We have all heard the old refrain: โYou canโt sell ice cream to Eskimos.โ
Donโt tell Todd DeMonte, because he currently sells dehumidifiers in the arid state of New Mexico to solve greenhouse operatorsโ mold problems growing medicinal marijuana plants.
The company he heads, Therma-Stor LLC, has grown under his leadership to become the largest manufacturer of dehumidifiers for both the business and consumer markets in all of North America.
Make no mistake about it, humidity is a big problem in our life, whether itโs in our own homes or for those that operate greenhouses or industrial plants. The Therma-Stor team prides itself on asking customers to try its units and make up their own minds about the quality of the offering.
What does DeMonte credit for his companyโs success? He points to his experience at a Mercedes dealership in the 1990s. Mercedes was under pressure to compete against Lexus, so it drove its costs down but sacrificed quality, to the detriment of the brand.
As a result, DeMonte believes delivering quality to customers is paramount.
His team adheres to the philosophy that customers have challenging problems, but they donโt know what the product solutions would be. A horse and buggy owner would never think to ask for the invention of a car.
DeMonteโs team feels it is in the โtranslation business.โ His employees listen carefully to a variety of sources about Therma-Stor products, from customers to sales reps to people using competitorsโ products.
They spend their time understanding the problems those customers face and then translate those problems into opportunities their equipment could solve.
Take the marijuana example. In the indoor facilities that grow legal cannabis, itโs necessary to control the lights. When the lights are on, humidity levels can easily be maintained. However, when the lights go off, humidity levels rise, creating serious problems such as powdery mildew, spider mites and a whole host of other things that will ruin the harvest.
Anyone in business is flooded with feedback from customers and the market, so the question always becomes: what can our team do about it?
DeMonte historically segmented the companyโs various product ideas and evenly distributed investment across their various brands. He said he got that idea by trying to treat his kids equally.
Unfortunately, the family makes a lousy metaphor for a successful business. Because we love our kids, we donโt fire them!
So instead, Therma-Stor developed a product innovation process that speeds up customer response through various gates to evaluate products. It begins with an analysis of their core competencies, as well as the potential for sales of the product, before anybody engineers or manufactures anything.
We all hear about โThe Lean Startupโ methodology by Eric Ries, but that applies primarily to software development. Jeff Bezos throws money at his software engineers to innovate. Thatโs not so easily replicated in the mechanical engineering world, where sometimes itโs hard to get ahold of raw materials or parts from the supply chain to test a product.
As a result, Therma-Stor can compress the testing process and that, in turn, allows it to focus on those projects it knows will create the most value.
That process has accounted for the tremendous growth of the company to become the leader in segments focused on efficiency, capacity or size.
Therma-Storโs team delivers the most efficient dehumidifiers in the world.
DeMonte hires most of his engineers from the Madison area, where his plant is located. Many are University of Wisconsin graduates. This proves that โMade in the USAโ is still a viable option.
We do not have to figure out how to sell ice cream to Eskimos to achieve the kind of results Toddโs company has achieved. It starts with a keen, careful listening process, and then turning customersโ problems into solutions that delight them. As proof, most of its growth comes by word-of-mouth, and Therma-Stor tracks that by ZIP code.
Innovation begins with careful listening and interpreting the needs of the customer. ฮฝ
