By Tom Innis
VP Sales and Marketing
Photo: Eric Hines, Avantech’s Finishing Team Specialist, won a kayak from Confluence Outdoor in a drawing at a recent all-employee meeting at Avantech.
At Avantech, we’ve been fortunate to establish many long-term, mutually beneficial customer partnerships, which over the years have allowed us to build a deep understanding of their end-product needs. We can then transfer this understanding via the tools we build, resulting in high-quality, value-added and marketable rotationally molded products.
While from a sales and marketing standpoint we do our best to share market feedback with our internal customers, there’s often a disconnect between the people building our molds and the people who actually use the products in the external marketplace. Despite recognizing the value of having our operational personnel make on-site visits to customer manufacturing sites, we still remain challenged to consistently facilitate this connection.
With the help of a valued customer, Confluence Outdoor, we’re making inroads into this challenge. Recently, we successfully completed a multi-tool project for Confluence, and performed very well in the areas of first-time quality and on-time delivery. As a means of acknowledging the performance of our manufacturing team, Confluence Outdoor donated two kayaks, a Pungo 120 and a Ride 115 Max, which were awarded in a drawing at a recent Avantech all-employee meeting.
In addition to providing two lucky winners with amazing kayaks, this gesture from Confluence Outdoor will pay immeasurable dividends in furthering our partnership and in strengthening the connection between Avantech manufacturing personnel and the customer. When our employees can see, feel and personally interact with customers’ end-use products, we enhance our ability to build tools that meet product requirements, and ultimately, provide value, differentiation and a competitive advantage to our customers.
Tom Innis is VP Sales and Marketing with Avantech and has been involved in the rotational molding industry for the better part of the past two decades. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and La Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico City, Tom leverages his knowledge of international business, multi-lingual skills, and sales and marketing experience to help drive Avantech and the global rotomolding industry forward.
