T-REX is one big beast.
Peering from each side of the 75-foot-long black semi-trailer truck is the glinting yellow eye of tyrannosaurus rex.
Inside is no display of dusty dinosaur bones, but rather a mobile classroom focused on metal finishing processes.
The brainchild of Minden-based Metalast International, Inc., T-REX, the Touring Research and Educational eXhibit, is on a three-year long nationwide tour of Fortune 500 companies.
Both concept and creative was the work of David Semas,Metalast chief executive officer and Greg Semas, vice -president of sales and marketing, who recalls,"We needed to get something out there.
It's gotta be catchy."
Mobility Resource Associates in Detroit built the mobile exhibit."Because MRA is so highly experienced, the project went off without a hitch," he says.
T-REX costs $500,000 a year for care and feeding.
But Metalast got sponsorships both regional and national.
"We're generating a lot of interest from people who want to be associated with it, because we go in front of Fortune 500 companies," says Semas.
T-REX is kept on the run by a team of three who work up to three months in advance of a booking.A researcher finds companies to visit.A scheduler makes contact and wrangles an invitation.A coordinator makes it happen.
So far this year 3,000 people at 300 companies have cozied up to T-REX.
A busy beast, it visits one, sometimes two companies a day.
By tour end, says Semas, the display will have reached a few thousand companies, plus universities.
The mobile classroom features an hourlong program shown on 63-inch plasma screens, plus an automated replica of a metal finishing process line.Visitors with technical questions can talk to an engineer at the Metalast Tech Center in Nevada via live satellite linkup.
It seats and feeds 36 and is even equipped with kitchen and restroom facilities.
The tour goal is to promote products and improve knowledge of metal finishing techniques, says Semas.
People ask,What is anodizing.Why do we get so many rejects? Finishing makes metal parts harder, abrasion resistant and less prone to corrosion.
Information and photos are at the Web site trex.
metalast.com.
Metalast and the T-REX Solutions Providers Tour received the Silver Ex Award for Best Mobile Business to Business Marketing Program presented by Event Marketer Magazine.Metalast was competing against 375 entries including Shell Oil and Olympus America.
The educational tour also builds the bottom line.
"We had a 12-seat classroom at the Minden facility," says Semas,"where we got 30 to 40 visitors a year.Now we can visit 50 people a day."
He says Metalast follows up each presentation "with a very soft sales call.We've been extremely successful in translating the visit into interest." Metalast sells product at all price levels, from a small quantity of chemicals, to a computer system that controls processing tanks to a full production line, he says.
It will also educate a company on anodizing, train employees and do everything to help a company that wants to bring process in house.
Metalast relocated in 1995 from southern California to a 17,000-square-foot facility in the Meridian Business Park, where it employs 35.
The chromium-based process licensed to Metalast is new, developed by the U.S.
Department of Defense.
Environmentally benign, it has the potential to replace the industry's leading, but highly toxic, hexavalent chromium coating, which has been in use worldwide for over half a century, says Sjon Westre, vice-president of technical support.
Hex is already banned in Europe.
The U.S.
automotive industry must meet a directive to get rid of it by June 2006.
Metalast was invited to speak this year at an OSHA hearing on hexavalent chromium.
OSHA has made no final ruling but, says Semas,"The writing's on the wall."
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