Steiner Technologies Hires VP Ganshorn Amid Solid Year – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Steiner Technologies Inc., a creative manufacturer and supplier of RV and marine componentry based in Lafayette has added Elkhart-area executive Chris Ganshorn to its management team as vice president of sales during what is amounting to a growth year for the innovative firm.
Ganshorn last served as director of engineering for Quality Engineered Services (QES), a 200-employee supplier specializing in wire harness assembly in Syracuse, Ind., and, prior to that, as an employee of Polar Kraft Boat, Atwood Mobile Products and LCI Industries.
“With over 22 years of industry experience, Chris’s mission is to expand the engineering and innovative products offered by Steiner Technologies within the RV and marine industry,” reported Steiner Equity Partner Don DeWitt, whose been affiliated with the 33-year-old company since 2005. “Steiner Technologies employs a unique and revolutionary business model offering a wide diversification of technologies within its existing product lines while also being capable of rapidly developing new and innovative products.
“Additionally, Steiner Technologies benefits from a robust and worldwide manufacturing base to support product delivery, quality and overall value,” said DeWitt, adding that Steiner’s current business is rather strong despite the relatively soft state of today’s recreational vehicle marketplace due to the new products it has cultivated recently.
“Yes, our core business obviously went down because of the OEM market in general, but our new products made up for that downturn and then some,” DeWitt told RVB. “Some of those new products came from new clients, but the bulk were generated by existing customers.”
Indeed, as DeWitt points out, 50-employee Steiner promotes an inventive gameplan through which it assists its varied client base in custom designing and developing their own “game-changing solutions” in terms of products from initial sketches to polished prototypes.
“That’s what we do,” said DeWitt, who has cultivated a number of patents over the years. “We partner with an OEM and we design and engineer a product or a solution for that customer. We put their name on it. They generate a brand around it. And since we engineer it, we retain the manufacturing rights and we go to market together essentially.
“And if we engineer a product for a customer, that’s their product,” added DeWitt. “We don’t sell it to anybody else, even though we get asked all the time to buy a product that we have. We’re loyal to a fault and the agreement is if we innovate it for a client like Keystone or others, that’s exclusively their product.”
DeWitt adds that Steiner’s novel approach to product development within the RV industry at times involves manufacturing a limited number of products itself and at times by others in locales as remote as China, Vietnam and Malaysia. “We’ve gained a lot of traction with our business model with brands like (Airxcel’s) RV Products, Cleer Vision and Velarium,” he explained. “I mean, that business model works because a lot of the RV guys don’t have the innovation resources. They’re busy building RVs, not truly engaging on the business side of things.”
“We are an innovative OEM supplier,” added DeWitt, whose firm also assists clients in supply chain management, instrumentation, transportation, packaging and GPS tracking with the continued support of his son, Josh DeWitt, who serves as vice president of engineering. “So, while we don’t market our own products, we brand, design and engineer products for our OEM partners.”
Meanwhile, DeWitt added, Steiner Technologies recently cancelled its distribution partnership with Structure Sales Inc. and owner Wade Seaberg. “We are appreciative of the results and relationships fostered over the past seven-year partnership,” said DeWitt.
