thermotron

Reply to Liar
Note of Explanation: This started out as a short response to a MySpace "friend request" (gladly accepted) from someone calling himself "liar2u ." "Liar" sorely attacked one of the companies I had listed in my bio there, as well as "michigans west coast hypocrits" [sic]. It was not my intention to refute any of that, since I'm not into online "pissing matches," but it did occur to me that something I had previously written (see I've become progressively more disgusted with religion.) could be similarly misconstrued by others. So an explanation of that seemed to be in order. My experience at the company in question was also much different than what Liar reported, so I felt inclined to share something about that also.

Hello Liar ~About Thermotron Corporation ~I worked at Thermotron for eight of its early years. It wasn't that way then. We were simple, happy, very successfully growing, but not very profitable. We were also not very shrewd or slick, so didn't have much choice other than openness and inclusiveness.The owner was Chuck Conrad, who was also the company's founder. The good opinion of his employees was more important to him than money. I don't say that in praise. It was more a figment of his personality organization than a real desire to be thoughtful and nice, but it all came out the same anyway.
All of us Executive Committee members put together wouldn't have made one good manager. Thus, although very successful in terms of growth, technological and market leadership, and all that, we weren't making any money, and the bank finally threw in the towel when the debt began to exceed $2.5-million. At that point they forced Chuck to bring in some professional management talent. That was the beginning of the end for me, and I left a year and a half later to start my own business.

Not long after I resigned, Chuck sold a controlling interest in Thermotron to a holding company from Wisconsin.

By virtue of their professional management talent, the company's financial situation quickly, and significantly improved. A few years after that, Chuck finally sold off his remaining share, and exited with a well-deserved $8.5-million. Over the years that followed, he donated large chunks of that to various projects in the Ludington area and elsewhere.

He and I took a final nostalgic tour of the place on the day he received his final payment.

After Chuck's exit, I didn't follow the company's fortunes much. I was then doing business with their competitors, so they were not comfortable with the idea of my having access to any inside information. I did a couple of deals with them, but they were both unpleasant experiences, so I kept away after that.

Evidently you had a bad experience at Thermotron.

I'm sorry to know that, but am aware that others also suffered some bad times there under the regimes that followed ours. On the other hand, there are others who survived and made out quite well, and I have often thought that had I been more mature, personality-wise and in a business sense, I probably would have fared equally well, and would be much better off in retirement than what I have to look forward to now. That's just an observation, not a lament.