Acquisition will extend Grapplers’ product line

Jay Thiessens, owner of Grapplers Inc. in Sparks, each year sells about 13,000 of the extended-reach tools favored by parks and highway workers for picking up trash. Last week Thiessens added a product that holds trash bags open to the Grapplers product line.

Grapplers acquired the assets of the Bagringer Corporation from Walter Thomason of Thomason Enterprises of Bangs, Texas. Financial details weren’t disclosed by the privately held companies.

Thiessens says Thomason had been considering selling the Bagringer business line for several years, and Thiessens had always envisioned the product as a complement to the Grapplers line.

The acquisition includes the bagringer.com Web site, product line and tooling to make the bag ringer. Thiessens has not yet decided if he will move manufacturing operations to Sparks — Thiessens is the founder of machining and sheet metal manufacturing shop B&J Inc. in Sparks.

“If we have it made in Texas we will have to have it shipped here; however there are assembly operations on it that will be done here at B&J,” Thiessens says.

Thiessens figures he’ll include some of the older bag ringers with larger purchases of the Grappler tool to help promote the product and increase its exposure.

Thiessens founded B&J Inc in 1973. He moved from an 18,000-square-foot facility on Deming Way after the building flooded in 1997 into a 54,000-square foot facility that fronts Interstate 80 just east of the Nugget.

NNBW staff