Riggs Report - V1 - Oct. 2019

RIGGS

REPORT OCT-DEC 2019

T hank Y ou

from the team

WHAT’S Up? VOL 1 ISS 1

EO

Dear Fellow Employees, It’s hard to believe we are already through most of 2019, and what a great year it has been so far!

After a somewhat sluggish start (remember all the rain?), we showed incredible growth at the end of 2nd Quarter and following up with a strong 3rd Quarter from the entire state. I understand what a strain that was on everyone involved, and I appreciate the long hours and effort put forth to bounce back from such a slow start.

Our market share remains strong, and we are showing significant growth in Product Support, Rental, and Power Systems. Riggs Outdoor is growing each and every day and showing much success in our adoption of a new business model to grow our customer base.

Not only have we grown in financial numbers, the Riggs family has grown tremendously with the addition of Riggs Outdoor, and we have expanded our team to over 450 team members in 2019.

I want to thank each of you for the effort and dedication to our business. We could not be successful without YOU! Along with business success, Share It Forward has made some big impacts in the lives of our employees and local communities. As we continue to build Arkansas, we appreciate your continued support to the program. To date, we have donated over 138,000 meals to our local food banks through the help of our customers. Not only have we been helping out organizations across the state, we have helped many who stand beside you each day. SIF was designed to provide financial assistance when life hits you hard and unexpectedly. We have given over $37,000 to your fellow employees when they needed it the most. I am proud to be part of an organization that has such a heart for helping our employees through a hardship.

We are using this newsletter as another communication tool to stay in touch with our team members across the state. I hope you enjoy reading about the exciting things that are going on throughout the company! I am so glad you are here and hope everyone’s year-end is impactful, meaningful, and successful.

Thanks,

Sean O’Keane − President & COO

west Arkansas

Jason McDonald − Sr. VP of Power Systems & Product Support

Skip Hokett − Sr. VP of Central Arkansas

George Cress − VP of CRS & Retail 2

Fall

CONTENTS

4 -5 6 -7 8 -9 10 -11 12 -13 14 -15 16 -19 20-21 22-23

Event Calendar & Highlights Share It Forward Foundation We Build Arkansas Initiative Equipment & Industry Updates Sales & Marketing Campaigns What’s Up? Employee Highlights Riggs Photo Sharing Best Practice & Social Media

THANK YOU to our amazing customers, friends, and local communities for your support!

We strive each day to provide everyone that walks through our doors with the best customer experience possible. We couldn’t do what we do without you and we are so appreciative!

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2019 Sunday 29

Monday 30

Tuesday 1

Wednesday 2

Thursday 3

Friday 4

Saturday 5

ABC Catfish Friday Sponsorship 11am – 2pm at ABC in NLR

6

7

8

9

10

October

River Valley Horticulture Customer Appreciation Day 2:30pm – 7pm at River Valley Horticulture in LR

13

14

15

16

17

Columbus Day

20

21

22

23

24

11

12

Bauxite HS Football Game Sponsorship 4pm – 9pm

Arkansas at Kentucky

18

19

Glen Rose HS Football Game Sponsorship 4pm – 9pm

Arkansas vs.

Auburn

25

26

Saline County Boys & Girls Club Annual Convention

27

28

29

Arkansas at Alabama

30

31

Fellowship Fall Festival 4pm – 7pm at Fellowship Bible Church in LR

2

Halloween

Sunday 27

1

Monday 28

Tuesday 29

Wednesday 30

Thursday 31

Friday 1

Saturday

2

Arkansas vs.

Mississippi State

November

3

4

5

6

7

8

Arkansas vs.

Western Kentucky

Election Day

10

11

17

18

9

12

13

14

15

16

19

20

21

22

23

Veterans Day

Arkansas at LSU

24

25

26

27

28

29

OFFICE CLOSED.

OFFICE CLOSED.

Thanksgiving Day

4

30

Arkansas vs.

