Episode 2: John Karamanos (HVAC Manufacturing)

In this episode, manufacturing tech exec John Karamanos enthusiastically shares how a move five years ago from Silicon Valley to East Texas rapidly accelerated his company’s innovation and growth. Before the move, HVAC Manufacturing employed around 15 employees. Now the company employs over 100 people and has expanded three times in its new Texas home.

Karamanos and his wife and co-founder, Stella, have seen their company grow as quickly and efficiently as their easy freeway commutes. Not being stuck in traffic any longer is a handy analogy for what’s happened for the family and company, too.

“We are innovating more in East Texas than we were in Silicon Valley,” Karamanos says, pointing to how the tremendous savings from overall cost of doing business allowed them to reinvest in the company’s R&D capabilities, bring most of those functions in house and now bring new technologies and products to customers much faster. The savings have also allowed them to invest more in their people, which he loves because they’ve found such talented, hard-working people to grow the team.

“There’s no way in hell we could have done this in California,” he says. “What’s amazing is we did this with no outside investment. We did it all just basically taking the profits and reinvesting it back into it. Plus, the other thing that’s really good is we came here and we’ve paid full benefits for everybody … a Cadillac plan for medical, dental, everything. It allowed us to come here and be competitive and get really good people.”

Karamanos shares these and many other advantages to living and doing business in Texas with Super Dave Quinn, CEcD of Day One Experts’ Texas Economic Development Connection.

Special thanks to our sponsor for this episode Lisa Denton and the team at Palestine Economic Development Corporation in Palestine, Texas.

D1Experts: https://D1Experts.com
Texas ED Connection: https://TexasEDConnection.com
Episode Sponsor: Https://Palestinetexas.net
HVAC Manufacturing: http://www.hvacmfg.com/