John Menold, now national operations manager for Grabber Performance Group, remembers the company sent two cases of warmers to each construction warehouse. John Wagner was in Japan sourcing drywall screws when he came across a pair of warmers. The company says sales already are growing by double-digits annually, and revenue this year has spiked 30 percent after acquiring a company that sold outdoor survival equipment including a NASA-inspired blanket.Ī division of Nevada-based John Wagner Associates, Inc., Grabber's warmer division was started 24 years ago at a time when the company locally sold only construction products. SW, off Clyde Park Avenue south of Gezon Parkway. Snapping the Magic Cool allows air to come into contact with moisture in the packet that drops in temperature as it evaporates.īoth new products could create more warehouse and distribution jobs in Grabber's plant at 5760 N. "They went crazy over a cooling product," Feyen says. The company's first venture into cooling products was welcomed by buyers, she says. The reusable device gets wet and, with a snap of the packet, stays cool using versatile technology, not invented by Grabber, that can be applied in many forms such as bandannas. Last week, at a trade show in steamy Florida, Feyen shopped another Grabber innovation: Magic Cool. "Prospects would just be endless," says Stephanie Feyen, Grabber marketing director. With 12 warmers in each 3.5-foot by 5-foot blanket, and more than 200 million major medical operations performed worldwide each year, the innovation could be a hot one. Using the same technology as Grabber's air-activated hand, foot and toe warmers that are popular this time of year among hunters and other outdoor enthusiasts, the blanket heats to more than 100 degrees for up to 12 hours. The "Heat Treat" disposable blanket conceived by Apricity, LLC is inserted with warmers to maintain patient body temperature before, during and after surgical procedures. And this weekend, Gerds will pitch a super-sized hand warmer at a conference of anesthesiologists in New Orleans. That scope, already broad, is widening this fall for the local company that last year moved from Kentwood into a larger Wyoming warehouse and now plans a building expansion as it supplies the marketplace with an increasing inventory of innovative products.įor example, Grabber last week launched a kind of alter ego to the warmer. "I said, 'No, you don't get the vision for the range of application here.'" "I said 'Look at what I'm going to sell' and she said, 'What else?'" recalls Gerds, now the general manager of the Wyoming-based company. Gary Gerds says he did not know a hand warmer from a hockey puck 13 years ago when he got hired as a salesman for Grabber Performance Group.
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