Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

Thankfully we moved a lot of our excess inventory yesterday, as well as our new servers, rack, bench displays, and some of the lesser used data recovery equipment. We also had all of our phone and data cabling installed as well as our ambient sound system. Today we finish moving everything and tomorrow the phones and data change over.

While we will be live in the new space tomorrow, our grand opening will not be for another week or two. There is still a lot of work to get done, and we are all tired and sore but man is it worth it!

Scaling from one computer repair service center at Schrock Innovations to two was a logistical challenge, but for the most part it involved duplicating systems we already had in place. Now that Schrock is adding a third Service Center in Papillion, NE we are finding that simply doing what has worked in the past will […]

Schrock Innovations announced today that Tim Meyer has been hired to assist in the development of the company’s growing web services division.

Tim had been working with Schrock for the past several months as a contractor, but earned a permanent position with the organization after demonstrating mastery of a wide range of skills.

“It is really rare to find a single person who can do it all,” Thor Schrock, CEO of Schrock Innovations said. “Tim can code with the best of them, crack a quick graphic when he needs to and still have time to return calls, assist clients, and keep everything rolling.”

Schrock Innovations is pursuing an intense web development schedule in 2011 that includes items such as:

• Development of video tutorial products
• Beta testing a new work flow management system
• Aggressively pursuing local hosting clients who are being undeserved
• Increasing the frequency and quality of communications with existing clients
• Refining Schrock’s existing web design packages to improve service levels

Welcome aboard Tim! You have a lot of work to do 🙂

Schrock Innovations will be offering some amazing deals starting this Friday and going all weekend along through Sunday at both Schrock Innovations locations.

A couple days ago I was on KMTV Channel 3 in Omaha to talk about the great Black Friday Weekend deals at Schrock.

You can read all about the details and get the specifications on the computers in our Black Friday Weekend Event circular.

Some of the items on special include:

• Preventative Maintenance Checkups only $29.99 (regular price $70)
• Norton 360 Installed and Warrantied only $79.99 (regularly $150 – 25 per Service Center)
• Compaq notebook computers only $399 (3 available per Service Center)
• Ultimate Upgrade 2011 Special only $399 (10 available per Service Center)
• $100 off the 2010 Holiday Special Desktop PC (only 16 left per Service Center)
• Free $10 gift card for every $50 gift card you purchase

You can also purchase the discounted Maintenance Checkups or the discounted Norton 360 installation as a certificate. They make a great stocking stuffer and they all display the full retail price of the item. They are redeemable after Christmas 2010 and are an outstanding value!

You can purchase certificates by phone. Click here for the number of the Service Center nearest you.

What is the Ultimate Upgrade?

The Ultimate Upgrade is a special computer that we typically only offer once each year in the spring. With the Ultimate Upgrade you trade in your old, tired computer for a brand new Modular PC for only $399.

For the Black Friday sale we are offering the 2011 Ultimate Upgrade model, which is almost identical to our X3 model that retails at $799.

As you can see, it is an amazing deal that will not last long. There are only 10 available per Service Center.

We are allowing orders by phone on this item. Please understand that we will answer phones as quickly as we can, but we are expecting a massive response Friday morning.

You don’t trade in your old computer until your new one is ready, and no old parts are used in the construction of your new PC.

I am going to be on the KMTV Channel 3 in Omaha during Monday’s Morning Blend program to talk about some of the best Black Friday tech shopping tips and to highlight some of the amazing things Schrock has on special next weekend.

I have been watching all of the Black Friday leaked ads to find out where the best deals are, what time you need to be there and how many of them will be available.

If you are not the get-up-early type, we are also going to tell you about some amazing deals that Schrock Innovations will have all weekend long – starting Black Friday through November 28th.

Unlike the box stores, we don’t get a kick out of watching our customers freeze in the cold for hours just to have a 1 in 100 shot at a sale item that is over-hyped and under-stocked.

Schrock’s Lincoln and Omaha Service Centers will both be opening at our normal business hours (10am to 8pm Friday and Saturday and Sunday noon-5pm).

You can expect some amazing deals including:

• Compaq notebooks for only $399.99 (3 available per Service Center)
• Ultimate Upgrade Desktop Computers for only $399 (10 available per Service Center)
• Norton 360 Installed and Warrantied for only $79.99 (25 per Service Center)
• $10 in FREE Gift Cards for Every $50 You Buy
• PC Preventative Maintenance Checkups for Only $29.99 (all weekend long)
• $100 Instant Rebate off the 2010 Holiday Special Desktop PC
• Register to win a Free 3-night Branson Condo Stay

All of the Black Friday Weekend Event details will be posted online on the Schrock Innovations website. If you want to see the hardware firsthand (and you are in Omaha), be sure to tune into KMTV Channel 3 Monday morning at 9!

