My one-time sale!!
After the Super Show in March I received a call from my contact at Franklin Sports to come see him. Franklin had lost their supplier for street hockey sticks and asked if we could make them at Quadrax. They needed a complete stick ready to go onto WalMart and K-Mart shelves. The order was huge so, before committing completely, I brought it up at a management meeting that day to make sure everyone understood what was needed at Quadrax. After the meeting Mike Dorf came to tell me that Jim Palermo had ordered him to fire me. The overt reason that Palermo gave will be the subject of a discrimination/wrongful dismissal suit so I will not comment on it.
Mike Dorf refused to fire me. This was not an isolated incident. Palermo would often see a particular manager as a problem and want to fire him. Mike Dorf would then have to put his job on the line to keep his team together!
To keep the peace and at Mike's request, I stepped away completely from selling hockey sticks. Getting the Q factory up to speed for the Franklin order was more than a full time job anyway. We had to run the pultruder and screenprint 24 hours a day to keep up with Franklin's needs. Many days I would leave Quadrax at midnight and be back at 7am the next day. Far from 'taking naps on company time' I was working harder than ever! Steve St. Louis did a great job of organizing the shop while I dealt with the technology & customer problems.
At this time Palermo was sulking and refused to talk me directly but I was pushing him, through Mike Dorf and in interoffice memos, to purchase another machine. The Power Stick machine was cranky, we didn't have any more capacity for new orders, and Palermo had failed to get an agreement with Power Stick. We desparately needed another machine. The machine I specified in March had an 8-week delivery time and needed a $65,000 deposit before the machine-builder would start. All available cash at that time was earmarked for the Victor purchase. A purchase order was placed with a $5,000 deposit in April. The complete deposit was finally made in July.
My 'one-time sale' was because 1) I was prevented from any more selling and 2) Quadrax did not have the capacity to make any more sticks. Douglas B Meyers and his 'Deep Throat' at the Q know only too well that I could have sold a lot more hockey sticks!
David |
