Small Business Stories - Fidanza Engineering Video

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Small Business Stories - Fidanza Engineering

Alex Fees: I'm Alex Fees at sbtv.com we are coming to you from the floor of the Las Vegas convention center at SEMA, 2007 that’s Specialty Equipment Market Association and joining me now is Bob Shay. Bob is with Finance Engineering Corporation out of Cleveland, Ohio, Bob. Bob: Good to meet you and it's good to be here. Alex Fees: Tell me about your participation in SEMA, how many years have Finance have been a part of SEMA? Bob: I think this is our tenth year now. Ever since we started the company back in ‘97, we knew that it was important to be at SEMA. This is where it all happens, this is where you see all of your customers and make the new ones. Alex Fees: They’ve convention each year all around the world. Bob: Absolutely it’s amazing the amount of traffic that you get from not only the states but from abroad. Alex Fees: Okay, what about Finance now are you principle in company or Vice President now, were you there 10 years ago as well. Bob: Yeah, absolutely. Myself and business partner Luth Rudenza, we started the company going back in ’97 and still the privately owned by the two of us. And I don’t say a family run business but were about as close as you can get. Alex Fees: How large? Bob: We’ve got 20 employees in the house, we used 30 outsides sales wraps, and we use a lot of local manufacturing facilities to do manufacturing in our local area. Alex Fees: Okay, now you mentioned high performance, I mean specifically what is your market? What do you do? Bob: Well we sell to the street performance customer mainly. Which is it's the bulk of this industry. We don’t try as far something anyone general, we don’t go any discount compact, we don’t do the mastic the sure pin, and we really run the game in. Aluminum plywood’s are our biggest selling product line and we do over 400 different applications in those, so you’ve got a lot of products for a lot of different markets. Alex Fees: Well Bob what do you think sets Finance apart from your competitors? Bob: We take a lot of pride in the quality of our products. Being raisers our selves in the past, winning the SCCAC production national championship. What we wanted as far as a full race part quality that we knew had to go into that. We put into our street performance products. So we really, really take pride in giving the costumer the highest quality that they can buy out there. Alex Fees: And you mention that you guys have cross paths at some point with a certain actor who has since got into the salad dressing business right? Bob: Well that gentleman name Paul Newman he was the defending champion. That he raised for Nissan at that time and we went in there with a 15-year-old Jaguar and dethroned all of the factory teams and it was that classic David versus Goliath story, pretty incredible. Alex Fees: Did that change anything for you guys as far as your perception in the industry and things of that nature. Bob: That’s absolutely dead; we really changed our way of thinking. We went from being a Jaguar dealership into the performance side of it, which they grew into the company that we have now Finance. We were manufacturing plywood’s ourselves and we've having them done for us by another company. We had to start then doing them for ourselves. We then get, we got request from all kinds of different folks in the industry for different products. So we went from that ones cue in Jaguar applications to having over 700 now. If you do something world— Alex Fees: Bob what about SEMA 2007 what do it representatives of Finance Engineering do in an event like this. Bob: But you what it really runs the game of it myself I worked a lot with the media, we get all of the magazines here, and we get the television programs and the .com like yourself here. So I spend a lot of time doing that, it's the one place where we can see all of them at ones. We also bring a contiguous sales people, they’ll meet current costumers they’ll also meet with the new leads. We also see a lot of the smaller job or business here that we don’t get to see a lot of the other places. So it really runs the game of it from dealing with the media, to dealing with the costumer. Alex Fees: Well Bob where can somebody who is in sbtv.com viewer where do they go for more information about Finance Engineering. Bob: Well they can go right to our website which is Finance.com. Alex Fees: All right Bob Shay, thank you very much sir. Bob: Thank you. Alex Fees: Wish you well, he is Bob Shay with Finance Engineering, I'm Alex Fees you're watching sbtv.com.

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Alex Fees: I'm Alex Fees at sbtv.com we are coming to you from the floor of the Las Vegas convention center at SEMA, 2007 that’s Specialty Equipment Market Association and joining me now is Bob Shay. Bob is with Finance Engineering Corporation out of Cleveland, Ohio, Bob.

Bob: Good to meet you and it's good to be here.

Alex Fees: Tell me about your participation in SEMA, how many years have Finance have been a part of SEMA?

Bob: I think this is our tenth year now. Ever since we started the company back in ‘97, we knew that it was important to be at SEMA. This is where it all happens, this is where you see all of your customers and make the new ones.

Alex Fees: They’ve convention each year all around the world.

Bob: Absolutely it’s amazing the amount of traffic that you get from not only the states but from abroad.

Alex Fees: Okay, what about Finance now are you principle in company or Vice President now, were you there 10 years ago as well.

Bob: Yeah, absolutely. Myself and business partner Luth Rudenza, we started the company going back in ’97 and still the privately owned by the two of us. And I don’t say a family run business but were about as close as you can get.

Alex Fees: How large?

Bob: We’ve got 20 employees in the house, we used 30 outsides sales wraps, and we use a lot of local manufacturing facilities to do manufacturing in our local area.

Alex Fees: Okay, now you mentioned high performance, I mean specifically what is your market? What do you do?

Bob: Well we sell to the street performance customer mainly. Which is it's the bulk of this industry. We don’t try as far something anyone general, we don’t go any discount compact, we don’t do the mastic the sure pin, and we really run the game in. Aluminum plywood’s are our biggest selling product line and we do over 400 different applications in those, so you’ve got a lot of products for a lot of different markets.

Alex Fees: Well Bob what do you think sets Finance apart from your competitors?

Bob: We take a lot of pride in the quality of our products. Being raisers our selves in the past, winning the SCCAC production national championship. What we wanted as far as a full race part quality that we knew had to go into that. We put into our street performance products. So we really, really take pride in giving the costumer the highest quality that they can buy out there.

Alex Fees: And you mention that you guys have cross paths at some point with a certain actor who has since got into the salad dressing business right?

Bob: Well that gentleman name Paul Newman he was the defending champion. That he raised for Nissan at that time and we went in there with a 15-year-old Jaguar and dethroned all of the factory teams and it was that classic David versus Goliath story, pretty incredible.

Alex Fees: Did that change anything for you guys as far as your perception in the industry and things of that nature.

Bob: That’s absolutely dead; we really changed our way of thinking. We went from being a Jaguar dealership into the performance side of it, which they grew into the company that we have now Finance. We were manufacturing plywood’s ourselves and we've having them done for us by another company. We had to start then doing them for ourselves.

We then get, we got request from all kinds of different folks in the industry for different products. So we went from that ones cue in Jaguar applications to having over 700 now. If you do something world—

Alex Fees: Bob what about SEMA 2007 what do it representatives of Finance Engineering do in an event like this.

Bob: But you what it really runs the game of it myself I worked a lot with the media, we get all of the magazines here, and we get the television programs and the .com like yourself here. So I spend a lot of time doing that, it's the one place where we can see all of them at ones. We also bring a contiguous sales people, they’ll meet current costumers they’ll also meet with the new leads. We also see a lot of the smaller job or business here that we don’t get to see a lot of the other places. So it really runs the game of it from dealing with the media, to dealing with the costumer.

Alex Fees: Well Bob where can somebody who is in sbtv.com viewer where do they go for more information about Finance Engineering.

Bob: Well they can go right to our website which is Finance.com.

Alex Fees: All right Bob Shay, thank you very much sir.

Bob: Thank you.

Alex Fees: Wish you well, he is Bob Shay with Finance Engineering, I'm Alex Fees you're watching sbtv.com.

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