By Dick Pehrson, Executive Vice President, Entex Technologies Inc.
My memories of college in the wild 1960s are somewhat cloudy, but I remember having great adventures and losing some close friends in war in those tumultuous times. Along with the adventure, the 60s was a time of steady, heady progress in space exploration. My plan was to go for a Doctorate in Physics, then work for NASA pushing the frontiers of knowledge, and getting into space.
I got a bachelor’s in physics, but by the time I graduated, funding for the space program had dried up. Further complicating my plans, I had just gotten married and needed a job to pay the bills. At that point in my life, a career in the wastewater industry had never entered my mind. However, as the great philosopher of the age, John Lennon, wrote: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”.
So, I dropped out of graduate school and interviewed for a job as an Application Engineer for a company in the wastewater industry. I didn’t know what that was, but it sounded a lot better than my other job offer to be a bill collector. So my wife and I headed to Aurora, Illinois, and the Henry Pratt Company. I learned a number of valuable skills that have served me well during my career, such as how to do take-offs from engineers’ drawings, and how to read specifications (specs). My job was to review the drawings, identify the valves needed for each bid, understand the spec requirements for those valves and provide pricing for that configuration. I enjoyed my time there, the people were a good, interesting group. I still treasure my little brass “Groundhog” paperweight emblematic of the company.
With the feeding frenzy that started with the Clean Water Act in 1972, things were jumping in the industry. It was clear that this marketplace had lots of upside potential. I also saw that I needed to learn a lot more about a wastewater and water treatment plant than just the valves.
To broaden my experience, I took a job as an application engineer at Keene Corporation (originally American Well Works and now Amwell) a local firm with a full flowsheet line of wastewater equipment. Most of my focus there was on aeration and clarification. I had long since realized that there was a lot of technical depth needed in good applications engineering, and my background in Physics and Math served me well. While at Keene, I chose to focus on aeration since I found it interesting and challenging. It soon became apparent that Keene was a company with an aging product line and, as a result, a company on the decline.
Soon a headhunter approached me with an attractive new opportunity. So, I moved to the thriving metropolis of Prophetstown, Illinois to join the jet aeration group at Penberthy Houdaille Co. Shortly after I joined them, they became a separation division, named Pentech and they moved us to Cedar Falls, Iowa. This position allowed me to utilize my technical background more fully as the product was still in the development and testing phase. In the 7 years spent with this development and marketing opportunity, we took jet aeration into the market as a serious option for aeration.
With Pentech, I made the transition from engineering to sales. My role as an applications engineer provided me with ample experience working with customers, and, as has been true for many before and after me, the transition was relatively smooth. I moved to Pittsburgh to be a Regional Manager to set up our East Coast sales operation. I found that technical sales was my real calling. I enjoyed it and found I was good at it. At that time, a handshake had meaning, and I developed the ethic that “my word is my bond”. Eventually Pentech decided to close the Pittsburgh office and relocate us back to Iowa. Cedar Falls/Waterloo Iowa was a great place but flying back on Ozark airlines in snowstorms had gotten really old. So, I wasn’t too keen on this move.
I worked with some great rep groups and engineers over these years (names withheld to protect the innocent) at Pentech and I saw in those days that the compensation for my reps was considerably more attractive than those of the sales staff of companies like Pentech. In 1981, I took the leap to start my own rep firm as Pehrson Associates, allowing me to stay in Pittsburgh. My experience with Pehrson Associates gave me a raw appreciation and newfound respect for the various skills it takes to be a successful rep. I found the rep business to be tough, with intense competition. In retrospect, I started an independent rep business with insufficient relationships with the local General Contractors, and an insufficient understanding of the “competitive” bid process. This was when I truly got an appreciation for the challenges of the rep business: for cash flow and how the money flows downhill, from customer to manufacturing firm and finally to the reps. This was an intense learning process and I felt like I was drinking from the fire hose.
After about 2 years at being at the bottom of the hill as a rep, I had run out of “air speed and altitude” and accepted a job with F. B. Leopold Co in Zelienople, Pa. as Product Manager to develop and market a new product; the Upflow BioTower. This was an innovative product, using an undergrid plenum with aeration supporting random media above the grid. The wastewater flowed into the lower plenum and was driven up by the rising air through the attached growth biomedia. I developed and sold model number 1 to an industrial client. It was up to me to develop the loading rates, the air flows, the media, projected performance and the design parameters. At that time Leopold was also connected to Sybron BioChem who dealt with engineered bacteria. I decided to use their bacteria in my industrial project. It was a great learning curve. This was my first experience with attached growth media, a technology that was to define the second half of my career.
The BioTower worked great, but I made mistake of telling management the truth about how long it would take to get significant sales of this industrial wastewater treatment technology. They liked the time frame answer given to them by the guy working to build their instrumentation business better. So, they funded the instruments and abandoned the BioTower. (As an aside, the actual instrument market timeline was considerably longer than projected, and never reached the promised level of sales. Surprise!). This was a hard lesson on managing up: learning how to communicate undesirable news to management teams that were sometimes removed from the realities of the marketplace.
At that time, Leopold just happened to have an opening for a Regional Manager for their standard products, which were primarily large municipal potable filters and associated equipment necessary for producing clean, drinking water. So, on I moved. This was my first real in-depth introduction to the potable water side of the industry. I worked with a different set of great reps and engineers. I will say the site visits were much more pleasant than my previous work with wastewater plants, especially the industrial wastewater plants. Some of the old water plants I visited looked more like museums with marble floors, pillars, control stands and lots of brass.
