Show-and-tell to be key for Reno HQ of equipment maker

For a while, the most important space at the new MB America Inc. corporate headquarters in South Meadows is likely to be the vacant lot out back.

The company, which quickly outgrew two office locations in Reno in 18 months before moving to space it bought at 8730 Technology Way a few days ago, needs potential buyers to see its equipment in operation, says Chief Executive Officer Miriano Ravazzolo.

And the new location a 1,900-square-foot office building on about two acres gives MB America space for demonstrations out back while sales teams and marketing teams are working nearby.

Owned by MB SpA of Vincenza, Italy, MB America markets a line of excavator attachments with an internal hydraulic jaw-crusher system.

The company's pitch to contractors, highway builders and demolition companies: The combination of an excavation bucket with an internal crusher allows a single equipment operator to recycle demolished materials on the spot.

For instance, Ravazzolo says, a highway contractor that wants to reuse material from a old concrete roadway today often demolishes the material with an excavator, trucks the concrete chunks to a crusher fixed in place, then trucks the crushed material back to the place where it will be used.

The MB crusher buckets attach to any excavator of nine tons or up and allow the demolition and crushing operations to be finished in one location.

"The problem is that people don't know what a crushing attachment is," says Ravazzolo. "And the construction industry needs time before embracing new concepts".

MB Crushers carry price tags ranging from $50,000 to $100,000, and construction contractors these days are holding tight to every dollar. Ravazzolo is confident, however, that MB America can convince construction executives that the crusher systems make good business sense and a significant return on the investment but only after they see the systems in operation.

The company has developed a dealer network across the United States. But because those dealers carry MB products as a sideline to their primary heavy-equipment business, the company recognizes that it will need to do much of the heavy lifting in sales by itself.

Its team of nine at the new Reno office the company added four staffers this autumn handles sales and sales support, working from a sophisticated customer-relationship management software with about 150,000 potential sales contacts.

Potential customers will get a first-hand look at the equipment in operation at Reno or locations in Pennsylvania and Texas where MB America keeps systems in stock.

Ravazzolo expects MB America to follow a path similar to its parent company in Europe. There, the company spent a couple of years patiently educating the construction industry, then saw sales boom to nearly 10,000 units in the past eight years.

Today, the market for crushing attachments in Europe is sufficiently robust that four competitors have entered the business but MB SpA still maintains a 91 percent share of the market.

The company's decision to locate its American headquarters in Reno reflects a victory by Ravazzolo in a prior job.

He is as well the unpaid trade representative for the Nevada Commission on Economic Development, looking to build links between companies in Italy and Nevada.

Among the companies with which he worked was MB SpA, which was convinced of the business advantages of basing its headquarters in Nevada, liked the proximity of Reno to big markets in California, and delighted in the nearby recreational opportunities of the Sierra Nevada.

"This is a great place to live," Ravazzolo says.