Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

Schrock Innovations is sponsoring this year’s Lincoln America Recycles Day Celebration by donating a new $1,300 Modular Computer to one lucky winner.

There are some really great prizes, and you can enter as a business or as an individual.

Here is the release that was sent yesterday:

PUBLIC WORKS AND UTILITIES DEPARTMENT

Recycling Office, 2400 Theresa Street, Lincoln, NE 68521, 441-7043, fax 441-8735

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 12, 2009

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Gene Hanlon, Recycling Coordinator, 441-7043

CITY ENCOURAGES PUBLIC TO PARTICIPATE IN AMERICA RECYCLES DAY EVENTS

The City Recycling Office encourages the public to participate in America Recycles Day November 15, an effort to encourage recycling and the purchasing of recycled products. Residents have the opportunity to make a pledge to improve their recycling efforts and to participate in several special events.

“America Recycles Day is an opportunity for people to shape part of the environmental impact they have on our community and the world,” said City Recycling Coordinator Gene Hanlon. “By making a pledge, residents have an opportunity to make a commitment to increase their recycling efforts and help reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”

Those who fill out a pledge form are entered into a drawing to win prizes, including

• computer system valued at $1,300, donated by Schrock Innovations;
• a six-year curbside recycling subscription, donated by the Lincoln Journal Star, Midwest Refuge, Recycling Enterprises and Star City Recycling;
• $100 gift cards donated by Russ’s Market and Wal-Mart;
• free Panera Bread for one year.

The pledge drive runs through Sunday, November 8. Prizes will be awarded at noon Saturday, November 14 at EcoStores Nebraska, 530 W. “P” St. Pledge boxes are located at Russ’s Markets, Lincoln City Libraries and select recyclers. Pledge forms and more information about America Recycles Day also are available online at lincoln.ne.gov (keyword: ARD).

Several other recycling-related events will take place in Lincoln next month:

• A free tire collection will take place from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, November 7 and Sunday, November 8 at N.W. 38th Street and West Webster Road. The collection is sponsored by the Emerald Sanitary Improvement District and funded by the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality.
• EcoStores Nebraska will host a usable latex paint exchange from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, November 14. Usable paint is free, and $2 is charged for disposal of unusable paint.
• Paper shredding and electronic equipment recycling events are also being planned. Locations, times and fees will be announced at a later date.

Yesterday I attended the Nebraska Retail Federation’s annual awards banquet and accepted the 2009 Customer Service Business of the Year on behalf of Schrock Innovations.

I am no stranger to political and business gatherings, but those in attendance at the NRF ceremony were not from the circle I normally meet up with at events.

At our table we were joined by several higher-ups from JC Penny. Other sponsors of the event included Pamida, Walgreens, Target, and a few other big-name retailers.

We were among 30+ nominees for the award and some had traveled in from as far away as Kearney.

As each of the nominees was introduced we were asked to briefly talk about our company to the audience.

Its All About the Service

When it was my turn on the stage I asked the audience to raise their hand if they had ever had a computer problem. Everyone raised a hand. Then I asked people who had someone to help them with their computer problems to put their hands down. About 40% did, leaving a majority of people in the room with nowhere to turn for PC help.

I explained the Schrock Innovations was founded 10 years ago o help people with their computer problems – even if we were not being paid to help. I explained that the Schrock approach was about building trust and relationships.

Schrockies in the House?

At the end of my presentation I asked if there were anyt Schrock customers in the audience. 6 people raised their hands (not bad considering there was no one from Omaha and 1/2 of the crowd was out of our Lincoln service area).

I asked them in front of the crowd if they fel;t special after they worked with Schrock Innovations. They said that they did.

Thank You NRF

This award means a lot to Schrock Innovations and its employees. On the eve of launching the biggest sales event of the year, our Holiday Sale, this award reminds everyone of the reason we are in business. It’s not to sell hardware or software – we are in business to provide service. Everything else will take care of its self if we take care of our customers.

I received a note today that Schrock Innovations was nominated for the 2009 Nebraska Retailer of the Year Award presented by the Nebraska Retail Federation.

Being nominated alone is a significant honor considering that previous recipients have included Bob and Vicki Rokeby, Gary Michaels, Merle Honerman, Robert Allen, Dick Campbell, and Rose Blumkin.

We will be attending the awards banquet to honor whichever business wins the award this Friday.

As part of the nomination process, the Federation asked that each nominee send in some information about their respective business. Here is what we sent them for consideration:

To Whom it May Concern:

When Schrock Innovations was founded ten years ago, the retail technology world was a different place.

Dell was just figuring out how to mass-manufacture PCs, Hewlett Packard was the only game in town for printers, and local OEM providers made their profits by selling hardware.

Schrock Innovations sought to differentiate itself by emphasizing service instead of specific products.

In fact, the first concept we introduce to new employees at Schrock is that we don’t sell computers. We don’t sell hardware. We sell the service that makes those computers and devices work for our customers.

The world has changed in the last 10 years – Now it is considered acceptable to outsource your technical support to India or to expect your customers to mail back defective products at their expense rather than exchanging them with a retailer.

At the same time we are all facing one of the most hostile economic environments in recent memory.

Schrock Innovations tightened its belt just like everyone else has been forced to do. Those cuts required our staff to work a little smarter and be a little more efficient.

But Schrock has never forgotten that its competitive advantage – its secret to business success – is our dedication to making our customer feel good about doing business with us.

The commitment to our customers’ experiences has been the consistent factor that has carried us through good times and bad over the last decade. It was the motivation behind opening a new $825,000 retail facility in Lincoln this year, and the key to a double-digit increase in sales and profitability YTD.

