our Blog. If you come to visit, you can even check in here on Foursquare, Gowalla, or BrightKite.

Recently I’ve seen a number of articles about a new show coming to ABC in January called The Conveyor Belt of Love (only because I have a Google news alert set up for “conveyors”). As a conveyor guy, it immediately caught my eye. You can see the preview below. It looks like a terrible show, as it’s even more like a meat market than The Bachelor.

Here’s how the format works:

“If a woman is interested in someone, that man will step aside and wait as the rest of the men go by.  But if another man comes by on the belt that seems better than that woman’s first choice, she can swap out the man waiting off of the belt as many times as she wants until the last man has passed by. If two or more of the women are interested in the same man, the tables turn and the man on the conveyor belt gets to choose which one he would like to wait for. After all 30 men have made it through the ‘Conveyor Belt of Love,’ each woman is left with her final choice as they embark on a date in the hope of finding a true connection.”

While we’ve done conveyors for show-business before, this doesn’t look like any conveyor we’ve ever built (in the first shot you can see a clipper lace splice, which we almost never use). It did however remind me of our own Conveyor Belt of Love, so to speak. It’s a video we shot a few years ago to prove to a customer that their conveyor could easily move — and index — their required load of 1000 lbs.

Congratulations to our Cleveland distributor, Conveyer & Caster – Equipment for Industry. They were recently honored with a Weatherhead 100 Award which honors the fastest growing companies in Northeast Ohio. Last year they ranked 95th, but this year they’ve moved up to 63rd. Not bad for a firm that’s been around nearly 50 years.

It’s hard to believe how fast 2009 has gone by. It really doesn’t seem like it’s time for Thanksgiving and Christmas yet. We’re all looking forward to a few days to spend time with our families and rest and recuperate from this hectic year. As such, our offices will be closed this Thursday and Friday (November 26 & 27) for the Thanksgiving holidays and again from December 24 – January 3. We’ll reopen on January 4 as usual.

If you have a service emergency during those dates, please call our main number and leave a message. One of our on-call service technicians will return your call.

Here in Cincinnati, we kick off the holiday season each year with Balluminaria, a hot air balloon glow at Eden Park. I’d like to share this tradition with you to help get your holiday season off on the right foot.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on organizing and cataloging all the various pieces of literature we’ve produced over the past 28 years. It’s been fun to see where the company has come from, and, as a graphic designer, to trace the history of our logo over that time.

The “logo” above appeared on our first catalog in 1983. That’s the only time it ever appeared.

This logo first appeared on the cover of our 1989 catalog. It was our first official logo and versions of it were used for eight years.

Here you can also see the origins of the “QC” in our name. It comes from “Quick Conversion” which allowed our customers in the metal stamping industry to change out their dies and conveyors quickly.

This logo is the first direct predecessor of our current logo, appearing on the cover of our 1997 catalog. When this logo is reduced our name becomes nearly unreadable, but versions of it somehow persisted for seven years.

One oddity of the 1997 catalog: while the logo above appeared on the cover, the logo at right appeared on the back. To my knowledge, this is the only time the left side of the “Q” ever showed. It almost seems to have been an accident.

The logo evolved slightly for the 2001 catalog. This logo continued with numerous changes (in some versions the word “modular” is replaced with “low profile”).

This logo first appeared on the cover of our 2004 catalog and has been used without modification to this day.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick peek back at our history!