“That’s where the rubber meets the road,” Verosky added, “separating the successful companies from the unsuccessful ones.” “Once you create the product, you always have to ask yourself, ‘Will the market accept it?’” Krygowski said. At that point, everyone knew in their heart of hearts that we were on to something and an automated sprayer could be a real winner.”Ĭoming up with a product concept is one thing commercializing it is something very different, however. “At first I was dubious, but after Phil explained what he was thinking, I thought, ‘That’s pretty cool.’ We did a quick patent search and realized there was nothing like it on the market. “Phil came into the office the next morning with this black box (the Power Pack X lithium-ion battery) and nothing else, because as an engineering geek that’s what he does,” Verosky says with a laugh. “I had been tinkering with the idea of creating a battery-powered mower, but when my wife mentioned she was frustrated with her sprayer, I thought why not attach a battery to the tank to pressurize the air automatically instead of pumping it up?” Schrum said.
#Green gorilla amarillo texas professional#
The genesis of the Green Gorilla professional spray system came about one day when Phil Schrum’s wife, a devoted gardener, expressed frustration about having to constantly pump up her compressed air sprayer to apply liquid fertilizer to plants. WHY PEST CONTROL? But how do three university-trained engineers with deep roots in the nuclear propulsion field and more than 70 years of combined industry experience end up developing a piece of pesticide application equipment - the Green Gorilla ProLine sprayer -for the professional pest control market? Like many entrepreneurial ventures, it was equal parts market opportunity and good timing, combined with a bit of kismet. “We wanted to create our own unique technology, commercialize it and bring it to market,” a long-term vision that won early support from the State of Pennsylvania with the award of a Ben Franklin Technology Partner Grant that helped fund the company’s early development.
“As engineers we like to tinker, and after working for someone else for so many years we wanted to create a business that would allow our own product ideas to come to fruition,” he said. However, after working in private industry for nearly a decade, Verosky joined forces with Chief Technology Officer Phil Schrum and Vice President of Products David Krygowski to form Forefront Engineering & Design in 1996, which would later spawn Forefront Product Design 10 years later. The Green Gorilla sprayer featuring Power Pack X with Smart Pressure Technology. “Our background was in nuclear engineering working on propulsion systems for nuclear subs and aircraft carriers,” observed CEO Mark Verosky, a native of the “City of Bridges” who graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in mechanical engineering. It is in the shadow of this impressive legacy that three former Westinghouse engineers - like the famed industrialist himself - pursued their entrepreneurial dreams two decades ago with the formation of Forefront Engineering & Design, renting office space in a repurposed industrial park on the grounds of George Westinghouse’s original factory in hardscrabble East Pittsburgh, Pa. Westinghouse, an accomplished engineer and acclaimed inventor, was responsible for the development and commercialization of AC-current, joining forces with Nikola Tesla to light the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and win a contract for construction of the first hydro-electric plant in Niagara Falls that would eventually lead to the electrification of the world. At the time, the “Steel City’s” growing prominence on the American stage was due in large part to the contributions of industrialist George Westinghouse and his inspired creation, the Westinghouse Electric Company. While Silicon Valley is considered the epicenter of innovation in the United States today, at the turn of the 20th century Pittsburgh was one of only a handful of North American cities that could justifiably claim that lofty position.
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