Q: Joel you’ve been in business a long time. What makes ETAPII and Martech Controls stand out from your regional competitors? Why would it be better to do business with you, what are some of the advantages?
A: So at ETA Process Instrumentation and Martech Controls, our focus is on working with our customers to do one of two things, or a combination of two things. One is to help them improve the efficiency of their processes, to make it more cost effective for them to manufacture whatever they’re making, and the other is for us to help reduce the cost of ownership of the process instrumentation they use. That cost of ownership we help reduce by selling instrumentation that is more reliable, has better performance, has a longer lifespan, and does not take as much routine maintenance as our competitors’ equipment. So if we could find one or both of those advantages, that’s of benefit for both our customer, and feeds into our selling philosophy and the advantages or our principles so that we’re selecting companies that we want to represent. Those are the two core criteria we use in terms of evaluating them and their products. Most of our principal relationships are long standing, many for ten or fifteen or twenty years, so the other advantage of working with us is that we have a long term view.
We look to work with our principals on a long term basis, and we look to work with our customers on a long term basis, and we try to assure that the solutions we sell are true solutions. We’re not looking to just make a sale. We’re really looking to solve problems, and make sure that the solution that we propose, will help our customer improve efficiency, will help them reduce cost, and if there’s really not a fit, we don’t want to sell the product. We really want to make sure that when someone buys something from us, initially, and in a year, and three years, and five years down the road, they’re still happy that what we sold to them was the right product.
