I started as a junior salesman, I worked myself up through the company, in all aspects of the company, and was President for about 10 years before I became CEO six years ago. Our business is geared to selling products and services to the institutional and industrial markets, such as hotels, restaurants, hospitals, prisons and food and beverage processing facilities. In that same hotel we sell laundry products, janitorial products, water treatment products, and even pest elimination services. So you see, in a hotel you have many different areas where they would use our products. In the food and beverage industry, you have everything from cleaning and sanitizing to putting lubricants on the lines, CIP systems, which are cleaning and sanitizing the production line parts in a plant.
Consolidation is a big thing in our business today.
Many of our customers are consolidating. So there are many opportunities in the marketplace for us. On a global basis, we have only one other competitor. Most of our competition is small, local companies supplying products through private labels, but none that can really handle the national or global chain business as we do. Our customers feel comfortable with a company like ourselves that will back the product s quality with assurance.