Bill Hannon on Competing with Nela Park

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I was an outside “large lamp”msalesman for Sylvania for ten years and a marketing manager for Philips for five years.

We always kept our eyes on the “General” and obviously followed the GE’s lead on pricing and products. I and my fellow lamp buddies

very often wondered what was so mystical about Nela Park when distributor management and sales people came back and raved about

how they were treated and what they had learned there.  

In the mid 90s I was with Aromat Corpration and we had to meet with GE’s lamp engineers concerning compatibility issues. Our meeting was at “Nela Park” and I looked forward to feeling and seeing the ‘legend”  established through my lamp years.

The meeting went great but I broke away from the group and called a couple of my former Sylvania and Philips colleagues saying-‘guess where I am” the questions started flying and I answered quickly before I had to write out a “competitive report” for the GE managers!  

I wish the best to my former competitors—we had a great time competing against them during the late 80’ssand 90s!

Bill Hannon

Eastern/Central Manager

Metalumen Manufacturing