As I progressed in my career, I couldn’t help but notice that a significant number of senior executives in many of the companies I worked for had advanced degrees. The MBA in particular seemed valuable for career advancement. While I was working at Leopold, I asked for and got support to work on an Executive MBA at the University of Pittsburgh. They gave me every other Friday off, and I contributed the alternating Saturdays for two years. The program required those selected to have a minimum of 10 years of business experience to be accepted. While working on my degree, I enjoyed the camaraderie, drive, and intelligence of my fellow students. In retrospect, I wish I have made a greater effort to stay in touch. But these were the days before internet and social media and keeping in touch (while working your rear end off) was more difficult.
About the time I finished my MBA, a headhunter introduced me to Dr. Lancy of Lancy Labs in Zelienople. He offered a challenging position as Market Manager for Special Products. This was all industrial: Reverse Osmosis (RO), Ultrafiltration (UF), Electro Dialysis, Plate Separators, Phys/chem treatment, and Specialty Instruments. It was an exciting challenge with advanced technologies. During my time there, I built a strong business, establishing three new Product Area Specialist/Managers to build sales. This was another totally different set of reps and used direct sales as well. Eventually, we were purchased by Alcoa.
I’d grown up in Illinois, and was still living in the north, but always wanted to get out of the snow-belt and move South. Fortunately, the same headhunter contacted me and had a position in Thomasville, GA for an Industrial Marketing Manager. As I flew in on the company plane for the interview, it was love at first sight seeing this delightful small southern town. This was Davco. In the meantime, Alcoa counter-offered to try to keep me there. This seemed to happen every time a new offer came up. I realized that going back on my commitment to the new company would be a serious mistake, so I never accepted these counteroffers. They were always a day late and a dollar short.
In just 3 years at Davco, we built industrial sales from $200,000 to $10,000,000. Eventually the economy turned down in the early 1980’s and the industry stopped buying water pollution control equipment. With the economic downturn, the regulatory guns were unloaded to give relief. Like all well-run companies, Davco adjusted to the new reality. My Industrial Group was closed, and I became Municipal Sales Regional Manager. First for the West, later for the Midwest and later yet for the East Coast and South. It was grueling, on a plane Sunday or Monday and back to T’ville on Friday. Company policy was for salespeople to be traveling all week, no exceptions. Over the next 3 years I racked massive amounts of Frequent Flier miles and got accustomed to being upgrading to first class. Traveling then was a different world; you were treated well by the airlines and not herded like cattle.
While I was at Davco, the Burde rep group introduced me to a newly developed product called BioWeb. It was a fixed film system using a fabric media. Working with my ace applications engineer, Mack McDougald, we refined the technology and put a BioWeb system into the Greensboro, NC wastewater plant. We were enormously excited about the potential of this technology.
It was during this time, around 1987, that another rep group introduced me to a new biological phosphorus removal technology using anaerobic selectors sold by a company called Air Products. The Air Products manager whom we worked with to license this technology was Wayne Flournoy, and thus began an over 35-year friendship, that when combined with the BioWeb technology, later became another chapter in my life. Wayne and I kept in touch over the next 12 years, often catching up at industry conferences.
One day as I arrived at the office, we were called into a meeting and told by senior management that we were now part of US Filter. By that time, my friend and division manager, Bob William left to take a great job as General Manager at Ashbrook. I was moved up to VP Sales and Marketing for the Davco Group managing about $30,000,000 a year in sales. The US Filter ride is entire chapter unto itself, as I became part of the team responsible for integrating the rapidly growing number of acquisitions into the company.
As the US Filter organization grew and became increasingly bureaucratic, I soon tired of the growing internal politics. I left US Filter and moved to the Philadelphia area to help introduce Auto Thermophilic Aerobic Digestion for high strength industrial wastewater treatment. This was an innovative technology that promised near zero waste sludge (if you don’t count what left in the effluent). These were large, expensive systems. Sound technology, but very site specific, and where properly applied and operated, was some good stuff. This was elephant hunting, but we weren’t finding enough elephants.
After I left US Filter/Davco, there wasn’t much internal interest for the new BioWeb product I had introduced. So, in the late 90’s I formed the BioWeb Company in conjunction with the product manufacturer and patent holder. I worked a deal with Brentwood Industries to license the product to them. My old friend Wayne Flournoy oversaw this group. Since we had worked together before, me at Davco, and Wayne at Air Products, I felt comfortable working with him again. A lesson for those of you who are new in your career, treat people well, and keep in touch.
To again shorten a long story, Wayne moved to take over North America for Kaldnes, a Scandinavian moving media company. We met and saw a great place for a company in our industry that could offer both fixed and moving media. Together, we formed Entex Technologies Inc. in May of 2004. And that my friends, is another book unto itself.
I’ve spent the last 16 years of my career helping grow Entex from a small startup into the market leader that it currently is. As I passed 65 years of age, I began taking more time for wife, Heidi, and my family, including the younger generations. So, several years ago, I began working from home, still helping provide my years of experience to the staff at Entex as they needed guidance. As the coronavirus has hit the US and many of us now work from home, my life hasn’t changed nearly as much as it has for most of you, as I’m used to this “new normal”.
I write this with fond memories of great colleagues, good companies, and interesting technologies. I hope that if you’re reading this as a younger professional, you may learn something. If you’re more experienced, I hope my tale brings you a smile, as you remember your own journey. If you’re in the industry, I suspect that much of my story will feel familiar. Regardless, stay safe and keep working for a better world.