MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Another challenge is educating customers. “Over the years we learned the customer is not always right,” said Mike. “We often recommend a replacement or recore and the customer asks, ‘Can’t you just patch it?’ Our answer is no. If we do, they will be back in a few months complaining. The key in these situations is education. You need to educate the customer on why your recommendation is the best way to go. We often hear from customers with rods and antique vehicles that they can get it cheaper on the internet. But then we explain and show them the differences in our cores and what we do. This often leads to a sale.”
The New Year also brings new goals for the Schelkuns. “I’ve been slowly pushing the production side of things,” said Jim. “My end goal is to bring core manufacturing in house. So the end game is complete, start-to- finish manufacturing.”
Empire Radiator Service also believes having a broad web presence and a functional website is key. The Schelkuns have teamed up with a local company to maintain web marketing at
EmpireRadiator.com and have since seen increased traffic. Another one of their goals is to provide direct online sales.
“We are the only shop in our area providing heavy duty services and see potential for unlimited growth,” said
Mike. “Our goal is to cover all of upstate New York down to Pennsylvania and from east of Syracuse to Buffalo.”
The Schelkuns joined NARSA almost immediately after getting into the cooling systems industry. “Our membership in NARSA has helped a lot, said Mike. “One example, we now have a burn off oven. We learned about these from attending a NARSA event hosted by Mark Hicks at Maas Radiator. And we have used the services of David Bienvenu in Louisiana to service tube and bundle coolers. As things involved, we have made a lot of good contacts. To me, NARSA has always been a great resource.”
“Belonging to NARSA has been pivotal to growing this business,” said Jim. “We now work with Jesse White of Amherst-Hamburg Radiator, and we have a buyer’s group and a collective of service shops called the Chimera Group. That relationship is all because of NARSA/IDEA.”
Want more? You can listen to more of the Schelkuns’ story in Episode 12 of the “Solder & Soot: a NARSA/IDEA Podcast.” You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Anchor.fm or our website
http://narsa-idea.org/ podcast.
Want to recognize your hard working employees in this section?
Email
linda@narsa.org and we’ll be sure to shine the spotlight on them!
January/February 2022| THE COOLING JOURNAL | 21
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