The NFIB member owns Electric Time Company, Inc., a firm that designs, maintains and repairs street and tower clocks.
Name: Tom Erb
Business: Electric Time Company, Inc.
Employees: 35
Location: Medfield, Massachusetts
We all know the saying: Time flies when you’re having fun. That rings true for small business owner Tom Erb. The NFIB member owns Electric Time Company, Inc., a firm that designs, maintains and repairs street and tower clocks. The over-a-century old business takes pride in creating clocks for each continent, except for Antarctica—something they’re still working on. Erb reflects on how times have changed and how his company has continued to stay in the present.
What’s an interesting challenge you’ve faced in this particular industry?
In 2007, daylight savings time changed. We’ve been a part of 5,000 controls across the United States and Canada. So, we actually had to update all of our clients’ software. That was quite an adventure.
Walk me through the creative process behind designing a clock for a potential client.
Sometimes, [the clients] have a general idea of what they’re looking for, and we can help them fill it into something practical. For instance, we did a project in Denver, Colorado for The Brown Palace Hotel. They wanted a special clock for some sort of special date, a ceremony, for that hotel—might have been a 100-year or something like that.
We looked at historical literature, and we worked back and forth to figure out what they wanted. We worked up some sketches, and they generally approved it. We were able to estimate it, and we fabricated it, shipped it. They installed it.
Or some city or town may have an event…and they want to do something special for their town. We have some standardized Victorian street clocks, and in a lot of cases, a town committee would purchase the clock.
Most of the clocks you’ve worked with date back to the 1920s. How have you and your business maintain repairs with older models? And how do you update new ones?
Yeah, like the one in Wrigley Field [in Chicago] is from 1941, which is 75 years ago now. We still have parts for the old equipment. We’re very, very proud of the fact that Wrigley Field can call us up and say, ‘We need a part for this.’ And we still have the part.
But our newer clocks are controlled by an electronic control that can handle daylight savings time and power outages. But if we have a clock in the tower that’s been there for 70 years, we don’t want to rip it out. So, we even have equipment for the control side of it. Our clocks are set by GPS satellite that goes around the earth.
What about dealing with various weather conditions?
We did a project in Thompson, Manitoba. We had to plan for -56 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the coldest temperature there. We’ve done some work in the Middle East where the temperature there is 120-130 degrees. We have testing chambers here in our factory to make sure things work well in the cold and in the warm.
What do you enjoy the most as a small business owner in this particular industry?
Just the diversity of tasks I do and the great staff and clients I work with. It’s fun. Every day that I come into work, it’s something’s different. You’re not pigeon-holed into doing only one thing all the time. In our case, our projects are a lot of fun, and it’s usually a part of a major project. So, we pay a lot of attention to it.
What would you say is your favorite project?
Uh-oh, that’s like saying who’s my favorite kid. Well, a recent favorite one—there’s a project out in Reno, Nevada restoring [a clock]. It was built in the 1930s, and there was a lot of historical questions regarding its origin. So, we worked with the donor and the city. And we actually figured out when it was built, and it was all custom metal fabrication. So, we restored it back to its original. And I was on sight when it was shipped; we helped get it crated.
We also restored a beautiful cast bronze desk clock in New York City in a place called Madison Square. We also did one for this watch store Tourneau, and that was quite a project.
What advice would you offer to up-and-coming small business owners?
Do what you enjoy, and as a small business, it really takes quite a lot of perseverance. You gotta keep doing it and fighting it.
What’s it like to handle a small business in Massachusetts, and how does your experience influence your decision to be a part of NFIB?
It’s tough to operate in Massachusetts. It’s tough to be a small business and deal with all the regulations. Sometimes, the conflicting state and federal regulation can be a problem for us, too.
As a small business [owner], you just have to learn to fight through them. Especially in my state, NFIB is one of the reasons I got involved, too. They’re very good for small businesses and paying attention to laws that get passed. A lot of laws get passed with good intentions, but sometimes, the secondary effect is tough on small businesses.
