Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Last Thursday we held a marketing RoundTable at our facility to gather like minds in marketing. Jim Beretta, formerly the Marketing Manager at ATS and now the Event Manger for Canon Communications Canadian Show, ATX Canada described it as “professional, high value and creative.” Also in attendance from Canon Communications was the Director of Sales, Events Division Josh Dome who is responsible for over 45 of Canon’s trade shows.

My vision was to pull a group of minds like this together for many years. The intent of this meeting was to share ideas of successes and failures with three specific segments of marketing: print, .com’s and shows. Jim and I have been friends for years and talked about doing this prior to shows, however we never found the time. We finally set a date apart from the shows to get the ball rolling.

The event began the evening prior with dinner the Montgomery Inn Boathouse on the Ohio river. The entire next day was great; we hit topics such as blogging, what the future holds,  email campaigns, the evolution of print as well as the ever important personal interaction and trending of trade shows.

Although the title of the meeting was catchy utilizing the moderators name, the overall theme of the meeting was “personal touch” and how important it is to take the time to actually see and meet with customers. Yes we talked about lead procurement and quality product, however time and time again the meeting drove towards people coming closer together.

Jack Aguero, Vice President, Business Development & Marketing and Brent Meyer, Director of Marketing Communications from Pro Mach Integrated Packaging Solutions joined us, along with Richard Meyer, Senior Program Manager from Fanuc Robots, Bob Pompei, President and Joe Cantara, Vice President of Action Automation, the northeast’s leading industrial automation distributorship. Also joining us were Bill Hornsby, Director of Marketing and Marc Knable, General Sales Manager from Habasit, the largest belting supplier in the world. We invited a strong group of vendors to support our efforts including Don Neumeister from Packaging World Magazine, Michael Perryman, Global Spec, Roger Judson, Precision Metalforming Association (PMA), Lee Sjoquist, Skyline Exhibits and Rick DeMoss, Industrial Research Services (IRS). All these excellent companies contributed a great amount of information.

Many thanks to everyone who made the trip here to QC Industries for their time and contributions to this meeting.

Fanuc Robotics recently introduced their new robot, the M-3iA. It’s an intelligent, parallel-link robot which is designed to maximize speed and flexibility for assembly, small part handling and picking applications. It’s shown here moving product on top of our new Automation Series low profile conveyor. The robot was introduced at this year’s ATX show in Charlotte, NC. Fanuc is currently buying many QC Industries conveyors for their marketing opportunities, demo cells and material handling lab.

Today marks the beginning of QC Days, our month-long customer and distributor education event. We’ve got lots of exciting things planned between now and June 4th. What are we most excited about?

• We’ll be releasing our Conveyor Configurator, an intelligent conveyor sizing and quoting tool. You’ll be able to configure your own conveyor — along with its drive, sides, stands and accessories — and request a quote directly from your local distributor
• We know your time is valuable, so we’re launching a new series of short support videos called Quick Clips
• Our distributors will be calling on customers both old and new to show you all our latest innovations

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.

Thank you to our distributors for coming to our Level 2 Training sessions this week. The training on our low profile conveyors has always been labeled as excellent and based on the comments this “Level 2″ training was once again well worth the time and expense. “One of the best training schools I’ve been to in fifteen years,” said Darren Rist, Application Engineer with Airline Hydraulics. Luke Thompson, Sales Engineer from Automation Inc. said, “Great group of guys their know their product and explain it very well.”

Always a highlight of the trip is the happy hour followed by an awesome evening at Montgomery Inn downtown overlooking the Ohio river.

The company also would like to thank Mike Buckingham, our lead trainer, and those who supported from our Engineering and Production teams. Special thanks to Cindy Dixon and Chris Thompson for their supportive roles.

Thanks again, distributors!

See the full gallery of images from training.