History of TM Shea Products

Over the past years many people have asked me: “How did you get involved in the merchandising display business?” Well, like any business there is always a spark that lights the fire of success. In high school I started a house painting business. One of my biggest frustrations with the job was removing paint from glass. To help with this task I invented a small holder for a single edge razor blade that was not only great for window scraping but other cutter/scraper chores as well. I then patented and trademarked the Blade Ade®. When I was 20 years old I began selling the Blade Ade® to many national and regional chains across the country. To this date over 30 million have been sold.

All through my 20's I developed more cutting/scraping and painting tools along with importing other razor blade products. I eventually began producing these products in the neon color that has now become the standard in the hand tool industry. Not only was I involved in inventing, producing, ordering and selling these products I was also interested in how these products were merchandised.

As many manufacturers know, it can be extremely difficult to get placement in a retailer's P.O.G. so I started to focus on how I could merchandise my products by utilizing unused air space on plan-o-grams for permanent merchandising whether it be in-line or crossed over to another area/department. I wanted something that would hold more products and be more durable than the standard clip strips or cardboard floor displays. I went on to develop what I call the AMMO Bar Display ( A djustable M ounting M erchandising O utrigger). When I presented my line of blade products to buyers and retailers they said; “Tom, we like your hand tools but we love your display fixture...can we buy those separately?” The three questions that immediately came out of my mouth were; how many? What color? And when do you want them shipped?

From that point on I realized that there was a need in the marketplace for merchandising displays that captured dead air space for promotional in-line sales and permanent secondary opportunities. I began developing additional displays for off wall, off shelf, off gondola end cap side rails, etc.

I look back on my beginnings with a sense of pride and gratitude that a simple house-painting job sparked my creative instincts and landed me in the fire of the merchandising display industry. For the past 7 years I have been on a rampage developing and patenting all types of permanent and semi permanent promotional display fixtures and I am not done yet. If a customer has a challenging display need that I can't fill with one of our many displays I will create a new one!

I will always have “Ideas for Space”.

Sincerely, Thomas M. Shea, President