Hi – thank you for visiting Cables To Go and welcome to my blog. First – allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mike Shane and I am one of the founders of Cables To Go (www.cablestogo.com) and serve as our Chairman and CEO. The company’s roots started over 25 years ago in a computer store that I owned and operated shortly after I graduated from college – The Indiana University. After closing the store in early 1984, I, along with my co-founding partners; Geoff Hyman and Jeff Fourman, formed Cables To Go. Twenty-five years later, we’re still partners, although our operating capacities have changed quite a bit over the years. Our corporate entity is now referred to as Lastar, Inc. (www.lastar.com) and serves somewhat as a holding company for our global connectivity based businesses. I decided to start this blog to share my thoughts about business. While I love our products and services, I have found over the years that my passion has been more about building a really awesome company where customers can clearly understand our value proposition –providing an extraordinary customer experience and where our team members really buy into what we’re trying to accomplish, feel connected and really love being a part of the company. The term ‘providing an extraordinary customer experience’ may sound a little cliché, but it really is what our mission is all about. In the early days when Geoff, Jeff and I were building this company, we tried to ‘create fans’ out of our customers. There were no limits in terms of the lengths that we would go to in order to satisfy our customers and attempt to exceed their expectations. There were countless circumstances where one of us would go chasing down the UPS driver to get a late shipment out – situations where we did ‘counter to counter’ air delivery because one of our resellers was in the field doing a system implementation and needed product immediately. There were numerous circumstances where the customer provided the wrong specifications and we simply made it right because it was the right thing to do. We still strive to keep these values alive. Just recently, our warehouse supervisor at our Hickory, NC facility, Amanda Fleissner, realized that FedEx had missed a box on their pickup the previous evening. She hopped in her car and drove 4 hours to the customer site to make sure they received their delivery that day as promised! When your warehouse supervisor at a remote site ‘gets it’ – that is really cool – seeing that Geoff, Jeff and I set those roots – that is icing on the cake!
We have been fortunate to build an organization around that culture and that culture extends into the way that we treat our people too! We’ve grown to over 400 domestic team members located at facilities located in Salt Lake City, UT; Albia, IA; Hickory, NC along with our headquarter facility in Moraine, OH and our primary distribution center located in Dayton, OH. In addition, we have a new sales and distribution center located in Telford, UK; manufacturing facilities located in Guangdong, China and a purchasing operative in Taipei, Taiwan.
Starting a company and then leading through the various levels of growth and change that we have experienced over the years forced me to become a student of business and that is where I found my true passion. I love business - not just this business, but business in general and have certainly learned a lot of lessons over the years – most of them the hard way! As I start making entries into this blog, I hope to create a dialogue that readers will find of interest.
Please feel free to share your thoughts!
Happy Holidays!
Mike Shane
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