Missouri (Little Rock)

Event Sunday 1

December

8

15

22

Monday 2

Tuesday 3

9

10

HA Christmas Party

RV Christmas Party

16

17

FS Christmas Party

SD Christmas Party

23

24

Wednesday

Thursday

4

5

ED Christmas Party

TX Christmas Party

11

12

Friday

Saturday

6

7

13

14

19

20

21

RO Christmas Party

LR Christmas Party

Winter Begins

26

27

28

2

3

4

JB Christmas Party

18

25 OFFICE CLOSED.

Hanukkah

29

CALENDAR

Christmas Day

30

31

1

New Years Eve

EVENT Highlights

Cattleman’s Association in Hot Springs

The Salt Bowl Game at War Memorial Stadium

Our Fall Judge’s Meeting & Dinner in Benton

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Notes from SI F Scholars:

This past May, I graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in biology and general business. With the aid received from Riggs, I was financially capable to study abroad in Ireland and gain knowledge in international business.

I successfully defended an honors thesis where I researched stem cell differentiation into smooth muscle cells.

I met a wonderful, beautiful woman during organic chemistry three years ago. I proposed to her last fall, and we got married this past May! After getting married, my wife and I moved to Memphis, Tennessee where I work for Smith and Nephew as a quality engineer. At this location, we manufacture orthopedic implants such as hip and knee replacements, plates, screws, etc.

Since Smith and Nephew provides tuition reimbursement, I will begin graduate school starting next month!

My name is Steven Estell. I was a recipient of the Riggs Scholarship upon my graduation from high school in 2004. I was fortunate to be able to use the scholarship funds to further my education at the University of Central Arkansas where I earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management with a focus in Insurance, Risk Management and Financial Planning.

After I received my degree from UCA in Spring 2008, I enrolled in law school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I graduated from UALR School of Law with a Juris Doctorate in May 2011 and successfully passed the bar exam in July 2011. I moved to Fort Smith in late 2011 and began working for a law firm serving injured persons in the River Valley area. In June 2018, I was blessed with the opportunity to start my own law firm in Fort Smith.

I married my wife, Lindsey, in December 2012. Since that time, we have had two beautiful daughters, Parker age 4 and Quinn age 2. We have been blessed again by Riggs since the birth of my youngest daughter, Quinn. When she was born, my wife and I were displaced from our home in Fort Smith due to complications following her birth. We spent the first six weeks of Quinn’s life in the NICU at Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. Given the circumstances, neither my wife nor I were able to work for almost two full months. The Share It Forward Foundation at Riggs stepped up once again for my family and provided financial assistance to me and my wife so we could keep our heads above water during such a trying time.

Thanks for supporting me these past four years! It is greatly appreciated.

The Riggs Scholarship was a huge boost to me in helping me attain my goal of graduating college in 4 years, and ultimately turning my attention to a professional school and career. I am forever grateful for the many blessings, both educational and personal, that I have received from both the Scholarship fund and the Share It Forward Foundation throughout the course of my life. Thank you.

Jackson Hedrick

Steven Estell

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We founded the Share It Forward Foundation with the goal to help our employees and communities in times of need. Thanks to our employees and the company match, we are able to make a positive impact on many lives.

I graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2003, with honors and a degree in Human and Organizational Development (focus in Organizational Effectiveness). Although my focus of study is - at best - indirectly applicable in my career (as opposed to directly applicable as an engineering degree might have been), the breadth of study it allowed satisfied my love of learning, and the immersive experience helped me develop a creative approach to solving complex problems that has been instrumental in my career success.

Speaking of my career, it has been anything but typical in my field. Shortly after graduating, I began working as a Production Analyst for a small start up and helped turn it into a not-sosmall company (CustomInk). I bounced around a bit thereafter in various and progressive roles (building technology platforms to enable analysis) until 2014 when I joined the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (http://www.msdf.org), where I plan to remain for the foreseeable future. At MSDF, I’m working toward fulfilling our mission to bring innovation to philanthropy, and I am currently focused building our capability to measure the effectiveness and impact of the programs we fund. Aside from being the perfect fit for my professional skills and interests, I leave work knowing that what I am doing matters. Interesting side note: I met Lee Forst several years ago at Tableau Conference. He and I have a shared respect for data and what we can learn from it. (I am horrible at articulating what I do, so this might be a better description: https://www.msdf.org/ employees/aaron-booth/)

After graduating, I lived and worked in Washington, DC for several years before returning to Austin, TX (where I was born) in 2005.

I have a lovely wife (Leslie) and four kids (Grace 12; Torsten 10; Griffin 7; Tatum 4). I spend most of my time outside of work coaching my boys’ baseball and soccer teams (and playing soccer myself when I can), working on DIY projects (aka my wife’s never ending honey-do list), and learning new subjects (behavioral science, anthropology, astronomy, etc). And - I still look up to my dad.

