[Supplier Spotlight] Act Two

Legendary management guru Peter Drucker famously said, “Know and understand your customer so well that the product or service sells itself.” This theory summarizes exactly what B&G Equipment has been trying to do for nearly seven decades — develop and sell pest management professionals tools to make their work easier and more effective.

“The inventing is the fun part of the business but it’s not as easy as it looks from the outside,” said Cecil Patterson, president and CEO, B&G Equipment, Jackson, Ga. “A good idea, in and of itself, isn’t enough.”

Patterson, who has been at the helm of one the industry’s oldest and largest equipment manufacturers for more than 15 years, said it requires an entire team of talented people — engineering, marketing and manufacturing — to take a product from the drawing board to a technician’s service vehicle.

The three parameters Patterson and his team work within when developing a new idea from scratch are the concept, the design and the manufacturing process. He said each must work together to create a product that is economically feasible — and that is not always easy.

“Manufacturers can come up with a great idea for a product but not know how to build it, or it may be too expensive to make,” said Patterson. “All the stakeholders in the process have to work together to create a product that is economically feasible, or it just won’t fly.”

Orchestrating this manufacturing symphony of ideas, process and results isn’t new to Patterson. In fact, he virtually grew up with the sound of equipment manufacturing ringing in his ears.

Patterson’s father, Cecil E. Patterson, was instrumental in the development of the current-day B&G Sprayer. The original sprayer was developed by Purdue University students Bill Brehm and Paul Gilmore in the 1940s. Cecil E. Patterson worked as a representative for Spraying Systems, which manufactured the B&G’s spraying components. He created a gun-type design, which was introduced on all B&G sprayers in 1964 (and is still in use today).

Working the Mid-Atlantic region as a representative for Spraying Systems, Patterson’s father knew the Brehm family well and was a frequent caller to B&G Equipment’s original offices outside of Philadelphia, and B&G was the company’s biggest customer at the time. (The company relocated to Jackson in 2003.)

Working with his father throughought high school and college, the mechanically oriented Patterson developed a liking for the manufacturing business and joined Spraying Systems as a technical sales representative.

“Spraying Systems is by far the leader in spray technology in the world and they know how to build good equipment,” said Patterson. “That is where I got all my experience.”

Eventually, Patterson took over his father’s territory and worked it for nearly a dozen years before spending a couple of years pursuing other interests. Then Patterson received a call from the current representative of Spraying Systems — B&G might be looking for new ownership. His gut told him exactly what direction to head.

“I’ve had two jobs in my lifetime: working for Spraying Systems and working for B&G Equipment,” said Patterson.

Vast Market Knowledge. If you talk with successful business executives, most will say experience is the best teacher, and B&G has several well-taught staff members working on its behalf. “We have long-established people with a lot of field experience like Dr. Claude Thomas and Dr. Bill Robinson,” said Patterson. “They’ll take ideas out in the field and get feedback. They don’t sugarcoat it.”

Adhering to Peter Drucker’s quote on finding out what customers want, the eyes and ears of B&G’s staff, starting with Patterson, are always wide open and listening. “I’m always interested in talking to prospective customers, not just our own people internally,” said Patterson.

He pointed to customer feedback on the new Versaduster (see related story at the end of the article) at last year’s PestWorld convention, and how several suggestions he received on the show floor from PMPs were incorporated into the final design.

Another area Patterson feels strongly about is keeping the price of B&G’s products in line with what the market will pay. That means keeping price in mind from the start of the development and manufacturing process.

Veteran B&G Technical Director Robinson said Patterson’s first considerations when the development ideas start flying are the price of components and the features, which impact the price and affordability of any piece of equipment. “He wants it to work well and make the job of the technician easier but he wants it to be affordable,” added Robinson.

“You can invent anything in the world but if someone isn’t going to pay for it, there’s not much use to making it,” said Patterson. “People buy what they need, not what they want. That’s very, very important to remember.”

When asked what his most significant achievement has been during his 15-year tenure at B&G, Patterson points to fixing some design and quality control issues that were present when he took over. He is also proud of restoring the company’s reputation for building high-quality products.

“The products we put out today are of the highest quality and pest management professionals can rely on them to get the job done,” he said.

Under Patterson’s watch B&G also has diversified its revenue streams and grown globally. When Patterson arrived, 85 percent of the company’s sales were for sprayers and termite control equipment. Today, those two items represent less than 35 percent of the company’s business.

B&G has expanded into selling insect monitors, aerosol systems, dusters and rodent stations among an ever-growing and diverse product line. “We’re much more than just a company that makes compressed air sprayers,” said Patterson.

Diversification has led to success in overseas markets where B&G derives 25 percent of its business. An example of the acceptance of the company’s technology overseas is the Multi-Dose Bait Gun (see related story on page 78). Until its recent reengineering and re-launch in the U.S., 98 percent of sales were overseas, especially Asia and Europe.

“Both those markets saw the economics of a properly calibrated tool that gets everything out of 30-ounce tube of bait gel,” said Robinson, B&G’s technical director for the last 12 years.

In an industry that has seen technicians become increasingly versatile and multi-functional, B&G’s equipment must keep in step with the users of its products. Smaller, more portable and with the ability to track product usage and measure the true cost of a job in regard to materials used, are among the trends B&G and its competitors face.

“Building equipment that is of real value to PMPs is not easy,” said Patterson. “There is a lot of guesswork involved and you have to be a few years ahead of the market. In the past we had some doubters about the products we were introducing to the market, but that’s no longer the case today.”
 

The author is a frequent editorial contributor to PCT magazine. He can be reached at jfenner@giemedia.com.