2001 - A Year of Growth & Change

After having nurtured the growth of IF, Jane Hayes decided to leave IF in January to have more time for her music and riding. She is a dynamite sax player. I pitched in to help hold the fiscal house together. Again the job market in Boston was such that it took us until July when we recruited Tina Crugnale who has helped to clean up all the problems I created with my good intentions.

Steve's wanderlust led to his leaving IF in May to travel out to Colorado where he has now settled. Steve deserves a great deal of credit for helping us to build IF to the position of prominence we now enjoy. Ed Magrecke joined us as VP of Sales and Matt Bracken took over Steve's position of VP of Marketing & Sales. Ed's considerable experience as a retailer of IFs since our beginning has allowed him to start his new job running. Ed has brought new discipline to our order processing which has already improved our customer service.

Our painting department, under the leadership of Lloyd Graves, received Certification from PPG Industries in 2001 as a, "Certified PPG Collision Center." Certification means that the head of the Paint Department has been trained as a, "PPG Certified Fleet Technician" and that our facilities and procedures meet the high standards set by PPG. IF offers 26 stock colors for 2002 and 14 decal colors, providing more choices than any other custom frame builder. The department has made great progress with Chi Leung, Todd Berger and Erin Croft.

Jamie Medeiros, our champion finisher, trained his successor, Shawn Estes, and has moved on to the tacking department where he joins Shanna White. Jamie's computer talents have also served us well in developing better methods of entering orders, generating work orders and tracking orders as they progress through production.

Matt has a very open style of leadership which has allowed very creative input from others in the development of our 2002 Catalog. Our goal for the catalog was to portray the human element of our business for both the ti and steel customers. The catalog had input from throughout the shop. Tyler's Mom, Mint Evans of Mint Designs, pulled it all together for us. We were all delighted with the final product.