Hi I’m Paul Darley and thanks for tuning into the May issue of Inside Darley.
We are just back from FDIC down in Indianapolis. It’s the largest trade show that we attend in the fire service and it was just a great show. There was a lot of energy throughout the exhibit hall. We had record attendance of 39,920 attendees. Our booth was just full of all sorts of innovative new products from drones to smart pumps that start and run by themselves.
As I looked around our booth it really dawned on me that all of the young Generation Y or “Millennials” as they are called working our booth they were really the ones promoting all these exciting new products. Generation Y are generally those people born between the early 1980’s and 1990’s, aged 20-40. There are currently 80,000,000 of them in the United States. By 2020 they will represent over 35% of the workforce. So our first two articles are just on Millennials. The first article comes out of Princeton and is called “Understanding Generation Y: What You Need to Know About Millenials”. The second comes from Forbes and is entitled “7 Surprising Ways to Motivate Millennial Workers”. Millennials are going to be in every organization, whether you are a fire department, military organization, business. They really respond well to inclusive environments, they like being mobile and they really respond well to recognition and acknowledgement of a job well done. As I look at our young team, we are so excited to have them on board. They are changing the face of our company.
On the corporate end of our business we are really excited to welcome a new Board of Directors member; Vice Admiral Joe Maguire. Joe Maguire was actually in charge of the Navy Seals, he was in the Navy Seals for over 36 years. His actual title was Commander of Special Warfare Command. Joe brings a tremendous amount of military and business experience to our business. I first met Joe about 10 years ago when he attended the funeral of my cousin’s husband who was a Navy Seal and he today is also in charge of the Speical Operations Warrior Foundation which is one of the more than 200 charities that our company supports. We are really excited to have Joe on board.
On the defense end of our business we also during the month of April had a great Darley Defense Days. A Darley Defense Day is when we bring the trade show with exhibitors on to a military installation. We just had one at Fort Bragg in April with over 500 attendees. We have three more planned over the next couple of months so if you are in the area we’d love to have you come by. May 7-8th we are going to be at Fort Carson, Co, June 4th in Virgina Beach, and July 8th we’ll be down in Florida at Hulrburt Field.
So thanks for tuning in to this issue of Inside Darley if there is anything we can be doing to assist you, we hope you’ll reach out to us!
