In our last newsletter we focused on the great folks that make up our North American sales team. Therefore this month we wanted to share with you some more information on the facilities and capabilities that the sales team have at their disposal in North America.
North American Headquarters and Factory – Knoxville, TN
TOMCAT was originally founded in Texas in the 1980s, however in 2013, not long after becoming part of the Area Four Industries group of companies, TOMCAT relocated to their current location in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Geographically Knoxville is ideally located to serve our customers in the Eastern and Central time zones with major markets such as Florida and the major population centers of the Atlantic Coast all within a day’s drive of this Eastern Tennessee city of approximately 190,000 people. Knoxville has a rich tradition of truss manufacturing with James Thomas Engineering, now a sister company to TOMCAT, originally beginning manufacturing in the city back in 1990. In 2014 James Thomas Engineering also became part of Area Four Industries and production of both truss products were merged into the current Knoxville production facility situated around five miles east of the city center.
The Knoxville building includes 60,000 square feet of indoor production, warehouse and office space as well as a large outdoor staging and “test build” area. Both TOMCAT and James Thomas Engineering products are manufactured in Knoxville through a state-of-the-art welding line and through supporting production departments such as the saw department and the CNC machine shop. As well as full production capabilities this location also supports the majority of the companies’ administration tasks with the finance, design and HR departments also located under this one roof. Our east coast sales team also get to call Knoxville home.
As well as providing resources for both TOMCAT and James Thomas Engineering this facility also serves as the North American Headquarters for TOMCAT’s other sister company, Area Four Industries America, who represent the sale and support of the other brands within the group to the North American market.
West Coast Sales Office and Warehouse – Thousand Oaks, CA
Although TOMCAT massively improved its ability to serve its eastern customers due to its move to Tennessee in 2013, the company also new that in turn this would make it harder to support its western and centrally based customers. Therefore in 2017 plans were put in place to find a west coast facility that could provide more localized support for those customers and allow TOMCAT and James Thomas Engineering to have multiple warehouses and a sales team at their desk for a combined twelve hours per day. This plan came to fruition in January 2018 when we were very proud to open the approximately 25,000 square foot facility in Thousand Oaks, California.
Thousand Oaks sits on the border of Ventura & Los Angeles Counties and is less than an hour’s drive from the major production centers in Burbank and Hollywood. Further afield Las Vegas, San Francisco, Phoenix and tens of millions of people sit within a day’s drive of this location.
With all North American manufacturing being done in Knoxville, the CA location focuses purely on carrying large stocks of the most popular products and provides a base for our west coast sales team. However this facility is unique in that it also houses the companies’ first purpose designed training facility with a forty-person capacity training room in-house. This resource got its first use in March 2020 when the industry famous five-day TOMCAT U training event was held in California for the first time. Obviously all of us at TOMCAT can’t wait to get back to in-person training and getting much more use out of this facility as soon as health regulations allow.
Just as the Knoxville location serves “double-duty” so does the California operation with the Area Four Industries America brands also being serviced out of this location.
TOMCAT & JTE