John Krummell, President of Advance Storage Products, discusses the industry's journey towards increased automation– and how COVID has affected that. Danny: Welcome today's Executive Series interview on IndustrialSage. I'm joined by John Krummell, who is the president of Advance Storage Solutions. John, thank you so much for joining me today on IndustrialSage. John: Thank you. Danny: For those who are unfamiliar with us, tell me a little bit about your company, Advanced Storage Solutions. John: Yeah, we're a material handling system supplier, so our main business is we build pallet racks and push rack systems for warehouses selling into the grocery industry. And then we have a new business that's growing very very rapidly right now in automation, we're building fully automated storage and retrieval systems for warehouses, focused really around a unique product we built called the Rack Rover that we're rolling that out right now. Danny: Excellent, so now tell me a little about your story. How did you get your business started? Is it a family business? What's the background? John: Well, I started my career working in Anderson Consulting; I was in computer and systems consulting work, and I was moving from them going to graduate school, and my dad called and said, "You want to come and help me out for the summer while I have this big project? We sold one business, and we're growing a new business." And so I went to work with my dad for three months 30 years ago. So when I came into the business, he had sold a prior business; we were starting up into the rack push rack business, and I think we had about five or six employees in a 1500 square foot office up in Carson, California. And now we've grown it to about 300 employees and two factories, and the new automation business is growing as well. So it really was just, I had never planned to work with a family business, but we got in and I enjoyed it. I had never planned to work in the pallet rack business, but once we got into it, we learned it's a fun business, a lot to learn, it's always changing, and it's been a great opportunity to grow and to build a nice organization. Danny: So how long did your dad have the business before you jumped in? John: Well, he started the business in 1958, so my dad was really sort of an entrepreneurial guy, and he had at least five or six different businesses. I mean, at one point he made furniture, he had a moving business, he had an electronic workbench business, he was doing all these different things. And I joined in 1989, and at that point, when I came in, I'm not that creative, and so we really just focused in. And we started out in the push rack business. At that point, it was a growing segment in the rack industry. And so we had some unique designs, and then we went and we got some patents on the deeper systems, and started to grow that business. And initially we started out not in manufacturing, we tried just being an engineering business with a contract of manufacturing. And then in the mid, let's see, I have to go back to the time, but the mid-90's we realized we really have to go back into manufacturing. And so 'cause the business was growing and the subcontractors couldn't keep up with demand. So we went and we opened up our first factory in Rockmart, Georgia. At that time we were in Carson, California and we had a factory in Georgia. And really it was just a logistics decision that most of the material handling markets on the east coast, and so we wanted to put the manufacturing closer to the markets. And in Georgia, we found a facility that met our needs for the time, and so we opened up out there, and I got a lot of frequent flyer miles. And then we ran that facility for about six, seven years,