As tonight’s historic election results come in, Schrock Innovations thought it would be a great opportunity to run a commercial thanking our Lincoln customers for voting us Best of Lincoln for the 9th consecutive year.

This spot was actually the second shooting of the commercial. We shot the first attempt in the Lincoln Service Center but due to a camera error, we had to re-shoot the entire spot again. Because of schedule conflicts, we had to shoot it in our brand new Omaha Service Center.

The commercial will air on Lincoln’s Channel 8 throughout tonight’s coverage. Take a look at the spot below:

A couple months ago a member of the National Guard 1/209 RTI out of Camp Ashland asked us if we could spare a couple dead hard drives for a training exercise they were planning.

Schrock had a couple hard drives that had been wiped clean and were slated for destruction, so we donated them instead. I honestly thought they would blow them up or something, but what they ended up using them for was a whole lot more fun than that!

A few days ago we received this video and a beautiful plaque thanking Schrock for the donation.

In the video you will see the 3rd Platoon on an exercise to retrieve the data storage devices from a downed UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) in a hostile environment.

You can see the soldiers move into a protective formation around the objective before recovering the data storage device.

It was a real treat to get a surprise like this, and we are all happy that we were able to help our soldiers in a small way.

Each year Three Eagles Communications in Lincoln asks listeners of their 6 Lincoln, Nebraska radio stations to vote for who they consider the best local business in a number of categories.

Schrock Innovations is proud to announce that for the 9th consecutive year we have been voted the #1 independent computer repair company in Lincoln.

At Schrock we are always working to make sure each of our customers leaves our Service Center satisfied with the work we provided and happy to refer their friends and family to us in the future.

Knowing that so many listeners across many demographics, age groups, and stations all voted for our company is extremely humbling.

Awards are a great indicator of past performance, and we all know that we are only as good as our last customer’s service experience.

We promise to continue working hard to communicate better, develop cutting-edge products and solutions, and always keep sight of the fact that each customer who asks us to work on their computer is trusting us with a small piece of their lives.

Two months before our Omaha Service Center opened we started hiring new technicians to train in Lincoln. Some of those technicians worked out and some did not, but Joe Clark is proving to be a customer service go-to guy and just the kind of employee Schrock needs in Omaha.

Joe had a significant background in network cabling, operations management, and field repair experience at Qwest so we decided to bring him on board for a 90-day trial.

From day one Joe showed professionalism and the kind of concern for our customers’ satisfaction that a tech needs to have to succeed at Schrock Innovations.

Now that the Omaha Service Center is up and running you can find Joe helping customers on the phone, in their homes, and on our benches.

Welcome aboard Joe and thank you for your commitment to Schrock’s customers!

https://www.thorschrock.com/2009/01/31/schrock-innovations-opens-new-service-center-february-10/Sunday morning at 7:00 AM I took to the KFAB airwaves for our weekly Compute This radio show (available free on iTunes) to announce the opening of the Service Center that afternoon.

The show was awesome and I left the studio a little less nervous than when I got up that morning.

A Smashing Success!

We had over 100 people come in that Sunday (10/10/10 no less) and nearly all of them brought computers in for a discounted Preventative Maintenance Checkup.

The Omaha staff did a great job making everyone feel welcome, processing in the computers and making sure everyone got a helping from the Lovely Kimberly’s amazing cookie buffet.

In fact, 11 days later – after the glow of the grand opening had completely passed, our bench is STILL full with an average of 11 computers coming through the service center every day.

What is New in the Omaha Service Center?

In 2008 we built a state-of-the-art Service Center in Lincoln, NE. We got a lot of things right when we built that, but we also could have done a few things differently.

For example, we built the walls in the new Omaha Service Center all the way to the ceiling to help reduce echo, we shortened the distance from the front desk to the front door, and we leased two full bays – one for retail and service and another for repair.

The new configuration allowed us to install 40 bench spots (as opposed to Lincoln’s 26) – and thankfully so. As you can see in the picture above, the bench is full!

What’s Next for Schrock Innovations?

Now that Omaha is launched and moving I am working to catch up on things I have been neglecting (like this blog). We also have some big events coming up soon:

• Our 2010 Holiday Special
• Possibility of a Black Friday Sale
• Significant internal and external website updates
• A new software product that many of our customers have been asking us to make for years