The new corporate campus consists of four buildings and includes a training center where bring in customers from around the world to train them on how to use and sell its cleaning systems.
The move more than doubles the company’s facility size and gives it the ability to triple its staffing, according to Bob Robinson Sr., Kaivac’s founder and president.
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Founded in 1998, the company employees 82 people, the majority of them in Hamilton but with some sales team members located in other parts of the country. In addition, Kaivac employs 15 temporary workers and also utilizes a crew of 20 workers from the Easter Seals organization, which provides meaningful work to individuals with handicaps.
The move to the new location will allow the company to hire between 30 and 40 people in its manufacturing department, as well as several sales positions in the coming months and new sales people throughout North America.
The new corporate campus houses the company’s business offices as well as research and development departments and manufacturing and production operations.
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The move was needed because of significant business growth in the U.S., Canada, and overseas, for the organization, which has a joint venture serving Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, called Kaivac EMEA. Headquartered in Salzburg, Austria, Kaivac EMEA sells, distributes, and services our cleaning systems in 30 different countries. In addition, the company also has customers in Asia, the Pacific Rim, Latin America as well as throughout North and Central America.
Walmart recently selected Kaivac equipment to help standardize its restroom cleaning programs throughout its stores in the United States. The order for 4,000 cleaning machines to be used in each of the Walmart Supercenter Stores in the United States.
“This machine not only cleans the Walmart restrooms but also is used for spill cleanup in the grocery areas as well as in keeping the vestibule floors dry during wet and winter weather,” Robinson said. “This new business triggered the hiring of about 13 new full-time and 6 part-time employees including temps at our Hamilton plant location.”
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We asked Robinson about the challenges facing his company and how it is working to overcome them. Here’s what he had to say:
Q: What is the biggest challenge your company is facing and how is it working to address that challenge?
“One of our biggest challenges is in getting the word out about how our innovative cleaning systems can help customers throughout the world. The other is closely related and that’s getting the world to understand the value of clean along with the ineffectiveness of most existing cleaning methods. We are continually upgrading our marketing messaging and hiring additional sales representatives across the country to educate the market and grow the Kaivac brand. Our joint venture with Kaivac EMEA also gave us a bigger footprint internationally. We also believe there will be a new major awareness about Kaivac from the recent 4000 Walmart Store sale, we call this the ‘Walmart Effect’. Time will tell if these initiatives will have their desired effect.”
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Q: What’s the most prevalent roadblock the company encounters when it comes to hiring and what can jobseekers do to remedy that situation?
”Finding professional sales personnel that can use the telephone and other communication tools effectively to win new business. We believe that excellent phone and communication skills are a must for connecting to large national accounts and we are looking for those skills in our new salespeople. So we have a consistent need to fill entry-level sales positions – we are constantly looking to find talented and articulate young college graduates willing to learn the sales profession from the ground up.”
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