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STAINLESS RHINOWelcome to Stainless Rhino!! I wanted to write a little about our company and what we do and how we have evolved into creating our new website www.stainlessrhino.com. First a little about how this all started-my name is Ben Baume and I’m originally from Michigan, but moved to Texas back in ’85, so I’m almost 100% Texan by now! When I was in college at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, I worked summers for a company called Chatham / Worth Specialties. I had a friend whose father worked for a company called GAMCO (www.gamcousa.com) and he introduced me to Chatham / Worth Specialties-the father, Mike Marks, actually was one of the founders of GAMCO-only later did I find that out. So I worked for this small company a couple of summers while in school, graduated and worked part-time in the office while at SMU getting an MBA in finance. Upon graduation from SMU, I stayed on with Chatham / Worth Specialties and worked into a sweat equity position with the company as the Vice President. I was very fortunate to have a then boss and future partner in Keith Chatham-he envisioned a great future for us and it has all come to fruition-I owe a lot of my success to Keith. In February of 2006, the timing worked out for us, and I purchased Chatham / Worth Specialties from Keith. Stainless Rhino is a division of Chatham / Worth Specialties. We have always had a website, but I tell everyone now that I was shocked that we sold anything on the web, as our site looked like a Russian mafia front where we would steal people’s credit cards to sell on the black market!! We were able to learn a lot from our website, and the first lesson was that we needed something a lot more professional looking. I’m also somewhat of a dreamer, and I wanted a website that would become the world’s largest distributor of commercial grade stainless steel accessories. I thought long and hard about it and realized right off that I didn’t want a website like everyone else’s-the boring, straightforward, plain Jane websites that offer to sell junk at a certain price-there are thousands of them out there. And we’re selling stainless steel accessories-they’re not fancy or glamorous, but we can try to make our website a little better than the competitions! I wanted to be different and the first step was coming up with a name-I knew right off that we wouldn’t call it anything to do with what we sold-why do that when there are great websites out there with names that have nothing to do with the product sold. Instead, I opted for a name that people would REMEMBER. What does Expedia have to do with travel or Google have to do with a search engine (now we all of course associate Google with a search engine) or Yahoo or Go Daddy or One Fast Buffalo? The list goes on and on, but I learned that the idea was to create a name that people would remember-we started with stainless this or that and we were set on stainless monkey at one point, but opted for Stainless Rhino. The stainless of course refers to the accessories we sell-the Rhino I think refers to the toughness and quality of them-after all a Rhino is pretty tough. So we nailed the name-I hope it’ll be a good one, and then we needed the right person to come along and design a logo and a website. Eric Venegas came to mind immediately in terms of someone who could design a logo for us, and he did a phenomenal job-if you need a logo, email me and I’ll get you in touch with Eric-he’s the most creative person I know who really cares about the work he puts out. We were also fortunate to come across Andi Saunders with AJS Designs-our website designer-she is the long-time friend of our office manager, and as I write this, she’s in the process of designing and polishing up our website, but she’s done a phenomenal job with the color scheme and layout of our website and we were lucky to find her! Email me if you want to get in touch with her about your website. One goal of ours in creating this website was to create something larger than just a website that would enable us to sell product on the internet-anyone can do that. We wanted to do something a little more special-it started with a special name, Stainless Rhino-something that people would remember, but we also wanted something related to a cause that we can really get behind and support. To do this, we have partnered with the Selous Rhino Trust to provide them financial support based on the performance and profitability of this website. The Selous Rhino Trust is a small non-profit organization committed to working in Tanzania to save the Rhino and provide support for this wonderful animal. The Selous offers one of the very few places left in the entire world where black rhino still roam free and wild in their indigenous environment. Now about what we do and offer-we are a very young company-small compared to most, but large in our industry. We have awesome people that work here-over the years, we have evolved and changed-we now have 8 associates in the office ready and willing to help. Most have been with the company less than 5 years, but I’m certain that most will be with us in 10 years! Attracting and attaining happy, productive, efficient, hard working employees is the #1 professional goal of mine-it’s always a work in progress, but we have the best team in the industry! My philosophy is that if a company brings in good people, all of the other things will follow. We’re currently planning on moving into a much larger facility at the end of the year-we are going from 15,000 square feet to almost 30,000 square feet, so we’ll be setup to handle any order from a few grab bars to a thousand! With our team and the resources available to us, we have become Bobrick’s largest distributor in the Southwest United States, and our goal is to be their largest distributor in the country. We are young and energetic and quick to respond to customer’s needs. Our goal with the website it to provide a seamless buying experience from the point of sale to delivery-we strive to make this the best online experience that you’ll have! This is our next great challenge, but I’m confident that we can take care of you better than the competition by providing more competitive prices, quicker deliveries and a more seamless transaction! At this point, we’re focused on Bobrick’s stainless steel accessories-they’re the best in the industry hands down, but in the future we might offer more of our products online-we’ll have to see how this first step goes for us. The quality of product Bobrick puts out and the level of service they offer after the sale is head and shoulders above the competition! Remember that after the sale, you have access to Bobrick’s local representatives in your area for support and warranty issues. If you do need other Division 10 commercial products-just email us and we’ll be more than happy to take care of you-we sell it all-almost! Thank you for reading about our site and visiting us-we hope that we can provide you with a better website purchasing experience than the other guys. If we’re not taking care of you or if we did and you would like me to know or if you have suggestions, please email me, the owner, at ben@stainlessrhino.com . Thank you for your support. |