A week in California

I spent last week in California running like a crazy man on a lot of diverse missions.

It’s been a long time since there have been strong California independent contractors doing a good deal of traction elevator work. Do you remember Oliver & Williams? Reliable Elevator? Western Elevator? Tri County Elevator? I can’t tell you when these companies sold, but it’s been a while.

Now, there seems to be a resurgence of contractors filling the vacuum they created way back then. Emery Wilcox and the rest are growing Ascent Elevator, Chuck Morphew and other Reliable alumni are doing well with 5 Star Elevator, 24 hour Elevator and Guardian Elevator are both new to me.

This growing west coast strength causes me to think it might be time to get GALaxy a more widely known product. We have made only sporadic attempts to sell – and in fact sell very few GALaxy’s on the west coast. We need to continue our expansion and this market looks promising.

The Clock Tower at the Santa Barbara Courthouse

I also had a chance to go all the way up to Santa Barbara to survey a really interesting job with my old friend Michael Shaw – Republic Elevator. They are going to add a top floor to an elevator in the Santa Barbara County Courthouse. This is a classic California style building – all ceramic tile on the interior and a crazy mechanical contraption that actually still turns the clock tower clock hands. Michael wants to use a combination of Hollister Whitney and GAL Products and we came to the conclusion that it is in fact very doable. This will be a show job for us and Republic.

Teresa was in the San Diego area at the same time – attending an ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) Executive Symposium with the NAEC President, Brian Farley of Hudson Elevator, and Vice President, Bret Abels of O’Keefe Elevator. I was delighted to be able to join them for several evenings.

All of us got out one night and broke bread with Mike Corbo and Eric Zommers – both good friends and golfing buddies from Mitsubishi Elevator. A good time was had by all.

It was a good trip business wise, and it was good to get out of the frigid Northeast