Discover Crain

Crain Enterprises, Inc., (formerly known as the Mound City Warehouse Company), was established in 1945 by three businessmen as a commodities warehousing business. The warehousing activities were eventually replaced by manufacturing and during its early years, one of the founders, Joe Crain, acquired complete ownership of the company. By the mid-1950’s, Joe surprised everyone when he developed and introduced the company’s first manufactured product. The surprise was understandable, as Joe was a prominent attorney and judge, and few realized that he also had an interest and talent in technical product innovation.

Having observed utility workers engage in the then common, but dangerous practice of using metal tapes to measure the heights of overhead cables, Joe was determined to find a safer and more convenient alternative. With this inspiration, Joe Crain invented, developed, manufactured, and introduced a non-conductive fiberglass telescoping measuring rod. Joe's safer non-conductive fiberglass measuring tools quickly gained acceptance. Early customers included telephone companies, power utilities, and automatic fire sprinkler companies.

Nancy Crain Nelson with an SVR Series leveling rod-Click to enlarge

James’s sister, Nancy Crain (now Nancy Nelson), was also active in the company. In fact, she made the first direct customer contacts and sold the very first product, a measuring rod to an automatic sprinkler company. In 1979, Nancy became active in the company on a full-time basis in the role of Marketing Manager. In this capacity, Nancy increased Crain’s presence in the national marketplace. She was responsible for the development and production of many of the brochures and other advertising pieces utilized. Nancy made numerous sales trips, personally visiting many of Crain’s 500 plus dealers. These dealer contacts were crucial to Crain's market growth, as almost all of Crain's sales are made directly to dealers, in parallel to the sales and distribution of major instrument producers. Nancy served as Marketing Manager until her departure in 1993. Even today, many of Crain’s customers recall Nancy’s contacts and visits.

Under Steve’s ownership and leadership, Crain’s organization evolved significantly as he assembled a highly motivated and skilled management Team, capable of developing and sustaining outstanding performance. Crain's management team then developed a very forward-thinking strategic plan, along with a practical set of principles and values, known as our Core Practices. The management team, guided by Crain's strategic plans and defined practices, set the organization in motion, systematically executing a complete re-engineering of the company, molding a new culture and embarking on a mission of aggressive, but sustainable, process-based, managed growth and improvement. And today, Crain's strategic plans and core practices remain living components of our company, our process, and our culture.

Total Customer Satisfaction is Crain’s primary goal and engine for our growth. Crain's Response Center is established, and has, for years, consistently shipped over 98% of orders within 24 hours. This is quite a feat even before you consider the fact that over 1/3rd of these orders are also private labeled or customized! Proven over time, Crain's excellence in customer service performance stands in stark contrast to that of its competitors. Crain's culture and process enables the company to deliver world-class service and maintain strong personal customer relationships, as an ongoing routine practice.

As part of Crain’s plans, our Design and Innovation initiatives have accelerated significantly, and as a result, Crain now has more products that were developed after the ownership consolidation than existed prior to it. Many of these new products are revolutionary in design, and deliver real customer benefits. In fact, Crain has obtained or has pending patents on over 30 independent innovations related solely to these new products.

The same pace of growth can be found in Crain’s Manufacturing processes, as well. Recently, Crain has added manufacturing technologies including CNC machining, CNC turning, injection molding and electrostatic powder coating to its in-house resources. Additionally, Crain has broadened its materials spectrum significantly, now including special high-strength aluminum alloys and advanced carbon fiber composites and thermoplastics.

In January of 2008, Crain was acquired by Trimble Navigation Limited, a leader in systems for positioning, including GPS, lasers, optics and software solutions specific to customers' needs..