Friday, September 7, 2007

New Product Niche?

Our company stumbled into a big order the other day and we are thrilled. It came to us out of the blue. It involves a medical product (don't want to say what and give other people ideas!) and some changes that are going to have to be made to it in the next year. Luckily we were in the right place at the right time, and had a great response time to the query and a good price. We are able to make the changes that are required. We are also going to be able to make the deadline, even though it will mean some people working overtime this weekend.

But it is exciting for us. At a time when we are worried about growth, this is a boon. And it has given us the idea of approaching other companies to see if we can do similar things for them, maybe even creating a new niche. Right now we are working on proposals that one of our associates will take out on the road.

The great thing about one success is that it fans the fire to seek out other successes.

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On a less cheery note, we had to send our second employee today to get drug tested, which means he probably won't be coming back to work, since he will probably test positive. I am surprised, but not surprised. There has been a feeling that he uses drugs, maybe even sometimes at work. But I am surprised that he took the chance after the other man was let go. What is also surprising to me is how many people at work have family members who have had serious problems with drugs. Very serious. We don't have that many employees, and it seems there is an inordinate amount of them with this issue. It is really heartbreaking, and they don't deserve it. I talked with another woman at work about this, and she says that she thinks this problem is pretty widespread. I don't know--in my former working years, I never heard of this high of a proportion of workers having to deal with this. I wonder if this is more of a blue collar thing?

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