Company description

Earth Tools Inc. is a small business located near Owenton, KY, specializing in nationwide sales and service of small-scale agricultural equipment and tools. We are accepting applications for a General Manager...a position that has not previously existed at Earth Tools, as this role has been performed in the past by the owner / founder. We are currently the leading sales & service supplier of walk-behind farming equipment in North America, and the largest percentage of our customers are small-scale organic vegetable farmers ("Market Farmers / Gardeners"). We also supply a lot of homesteaders, hobby farmers, and a mixture of other customer types (landscapers, universities, regular homeowners, etc.) See the "about us" section on the earthtools.com website for our company history and to learn more about Earth Tools.
Since this job title has not existed previously at Earth Tools and is being created with this new hire, the "definition" of the role will take some time. We also expect that there will also be a considerable amount of training before the new hire is "up to speed".
We are a relatively old-fashioned business in that we believe in taking care of the customer. We do all of our own in-house customer support and technical support; we do not refer our customers to our manufacturer's customer service systems. If you are interested in a career with a company that is out to make a fast buck and only do lip service to actual customer care, do not bother applying...we don't think that way here. The goods we sell are extremely high-quality, so our relationships with our customers are very long-term (we have had some customers for over 40 years!), and we rely on word-of-mouth as our main (pretty much only, really) advertising tool. (A referral from a satisfied customer is worth more than a full-page magazine ad!)
If you want a career with a company that does things the old-fashioned way (answers the phone, does what they say, treats customers and employees like real people, and sell products that you can be proud of), then we welcome your application.

Job description

The General Manager position has not previously existed here, as this role has been fulfilled in the past by the owner / founder. The desire of the owner / founder is to train someone to take over general management tasks so that he can focus on other things (new product development, actually spending time at home, etc.) We are a small company and have never used "middle management" for the most part, but here are certainly different areas ("departments") of the company that exist and have to be "managed" to work smoothly and efficiently. This would include: Sales department, service dept, parts dept, shipping dept, warehouse, and fabrication dept. (some of these "departments" have only 1 person in them!) We are all located in one location; very few staff can work "remotely". As we are small and have limited staff, many jobs can "bleed" into other departments...for example, if the warehouse is super-busy and the service dept. doesn't have much to do, the service personnel will help with warehouse tasks, and so forth. It is expected that a General manager will eventually learn the basic workings of many of the departments, and can help fill in if necessary (as the owner does currently)...this is particularly true for Sales, as our sales dept. can get overwhelmed in the main growing season (March - July). So in other words, a General manager in this company should be ready to "get their hands dirty" if needed...we are small, so everybody pitches in. NOTE: the salary range listed is the STARTING salary range...and actually, it will start no lower than $60,000 a year (the amount will vary depending on what skills / experience the applicant brings into the job). After 3 or 4 years, I foresee the position paying $100,000 or more. Another note: We use Quickbooks as our company business management software, so experience with that would be a plus (but not necessary--it's not hard to learn).

Compensation

this position is: salaried, $50,000 - $75,000

Application instructions

Deadline

no deadline