-On a somewhat related note, this exercise made me think of some of the work I’ve done at MSDF with our US scholarship program (Dell Scholars), and the difficulty we sometimes have connecting with our scholarship recipients after graduation, but also some of the steps we’ve taken to help our scholarship recipients succeed.

One thought specifically is that we provide scholarship recipients access to an EAP program (for counseling, financial advice, etc) and have found it to be hugely effective. If EAP is an employee benefit offered at Riggs (it probably wasn’t when I was in college), it would be a great idea to encourage your employees’ children scholarship recipients or not - to utilize the program.

Lastly, I don’t know that I ever properly expressed my gratitude for the scholarship, and even if I did, it was as a naive teenager.

Twenty years later, I now have the perspective to understand and truly appreciate all of the help I’ve received along the way. So, to J.A. Riggs, Thank You!

Aaron Booth

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Mission Statement: Help our employees and customers prosper in what they do every day.

We strive hard to be the very best we can be. That is coupled with the fact we have a very strong internal culture. If we can help another in need, we will. We support each other through the ups, and the downs. We thrive to build a better community and that starts from within.

Our Fort Smith team — Buckets of Hope canned goods and baby supply drive

You’re welcome, Camp Aldersgate.

We’re happy to help!

Our team used our side by side to transport crowds to and from the pep rally for the Salt Bowl

Immerse Arkansas Open House

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Our Russellville team — Buckets of Hope canned goods and baby supply drive

Our team presenting a check to The Mayfly Project

Our team presenting a check to Second Chance Youth Ranch to complete building their playground

Our team presenting a check to Arkansas Food Bank

MEALS DONATED Q1-Q3

1 3 8, 9 0 0 9

EQUIPMENT INDUSTRY

U pdates

The Judges Event in Benton last month was a huge success!

From Q2 to Q3, the meal count sky-rocketed from

6,700

meals to

9,100

meals

This had a massive impact on our local food banks. We are so proud to support our communities, here in Arkansas.

We’re sending all the Judges a framed photograph, thanking them. Together, We Build Arkansas.

News in Northwest Arkansas Thanks to our tremendous, hard working team in Northwest Arkansas, we’ve had a noticeable increase in sales.

— We’d like to welcome a new customer to this region, Emery Sapp. He will be taking on the highway project between Bela Vista and Missouri, along with the XNA expansion project. Welcome, Emery.

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# MOVINGDIRTMOVINGPEOPLE # WEBUILDARKANSAS

Congratulations to the Fort Smith Team!

The team, along with Brett Avlos and James Carter, were able to convert 31 machines from Double “D” — this was a well-executed deal and took a lot of hard work from every one in Fort Smith.

Thank You, Riggs Employees!

We continue to outpace our business plan on GCI Machines — this is a huge WIN for us all. This is not only thanks to our Salesmen, but to the whole team. We appreciate all that you do.

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

Warren Buffett 11

Current

MARKETING & SALES CAMPAIGNS For full details, please visit riggscat.com/deals-specials

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ENTER TO WIN

A LIMITED EDITION, METAL TRUCKING SIGN

CAT.COM/THANKS

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Sadie Mae Pierce

Banded Gear is NOW AVAILABLE at our Riggs Outdoor Store — And apparently our team is sporting it, already!

Just hangin’ at Riggs Outdoor

Please help congratulate Trevor and Megan Pierce on a beautiful new baby girl. Born September 3rd at 8:47pm, 7lbs 10 ounces, 21-1/2 inches long

Jonesboro won Store of the Quarter for Q1 2019 — Congrats!

Proudly displayed at our newly remodeled Springdale store

The new Husqvarna display at our Springdale store ®

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

Abraham L incoln 14

Riggs Outdoor on Channel 7 News

Setup at Carter’s Mud Daze

Brooke and Trevor Freemyer are expecting a baby boy this April!

Jonesboro store at the Northeast Arkansas Fair

WHAT’S Up? 15

Our newly remodeled Springdale store

EMPLOYEE Highlights Josh Ausley

SHOP TECHNICIAN TEXARKANA The work environment is the best I have ever seen. All technicians and even management are above average and go out of their way to ensure safety as well as being polite.

