Tried and true product
By Bobbi Mlynar
Originally published 09:40 a.m., June 7, 2008
Updated 09:40 a.m., June 7, 2008
Kevin Swint is taking aim at a broader marketplace in the United States and Canada.
Swint is president of American Aimers, a company that manufactures headlight aligning equipment that has been in existence here in one form or another for about 50 years.
Swint’s company purchased the assets of Wall Industries, 3529 W. Sixth Ave., on May 15; Wall had purchased the Hoppy headlamp aimer rights from Hopkins Manufacturing in November 2005. The Hoppy name came along with the assets from Wall, and Swint has an agreement with Hopkins to continue using the name in American Aimers’ marketing.
“In the industry, the Hoppy is known for quality and dependability, so the name was very important for us to maintain,” said Swint, who went to work as president of American Aimers on May 27.
The headlight aimer is a product specifically identified with driving safety in several states and in Canada, and license plates cannot be issued until drivers meet requirements for headlight-alignment checks.
“Twelve states require you to have (checks) before tagging,” Swint said. “In Canada, they have approximately 15,000 inspection stations across the country, so that’s going to be one of our really key areas to try and get into.”
The number of major manufacturers of aimers is limited, with two — including the Hoppy aimer — in the United States and one in Spain.
“Spain tries to market their product in Canada as well, under a different name,” Swint said.
The selling point for American Aimers, in addition to the Hoppy name, is the fact that they are made in America.
“We’ve had a great response from the reps on our name because ‘made in America’ is very important,” Swint said. “... We’re hoping to add on improvements to the existing equipment to gain an even stronger edge.”
And American Aimers very well could crank down “made in America” to “made in Emporia.”
The company uses only local manufacturers to machine the parts that go into the aimers. Glendo, Kansa, BPE, Hopkins, and Mast Engineering are among the local companies that make parts for American Aimers.
“It just helps everybody out,” Swint said of the arrangement. The company tries to use “as many local businesses as possible, and they’ve all been great to deal with.”
Swint himself resigned from his job at Kansa to take over operation of American Aimers.
The small workforce at the Aimers plant produces about three units per day. The aimers come in several styles, from a hand-held basic aimer — much like Hoppy’s earlier products — to sophisticated, stand-alone “optical” aimers like the Hoppy Vision 100, with technical equipment that aligns headlamps precisely to targets inside, and tests the alignments with laser beams.
“Vision 100’s more user-friendly, less time is involved,” Swint said of the 100’s operation.
He is optimistic that product sales soon will begin increasing, and is taking a measured approach to marketing and production as he establishes a baseline for the new company.
“You’ve got to constantly look at cost to be competitive, and this industry is definitely competitive,” Swint said. “Right now, we’re going to stay as lean as possible until we understand what our target is per month, things like that.”
Company representatives currently sell the aimers to about 140 distributors and will train the buyers across the country as needed.
“We have about 12 representatives that handle the distributors,” he said. “They’re basically our sales force. They set up the distributors.”
After the sales ultimately are made to the end users — body shops and vehicle repair garages — the representatives are available to provide training to ensure operators are qualified to use the equipment. Instructions and videos for use also are available.
“Normally what happens is that the end user will contact the representative in that territory and they’ll actually come take it out of the box and train on it,” Swint said.
The aimers are, after all, intended to promote safety and sight on darkened highways.
Checking headlamps to make sure road vibrations or accidents have not skewed alignment is just another way for vehicles to become safer.
“Some of the insurance companies really push it,” Swint said. “