Karen: This is the PKF Texas: The Entrepreneur’s Playbook® and I’m Karen Love, the host and cofounder. Today I’m here with Jeff Applegate, the President of Blackwell Plastics, and the Chairman of the Greater Houston Manufacturing Association. Welcome to the Playbook® Jeff.
Jeff: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Karen: Fantastic. So I would like to start off by finding out what in the world is the GHMA?
Jeff: The GHMA is the Greater Houston Manufacturing Association. And Houston, you may be surprised to know, is the number one manufacturing city in the United States with over 250,000 jobs.
Karen: Wow 250,000 jobs. Well, amazing.
Jeff: Amazing and even more amazing is we did not have a manufacturing association or no network to bring us together.
Karen: It is. It is amazing. So you have put this organization together. And how would a manufacturer become a part of this association?
Jeff: Well we have four networking events a year. Those are primary events where we showcase manufacturers in the City of Houston. But we also promote a lot of other manufacturing. If there’s anything that’s going on in manufacturing in the City of Houston we want to promote it. We don’t want to be another organization. We want to be an organization that brings all the organizations together. So we’re not out there trying to compete for other things or other events. We’re trying to just bring everybody together. So if they could, go to our website which is www.houston-mfg.com they can get information about it and from there they could come to one of the events.
Karen: Well I’ll tell you what I would love to have you back in the future to talk a little bit more about that ’cause it’s very interesting and we need to have more details I think.
Jeff: Certainly. I’d be happy to.
Karen: Thank you for sharing that. This has been another Thought Leader production brought to you by PKF Texas: The Entrepreneur’s Playbook®. So tune in next week for another chapter.