Published on: March 11, 2022 by Blair Haas
While all of us at Bud are proud to focus on providing the best electronic enclosures for the industrial electronics industry, it is still wonderful to be recognized by others for our efforts. Recently, Carton-Bates, one of Bud’s long time distributors, rewarded us with their bronze “Supplier Excellence Award” for our work with their team in 2020. It was presented to us for our efforts to coordinate with their sales, product management and logistics teams in providing product that was modified specifically for several customers’ needs in addition to our ongoing support of their efforts in selling our entire line. In the industrial electronics industry, modified electronic enclosures, let alone standard enclosures, are not the “sexy” products and are often an after-thought for many buyers and engineers. Typically, like with the Academy Awards, the winners are the “hot” products rather than the “character actors” of electronic enclosures.
Bud and Carlton-Bates have a long history together. By the time I joined Bud nearly 50 years ago, we had a great relationship with the company. I remember a visit to Little Rock early in my career when I was Bud’s distributor sales manager and I had a meeting (and lunch) with Joe Carlton, founder of their firm in 1957 and his son Bill who was closer to my age and they were incredibly supportive of the “new kid” in the industry. My father and Joe had a close relationship and Bill and I served on many industry committees together and our professional and personal relationship helped both of us grow our companies and our careers. In recent years, we have been excited to work with the successor leaders after the family sold Carlton-Bates. Chris Wadsworth (pictured below) and I have traveled together to many industry meetings, talked industry strategy and have built many personal and professional memories, the best part of working in this industry.
Bud President Josiah Haas receive a Supplier Service Excellence Award from Carlton-Bates management
Above is a photo at the awards dinner. From the left it is Manny Brunson, VP of Sales at Carlton-Bates, Travis Erpenbach, Director of Sales Operations and Supplier Relations, Josiah Haas, President of Bud Industries, Lynn Viers, Bud’s Regional Sales manager and Chris Wadsworth, the GM of Carlton-Bates and VP OEM/Electronics at their parent company, Wesco. Alas, I was unable to be at the meeting and trade show and I am guessing that since we won an award when I was not there, I may not be allowed to attend too many of the meetings in the future. Below is Josiah with Jennifer Townsend, who was our Supplier Relations Manager at the time and who apparently realized that working with us was as good as it gets and jumped ship to the manufacturing side working with Phoenix Contacts early in 2022. Their entire team is incredibly professional and strives to provide the best for their customers.
Josiah Haas, Bud President, being congratulated by former Carlton-Bates Product Manager Jennifer Townsend
While NDA’s keep us from getting into too many details about our successes with the Carlton-Bates team, I will mention a few good examples. The first deals with technology in support of law enforcement and uses a modified version of our NEMA/IP rated NBF series plastic electronic enclosure. We worked closely with the Carlton team and their customer’s CM to provide a turn-key product with Bud using our latest robotics system to perfectly drill the holes needed in the box to rapidly install their electronics. We do this with the fastest modification times in the industry. A second customer in the trash disposal industry uses electronics and our box to assist in identifying the need for support at various locations. This opportunity used our PN series of IP68 NEMA 6 all-weather plastic enclosures to secure their sensitive sensing electronics.
We are very proud of our entire Bud team who worked so well to provide so many successful opportunities with the Carlton-Bates team. We are grateful for this recognition and look forward to working closely with their team for many years to com.
