Proudly serving the industry for which it was named for more than 50 years, Outdoor Power Equipment provides dealers who sell and service outdoor power equipment with valuable information to succeed in a competitive market.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/409933
On March 2, 2014, Servantage Dixie Sales (Dixie Sales Company), an independent, full-service, value-added distributor headquartered just outside of Greensboro, N.C., celebrated a milestone very few businesses ever attain: reaching its 100th year in business. In a recent Servantage Dixie Sales customer survey coordinated by a national marketing company, our customers across the United States and Canada expressed in their own words why they value their business relationship with Servantage Dixie Sales. Summarizing their survey responses, the marketing company found five attributes that our customers consistently used to describe their special relationship with us: "Servantage Dixie Sales is responsive to our needs. Servantage Dixie Sales is dependable, consistently. Servantage Servantage Dixie Sales is knowledgeable; they always get us the answer even when they don't have it. Servantage Dixie Sales is passionate about making us successful and treating us like a customer. And Servantage Dixie Sales sees itself as an extension of us, always helping us enhance our customers' experience with products and service." "Responsive, dependable, knowledgeable, passionate and an extension of us." We are honored and proud of how our customers described their relationship with us. They recognize that our company has an extraordinary culture, based on extraordinary values, exemplified by extraordinary people providing extraordinary service. Business guru and author Jim Collins once said, "The challenge is not just to build a company that can endure, but to build one that is worthy of enduring." We know that over the past 100 years, from 1914 through 2014, Dixie Sales Company and now Servantage Dixie Sales has earned our customers' loyalty and business by creating a business worthy of enduring. We've successfully reached a milestone few other businesses have. The seeds of our strong service culture were sown 100 years ago by Frank E. Snyder and L.H. (Jack) Starmer. The story began in February 1914, when Jack Starmer (my grandfather) and his father-in-law, Frank Snyder, arrived in Greensboro from Akron, Ohio, and bought Dixie Sales Company, an auto tire repair and vulcanizing shop, from Joseph Leahy, who was originally from Canada and then New York. Leahy learned the tire business by working for John Dunlap, the inventor of the air-filled pneumatic tire. Feature Story | Anniversary Series Special Servantage Dixie Sales celebrates "100 years strong" ■ By Jim Starmer 24 NOVEMBER 2014 OUTDOOR POWER EQUIPMENT www.outdoorpowerequipment.com Left: 1916 picture of Dixie Sales Company at the 115 W. Market St. location with co-founders Jack Starmer, left, and Frank Snyder, right. Right Top: March 1921 photo of Dixie Sales Company at the 109 S. Davie St. location. Pictured left to right, starting with the second person from the left, are as follows: Jack Starmer; his wife Mabel Snyder Starmer; Henry Emmett Snyder, brother of Mabel; and Ellis B. Snyder, brother of Mabel and Emmett. Right Bottom: March 1925 photo of the parts and office area of Dixie Sales Company at the 234 Library Place location. Mabel Snyder Starmer is pictured far right, and her brother Ellis B. Snyder is second from the right.