Sometimes a chance meeting can completely change someone’s career trajectory. Take for example, Chip Norwood, owner and CFESA master technician for Norwood’s Commercial Appliances in Boone, N.C.
A business major in college, Norwood was running a storefront for a welding supply company in Boone. Norwood also was a volunteer with a local rescue squad and was teaching EMT classes for a local community college at night. It was during one of those classes he met Bill Moore, then the owner of Moore’s Refrigeration, a company servicing commercial kitchen equipment. Moore encouraged Norwood to get some hands-on technical experience working for a local home appliance repair company, but before long the two friends were working together. In 1996, Norwood became the sole proprietor for the company that now bears his name.
“It’s an unusual story but it all just sort of fell together,” Norwood says. “Bill and I are still friends to this day and we both still volunteer on the rescue squad today. I still volunteer with the local fire department, too.”
Today, Norwood’s Commercial Appliances has four full-time employees and one part-time employee.
FE&S: Installations play such an important role in ensuring equipment items have long and productive life cycles yet it’s an area where people most often want to take shortcuts. How would you persuade someone not to cut corners on this all-important step?
CN: Sometimes projects will come in over budget and people want to value engineer that project by purchasing cheaper equipment. We have to ask the customer, “Is that what you really want?” Sometimes parts for cheaper equipment are not as easy to get as it is with other lines. We will ask how readily available are the parts? How well will that piece of equipment hold up over time? You may save money upfront, but it could wind up costing more over time.
FE&S: How has what your customers are asking from you changed during the past couple of years?
CN: We now offer to receive, store and install equipment for our customers. This came about for a few reasons. For example, we’ve seen a lot of instances where the customers buy the equipment over the internet instead of from a dealer. That equipment will show up at their operation on the back of the tractor trailer, but they have no way of taking it off the truck. We now offer to receive the equipment for them and then schedule a time to install it when it’s convenient for the operator. When COVID hit and the supply chain challenges set in, some customers needed to buy equipment months before they were ready to install it. They needed a place to stage it. So, we bought a shipping container and put it in the parking lot to provide extra storage and staging.
