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March 2010
Diamond Roll Up Door/Dover Roller Shutters finished the month of March feeling the slight up-tick in the American market.  Although the economy has been in deep slump for over a year, Diamond has managed to pick up several strong new customers as well as providing customer support to its existing customers.
 The wood division, probably hardest hit by the economic slump, is starting to see a little more activity from the truck body OEMs.  The NTEA Work Truck Show also provided Diamond the opportunity to display all its current products as well as a new product just being introduced to the market, the Diamond Lite Composite Door.  Despite the trailer OEMs being very slow, it appears that some of the fleets are now at the point where they are going to have to start repairing their trailers instead of parking the broken ones and pulling from remainder of the fleet.  Diamond has recently quoted a large door order to a fleet that is looking to extend the life of the trailers.  Hopefully this order will materialize in the month of April.  Diamond also continues to supply FleetPride, one of the largest truck and trailer part distributors in the USA, with aftermarket parts, panels, and doors.  FleetPride has the UPS maintenance account and Diamond provides parts, panels, and doors weekly to FleetPride for UPS.

 The aluminum division, Dover Roller Shutters USA, continues to pick up numerous new customers.  The two largest new customers acquired recently are Sewer Equipment of America and Quiroga Trucks of Mexico.  Sewer Equipment switched to the Dover product in July of 2009 and has been a steady satisfied customer ordering numerous doors each month.  Quiroga Trucks, the largest fire truck manufacturer in Mexico, started using the Dover 2EB shutter near the end of 2009 and continues to increase its purchases through the early part of 2010.  Special thanks goes out to Alan Saulsbury for our introduction to Quiroga Trucks.  The NTEA Work Truck Show was also a success for the aluminum division.  Recent visits to several OEMS from the show could turn into regular monthly customers.  The aluminum division also has several interesting bids currently out waiting for approval.  One is a company looking at producing recycling bins with roll up doors.  Several others are in different parts of the world, Israel and Argentina.
 The efforts of the staff and production personnel continue to support the dedication Diamond Roll Up Door has to its customers.  The staff processes all the customer requests in a timely manner and production personnel ensure the product that is being manufactured is top quality, second to none.  A recent emergency request by Pierce Mfg for a roll up door on a damaged fire vehicle was processed on the weekend and shipped the following Monday.      

July 2009
The Fourth of July in the US usually entails a three day weekend.  A lot of people are out and about, and of course, lot of fireworks will be going off.  This holiday is always known as one of the biggest three day weekends of the year for fire departments. 

Shortly after all the Diamond and Dover USA employees left for home to enjoy the long  holiday weekend, Ray, our President, received a call from The Mansfield Fire Department.  It turns out  they had just damaged a door on a truck that was going to be needed for this special weekend.  Ray made a couple of phone calls to arrange a time for both an employee as well as the department to get together here at our factory to complete this repair. 

The next morning everything went like clock work.  All the parts that were needing replaced were built and ready to go.  The fire department drove off very satisfied with our service and ready to get his truck back into service. 

It is situations like this that build relationships.  Relationships lead to referrals and referrals lead to more business.   Not only did we take care of the customer but this department has started spreading the word to other departments.  We have already started to receive phone calls regarding future business.

May 2009
Each year Indianapolis, Indiana host The FDIC, which is said to be “The World’s Largest Fire Fighting Conference”.  The FDIC is visited by companies represented from all over the world.  Not only do you see people from almost every US state but nearly every major country world wide.

This year Dover Roller Shutters USA had the unique opportunity to display our doors at a couple of booths other then our own.  Not only did these opportunities allow us to have our product at the FDIC but we were also able to pull off some surprises for the vendors displaying our doors.

We were first approached by a company called Sensible products (http://www.sensible-products.com/).  Sensible Products is a company based out in Ohio that has a customer base that largely overlaps with potential Dover USA customers as well as end users. The President of Sensible products, Philip McLean, had four fire truck cabinets built by a company also based in Ohio, Fire Marine Industries (FMI).   FMI builds cabinets as well as does a large about of custom fitting of fire trucks for companies such as Sutphen Fire Apparatus and Horton Emergency Vehicles. These are two of Ohio’s largest suppliers of emergency vehicles.  Once the cabinets were built by FMI they were then delivered to our facility to be fitted with the Nyloy30 rolling shutters.  Once they left our facility the cabinets were custom fitted for the FDIC and displayed at this years show.  Not only did these doors visit the FDIC but they are scheduled for several shows this year through out the US. 

Our second FDIC opportunity posed very little time to respond but as it turns out we were able cover the request.  We received a call form Plastisol Composites (http://www.plastisolusa.com/) Monday, two weeks before the FDIC.  It turns out that Plastisol had requested a couple of doors for ROM, our biggest competitor for rolling shutters in the US.  These doors needed to be wet painted to match their unit, motorized, travel through a bend in the guides, and roll up in a small headroom compartment.   Not only did ROM refuse to build these doors because they were difficult but they also needed to be installed that same week to allow time to finish the unit and deliver to the FDIC.

Our staff, including our President, Raymond H. Van Gunten, responded quickly and agreed to build these doors.  The opportunity not only posed possible doors for the FDIC but it gave us a chance to impress a potential customer we have been perusing.

As Ray built our test stand, the rest of the staff was busy matching paints, detailing the doors and figuring out the motor details.  By Thursday morning the doors were completed and ready for install.  Ray and I personally delivered the doors and installed them on Friday of that same week at Plastisol’s facility in the State of New York. It just so happened we had our first order of eight doors for a demo unit for Plasitsol that was due the following week.  Ray and I also delivered these doors as well.  At the last minute Ray decided to stay an additional day and install those doors.  The staff at Plastisol was very impressed with our efforts and from what we hear; they plan on turning all their shutter business our way.  These two units are also being displayed at varies show across the US this year.

Dover Rolling Shutters USA has been working diligently to get our feet back in the door here in the US in regards to fire apparatus doors.  These two opportunities should help to open some eyes to what we can do and how we are willing to go the extra mile.