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Cisco-Eagle: born of
material handling innovation
A customer-focused,
employee-owned provider of material handling systems, equipment, and
services
Cisco-Eagle was born in 1970 when Warren Gandall,
a material handling specialist for an industrial supply company, went into business for himself.
Mr. Gandall had a vision of
creating a chain of material handling distribution companies in
the Southwest. In partnership with one of the company's
first vendors, Eagle Material Handling was born.
There were only three
employees in the beginning, and just a few vendor partners. The
first month, they took eight orders--slightly over $8,000 in
sales. But the company thrived and grew. Within the next couple of years, Eagle expanded to an
office in Oklahoma City and a sales representative in Little
Rock, Arkansas.
In the beginning, there was no
forklift. Trucks were unloaded by hand. Warren installed a lot of
rack and shelving. He said with a laugh "that was enough to
last me the rest of my life." One particular installation
stuck in his mind. At 6:30 p.m., New Year’s Eve, 1970, a
truckload of rack showed up. The shipment was late, so in order
to get the material installed to the customer’s
satisfaction, they had to unload the truck by hand, reload the
material on their own truck, and take it out for installation on
New Year’s Day. It took six hours to unload that truck.
A
gamble that paid off
1974 was a breakthrough year for Eagle. In June of 1974, a
group of employees bought Eagle from its original parent company. At this
point, Warren invited his lifelong friend Bill Cupps
to join the company. According to Warren, he told Bill "I
know you like to gamble…have I got a gamble for you!"
The gamble worked, and the company grew. In 1975 Eagle Material
Handling opened its Little Rock office.
Eagle grew by leaps and bounds.
Along with all that growth, came change. "Change is
unavoidable," Warren said. "You change or you
stagnate." In the beginning, Eagle sold material handling
equipment, but also sold industrial lift trucks. In 1978, Eagle decided to stop selling lift trucks and focus on the
"allied lines" that lift truck houses considered
secondary to their business - equipment like racks, shelving, and other
warehouse storage equipment.
 Looking
to the future
In 1981, conveyor
was quickly becoming the company’s focus - and remains so to this day.
Mr. Gandall believed that in
order to sell conveyor properly, one had to have systems & design
capabilities as well as a top conveyor manufacturer like Hytrol Conveyors.
Enter Victor Leonard. He was Eagle's
first Systems and Design employee, and eventual vice president of
engineering. Eagle’s first large integrated system was a $1
million distribution center for convenience store chain QuikTrip.
Like most companies at the time, Eagle didn’t have CAD machines, or any personal
computers. This didn't matter, even if it seems primitive by today's standards.
Mr. Leonard was not only the engineer on the project, he was
also the draftsman. There were 8-10 subsystems on this project.
Every drawing produced was done by hand. There were probably 25
revisions to each drawing. Today, Cisco-Eagle executes a constant
stream of projects larger than that first large system, utilizing
a well-equipped team of project managers, engineers and design
personnel. Adapting to the demands of customers was always
the idea.
In 1985, Eagle Material Handling
formed a holding company and purchased Dallas-based Cisco
Material Handling. Cisco had been in business since 1959, doing
largely the same kind of projects Eagle Material Handling had
done. They started with a rotary dial telephone system and five
outside salesmen. There were no computers, no inside sales
support, no systems support. Today, Cisco-Eagle's Dallas facility
is pure state-of-the-art in both technology and personnel.
At this point, the company had
stocking warehouses in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Dallas. The
current Little Rock office was acquired in 1988.
Continued
growth
In April of 2000, Steven W.
Strifler was named Cisco-Eagle's new President. "This
change gives Warren the ability and opportunity to focus on the strategic growth
and strategic direction of the company without the clutter of operational
responsibilities," Strifler said. "Our growth and success demands a
more structural arrangement and this was the next strategic step in providing
that structure for the company's continued success, and to create a management
structure to carry us into the new century."
In 1995, the two companies Eagle Material Handling and
Cisco Material Handling merged to become Cisco-Eagle, Inc.
Employee Owned, Managed, and Operated
In March 2001, Cisco-Eagle made the
transition to an employee-owned company. Cisco-Eagle's employees own 70%
of the company. With a firm culture of ownership, creativity and
empowerment, the company is poised for a bright future.
Cisco-Eagle started with what has
been described as "a whole band of mavericks." Each
person brings unique strengths to the job…and it works.
From a handful of outside salesmen to a company with dozens of
vendor partners, over 100 employees in four states, and a
reputation in the industry as one of the most progressive
material handling systems integrators in the nation, Cisco-Eagle
has challenged itself and serviced its customers for thirty
years.
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