VICTORIA UNIVERSITY SOCIOLOGY PAPERS

didn't want a testing lab but we had to roll out how to put 180 people there the Walmart Kmart those folks the world everything changed over they all changed their method I was happy I didn't have a test method testing laughs and the wall one but by about a month afterward I got a call from a large manufacturer about to lose an 80 million dollar order for a test method we knew with plus or minus thirty percent it wasn't attachments and so he called me on Thursday we pick we went up Friday ran two tests wasn't anything wrong with his with his socks and he got a bit we over the we ran his tests that Friday sent the results in Saturday they got their business back monday and tuesday i had a call from retailers in hey would you do our testing cousin I've got one part-time person in the whole and that will grow within that was that's been like that and was one of the best things that we ever did because it helps if we can test a lot of different things um and I'll go over some of the things that we do um we actually got our ISO certification where CPSC certifies that we can do Consumer Product Safety Commission testing for lead and other things we are on their website and everything else but um we're a little different in that we don't just test our little niches we actually help other testing labs we just want folks to do it right what we do is if if there's a problem you know say it's colorfast or something I can bring a diary with 40 years experience if it's a problem with the streaks or whatever we've got ways to we've got folks who worked in yarn industry so it's how do we solve the problem not just doing the testing fact we we let other labs come in will show what we do we help them we go up there so it's not a competition type thing that we do stuff that they don't want to which is which is fine that's where we where we go some of the testing we we do and we're adding stuff to this all the time I won't read the whole list on some of the things we can do antimicrobial testing we are ISO certified on that you know when you see the you know 99 percent at the only kill or whatever on fabrics things like that we do that we're adding more testing that we're looking at doing a plastics testing some of this thing because the antimicrobial is a it's a big deal a lot of folks wanna want to know we're one of the only compression testing lab for textiles where we can do in the western hemisphere where we can do graduated compression testing for you know like if you got into embolism stockings or whatever to give you the millimeters of mercury like you know just like your blood pressure so they're building garments to do that we're looking at how do we do that for upper body stuff because you see that as a a big thing with the Under Armour's and those kind of things in the world so those kind of fun so we deal a lot with a lot of different folks these are some of our customers we currently test for about 250 different people throughout the country may know a few of these folks on there and a lot of them come here it's everything from textiles and network security two batteries you little we've got to come down out of the western part of the state I mean the eastern part of state does these little batteries when you if you if you your plane crash it in the water and you pull on the little best and then what in the battery gets her the they go competent the buoyancy compensator gets wet you know your little life preserver well it automatically kicks on we've made some prototypes and stuff for the battery holder so we're do a lot a lot of different things in and all this over the years doing this testing it really helps us because we've got some connections to of these companies with with the targets of the world and then came arts and those look so we know retail we work with those bugs so sometimes we can help get things in help entrepreneurs get their product out there oh we do some training no doubt of most of its customized it's in plant we work with other other folks we really don't care who because we're never going to run enough classes to earn big fte's or anything else of full-time equivalents is which is where in education you get a lot of you are funding from so we don't really our classes are a lot smaller and things I can't we'll we'll farm it out to other folks if we can't do it and that's that's perfectly fine and that's kind of our philosophy anyway a lot of things on we have a lot of partners our 3d modeling we haven't you know sins here with the NCC et that's a huge partnership for us they said helps us so much I mean we've got our most expensive piece of equipment over in his lab you know it makes a lot of sense because I can you can use our equipment if he needs if he lets us use it use theirs it's kind of a unique partnership but it's been great for us and I appreciate it see it I can't say it enough because it helps our customers because the if you're a manufacturer you don't care who solves the problem and that's kind of Selassie anyway we don't it doesn't matter just as long as it gets solved there's enough problems out there for everybody to go around you've ever been in manufacture you know that um so we have a lot of partnerships to reverse engineering and that helps us so much when you have an entrepreneur or a larger company that needs something done if we can get it done quickly and parted and certainly his Lavin's you know plastics and other things that is just it's fabulous to be able to have a resource like that in his cabin and that's what the taxpayers would rather have any way they don't want me to recreate what he's gotten and by person we've been very careful about what we buy and how we get things so that we're not trying to duplicate other folk stuff sometimes it happens but we try not to here's an example of a local company that was getting prototypes made in China was taking him several weeks to get it done and it wasn't right half the time and then you're communicating trying to go back and forth and and uh we were able to do this and it's being sold right now at walmart and other places and it's been worth several million dollars so we here's another one