It is easy to get caught up in the numbers – the deposits, payments, taxes, and quarterly growth rates. It is more difficult to come into to the Service Center every day and look beyond the work in front of us to see the faces of the real people we are serving.

The satisfaction of these real people is what we live and die by at Schrock Innovations. As long as our customers are happy, everything else comes out in the wash.

Thank you for taking the time to consider Schrock Innovations for this award. We are humbled by our nomination and honored to be in the company of the great retailers of the state of Nebraska.

Sincerely,

Thor Schrock
CEO
Schrock Innovations, Inc.

ShowTek Events in Denver, Colorado wanted their website revamped so it would stand out against the competition.

Rob from ShowTek reached out to Schrock Innovations to build a site that would maximize its SEO benefits, and plays a song of the day. Rob wanted multiple video & images, simple navigation, vibrant colors, while at the same time have the website run completely from his own server in an easily updateable framework.

Brad went over each specific detail Rob wanted and then create a site design that would house the ShowTek Events vision of the new site. He created a unique design using a one button menu bar. Combining this with a BACK and HOME button, the site is very simple to navigate and makes it easy to find each product.

The desire to avoid third-party services and the ability to have a song of the day was solved by Schrock building a custom Flash player for their content. The Flash player also allowed the vision for a video gallery to play on the same page when you click a thumbnail.

To keep the updating easy, we built his site was built using PHP, CSS and JavaScript. Upon completion Brad met with Rob for a brief introduction on how to update the website and manage its content.

Now ShowTek Events has a site fitting their vision which is simple to navigate and update

After a bit of a posting drought, we have started posting our Compute This shows again on the Schrock Innovations website for those who couldn’t listen live, or live outside of the local market.

I have heard rumors that KFOR may be posting our shows as podcasts as well. I will look into it, and get you a link so you can subscribe through iTunes is you would rather do that than download the .mp3 files individually.

September 12, 2009 Show:

Click Here to listen to the September 12, 2009 show.

During this show we launched a new sale called the Great XP Escape Sale.

There was an early Husker game this week, so the call volume was a little light, but we did have a few callers and they asked questions like:

• Should I buy a laptop or a desktop computer?
• Why does my music sound different when I burn it to disc?

September 19th 2009 Show

Click here to listen to the September 19th show.

During this show we wrapped up the Great XP Escape sale, talked about which browsers are the most energy efficient, and took a few calls as well.

Our callers asked questions like:

• My DVD drive disappeared from My Computer. How can I get it back?
• How can I fix a broken VGA cable?
• Why did my auto-fill stop working in the Yahoo Toolbar?

Compute This airs every Saturday morning on KFOR 1240 in Lincoln, NE from 10-11 AM CST. You can listen live on the KFOR website and call in toll-free with your questions at 800-825-5865.

My morning (and possibly most of my afternoon) today has been tied up in depositions in a case brought against Schrock Innovations by one of our local Lincoln competitors.

One of our local competitors is claiming that I have said things on this blog that have damaged their business. They are demanding $7,500 in unspecified damages.

We have offered a settlement, which was quickly declined. We have tried to move this case to trial, but have been thwarted by procedural tactics for almost 4 years by the plaintiff.

On one hand I am annoyed that I have to spend a half day on this, but on the other hand I am happy to finally start moving this thing to a conclusion.

Despite everything that has happened over the past four years between Schrock and this competitor, I hope that one day we can all sit down together peaceably and laugh about all of this.

Follow me on Twitter for up to the minute updates…

Only 2 days remain to get Schrock Innovations’ Preventative Maintenance Checkup on sale for only $19.99! This is the FINAL maintenance checkup sale of 2009, so it you miss this one its a long wait until 2010!

We are “officially” launched the sale on last weekend’s Compute This radio show, and our staff has done an amazing job keeping up with the workload. Unlike the previous sale, our turn around times are very reasonable (3 days or less).

A PC Maintenance Checkup is a complete head-to-toe examination of a computer that takes between 8 and 12 hours of bench time to complete. Our Maintenance Checkup is normally a great deal at its usual price of $60, but for next week only we will be discounting that price to an amazing $19.99.

Schrock Innovations’ web development division started off in 2001 with just one website – its own. We hooked up with a company in Lincoln called Binary.net that handled hosting for all of the websites we would come to manage flawlessly.

Schrock is a high-service providing company and our web customers expect us to be there when they need us in the capacity that they need us.

Schrock Moves Hosting to Rackspace

To help meet that service expectation, we decided the time to move our hosting infrastructure to another company had arrived. We moved all of our serveres to Rackspace Hosting about 4 months ago, and we haven’t looked back since.

Rackspace was voted one of the best Fortune 500 companies to work for in 2008, and I can honestly say I have never had a bad experience dealing with them over the phone or email.

Alarm Equipment Inc. (AEI) in Omaha, NE came to Schrock Innovations for a website “freshening” a few months ago.

AEI’s website was not ranking in Google for the key search terms they needed to bring in new alarm business. Today more people use Google than the Yellow Pages so ranking when it counts can be vital to a business’ success!

AEI Asked Schrock Innovations to modify their existing website to modernize its look and improve its SEO performance without changing the basic layout and styling of the existing website.

Microsoft is making Windows 7 available for pre-order now through July 10, 2009!

Order your copy of Windows 7 and installation from Schrock Innovations and save 58% off of the software’s regular purchase price!

Windows 7 Installed for Only $219.99!?!

If you have ever purchased an operating system upgrade, you know that they normally cost hundreds of dollars and can take a degree in computer science to install successfully.

Between drivers, updates, and lost files upgrading your operating system can be a real challenge – Unless you let Schrock’s award-winning technicians do it for you!