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? ’s with Josh Ausley Tell us about yourself.

I am from Bismarck Arkansas. My family owns a small gravel quarry. I grew up around construction equipment and chose to pick a career in the Heavy Equipment industry to learn how to troubleshoot and find a solution to problems that could occur with other equipment, as well as my own.

What do you look forward to in your line of work?

I look forward to becoming the best technician that I can be. The career a person chooses is a starting place in life and the future looks bright at Riggs Cat. Tell us about the “Think Big” program and how it assisted you in your career.

The “Think Big” Program was a solution to a problem. The main problem is how expensive college is and how the career a person may pick may not have positions open. The program itself offered incentives as well as giving the student time to work and pay as they attend the program. This program meant that I could attend a well-known college and obtain a degree in a field I strived to work in.

Would you recommend the “Think Big” program to others?

Yes I would recommend this program for other upcoming technicians. Caterpillar is top of the line and obtaining a job from a Cat dealer will ensure the best training a young technician could receive.

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EMPLOYEE Highlights Robert Diemer

COMPONENT TECHNICIAN LITTLE ROCK My favorite part of my job, is finishing up a job and knowing that the customer has been taken care of, and that they can get back to work. I also enjoy the great group of friends I have here that make the days go by smoother.

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? ’s with Robert Diemer Tell us about yourself.

I am married and have a 3 year old daughter. I have worked here at Riggs since I graduated high school in 2008. I chose this field of work because I have always enjoyed taking anything apart and putting it back together. I knew I wanted to be a technician but always thought that I would be an automotive tech. Mike Patton was recruiting at a college, as well as career night at my high school — I ended up talking to him and learned more about the equipment which sounded more interesting than automobiles.

What do you look forward to in your line of work?

I look forward to gaining knowledge in all areas of the company and how everything operates. I enjoy learning about the equipment, and how to repair it all.

Tell us about the “Think Big” program and how it assisted you in your career.

The Think Big program was a great way to learn all about Cat® and how to utilize the programs and troubleshoot equipment. It created a strong foundation of knowledge which in turn helped me progress my skills.

Would you recommend the “Think Big” program to others?

I would recommend the program to someone starting out. It is a great way to learn a lot about this environment and get them started quickly.

The school takes them through all aspects of the equipment and software they use. It will give them a better understanding of components that they might not learn if they are in one area only.

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Cade Barrett — ­ Son of Jamie Barrett

We want to see your

RIGGS Photos!

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Grayson Myles Harben — ­ Grandson of Don Langford, Nephew of Brooke Freemyer

Send them to hello@jariggs.com for a chance to be featured!

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Best

PRACTICE

Customer Loyalty

from Shane Franklin

So let me begin on what I think is driving my sales. I do believe that the service experience and the relationships I developed as a service manager really helped me get a start but I believe what gets me the sales is my responsiveness to the customer and my follow up. I am constantly on the phone, emails, etc. pushing things through and seeing their issues or opportunities all the way to the end and taking ownership. I feel that they trust me because I take ownership of their needs and it’s me that gives them the results. When my customers call, I answer the phone. And if I don’t, I always call back regardless if they leave a message. I constantly monitor my missed calls and return them, follow up on each conversation and emails. They like to know they can call one person and their issues are handled and handled promptly. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate.

Whether it’s good or bad just be honest and sincere. I believe in our product, I believe in our company and our core values and I share that with our customers. I know that as long as I do what is right and what is fair, Riggs Cat will always back me.

I also feel that I have a good work ethic. I get up early and I stay with it late. You have to work the same hours as your customers, be available and be consistent. I try my best to develop a relationship with each of my customers. Do what they are comfortable with and I don’t try to push any further, understand each one’s expectations and respect their space.

My customers and my coworkers know that I am persistent and that I will complete any task that is given to me and I will see that it is done quickly and correctly. When I have the opportunity to quote a piece of equipment I ask the customer his time frame on the purchase. I immediately put in the quote request and 90% of the time I am getting that quote back to the customer that same day. I try my best to have spec sheets available and best practices from other customers that have been successful. I try not to over complicate the process and just give them what they want. Most of our customers know what they want, we just need to get it to them and be quick about it. So that sums it up I guess on what I try to do each and every day get up, push yourself to be better than the day before don’t give up and if they believe in you they will come to you.

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Yours Truly,

Shane Franklin

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