LIVERMORE FALLS – A new video on the production of pallets at PalletOne of Maine, New England’s largest manufacturer of hardwood pallets and shipping containers, is boosting sales, an official said.

“We have seen an increase in regards to new prospects,” Scott Caron, vice president of sales and marketing at PalletOne of Maine, said Tuesday. “The video has been a tremendous sales tool for us.”

“More than half of the new accounts we have landed this year were closed using the video,” Greg Cutler, Northeast regional sales manager, said in a press release issued by Sustainable Forest Futures.

PalletOne Inc., formerly known as Isaacson Lumber Co., is growing sales and securing new customers with the help of the new video that illustrates the production capabilities at its Livermore Falls facility, according to the press release.

PalletOne operates in 17 locations in 11 states and employs more than 1,300 people.

People who pass by the Livermore Falls site daily get a firsthand look at the logging trucks coming and going from the more than 20-acre wood lot on Route 133. They get to see the wood as it’s loaded onto logging trucks from the piles of logs and then driven across the street to be placed on a conveyor belt. The finished product is also visible if people catch a look at one of the tractor-trailers loaded with pallets or some inventory stacked outside.

About 150 workers are employed at the Livermore Falls plant.

“Until seeing the new video, many of our customers didn’t know how big we are or how interesting the process is,” Cutler said. “Having the capability to manufacture over 100 truckloads of pallets per week is quite unique in North America. A picture is worth a thousand words.”

The video project began last year when the company’s sales team decided it was time to create a better way to show customers how a modern sawmill operates so they could better understand the scope of the operation and expertise it has on had to meet customers’ needs.

PalletOne staff attended a marketing workshop in Augusta presented by the Regional Wood Products Consortium and subsequently received financial assistance from Sustainable Forest Futures to support a portion of the video production costs.

“The goal of the workshop was to introduce innovations that could help companies develop new marketing strategies to recover from a down economy,” Collin Miller, director of wood products initiatives for Sustainable Forest Futures, said.

Cutler said, “Customers immediately understand we’re the right company for them once they see our production processes, professional approach and the ‘bricks and mortar’ that make up our manufacturing operation. The end result is that we’ve added about 20 percent to our revenue line this year and credit the video for much of this. Seeing it is just so much more powerful than saying it.”

The video was filmed and produced by Zack Wray of WrayMerica Media.

Isaacson Lumber, Pallet One’s Maine mill, was founded by Sonny Isaacson in 1945 and is in its second generation of operation by the Isaacson family.

Isaacson’s merged with PalEx Inc. in 1998, which later became PalletOne Inc., headquartered in Bartow, Fla., in 2001.

The mill is “consistently ranked in the top 20 hardwood producing mills in the nation and acquires hardwood logs from more than 7.5 million acres of local forestland,” according to the release. “Over 90 percent of the logs originate from forest managed under one or more sustainable forestry certifications.”

dperry@sunjournal.com

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