Watching golf on the 4th of July at Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, brought back some memories of an unpleasant trip. In 1982, Newtown Square was the headquarters of RGM Associates, a company that contracted cleaning services for Sears® customers on the east coast. I was summoned to meet with the President, Bob McCaffery, who had purchased 121 of our truck mounted units in the past few years.
As Bill Jr. and I boarded the plane for Philly, we were excited about the probability of getting an order for more units. But, instead of an order we got an ultimatum to cut the price 20% or they were going to build their own units. We couldn't do that. RGM was owned by a restaurant supply company that had the capability of manufacturing equipment with stainless steel.
During the next few years just about all of those 121 units appeared on the used equipment market and most buyers came to Indy to have the equipment inspected, refurbished and to take our training course. It took more than five years for the market to absorb that used equipment and hurt our sales for awhile. But guess what? We're still here and RGM is gone!
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