10. Our customers. Your excitement for our fans continues to inspire us and drive us to create new, unique designs that will make a statement in your home.

9. Options. With myFanimation, we can all be designers and build the fan of our choice!

8. Good deals. See #10. Because we love our customers, we’re offering 20% off retail price on any Fanimation fan during our Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale! Valid at participating showrooms or online retailers between Nov. 20-29.

7. Our dealer network. The support of this nationwide network has helped make the Fanimation brand what it is today.

6. Our leadership. We love being part of a family-owned business that’s committed to its employees, the industry and customers. Plus, they support having a fun working environment!

5. The rich history of fans. Visit our Antique Fan Museum to see how fans have evolved over the years.

4. Our employees. They work hard and represent Fanimation well in all they do—from design, sales and distribution to customer and technical support.

3. The way technology has enhanced fan control. It is so convenient to use FanSync to control the ceiling fan in your home remotely via your cell phone.

2. Design collaborators. Some of our newest fans have been because of our partnerships with the Michael Graves Architecture and Design Group and independent designers like Mark Pickett.

1. The form, fit and function of fans! Today, fans are more than an appliance. They are a piece of home décor that is highly functional and fits beautifully in environments of all kinds.

Meet Just Fans

Website: www.justfansinc.com

Owner: Tim Battishill

Location: Sarasota, FL

How Just Fans Got Started: Tim started in the fan industry at age 19, working for another Sarasota-based company. Two years later, he decided he wanted to venture out on his own. His father and grandfather liked his business plan and loaned him the money to launch Just Fans. That was in 1991. A year later, Tim’s father, Michael, joined the business, and the father-and-son duo worked together until Michael retired last year.

Top-selling Fanimation Fans: Spitfire, Xeno, Levon, Cancun and Benito

Favorite Fanimation Fan: Xeno – “It does a nice job of moving lots of air, while providing all the features consumers appreciate.”

What You Like About Fanimation: “From a technical side, Fanimation is always very accessible. They are available to answer any questions we have. Plus, we know when we get a new Fanimation product, it’s been tested and kinks have been worked out before it is in customers’ hands. Because Fanimation is a family-run business like us, I think there’s a high level of quality control over the final product.”

What We Should Know about Just Fans: “For us, as a family business, this store is like our second home. We want our customers to feel the same way when they are here and to leave happy. We also intentionally chose to specialize just in fans so we’re very familiar with all the intricacies of fan development, installation and service and can cater to our customer’s fan needs.”

Meet Lighting First—part of Fanimation’s “extended” family.

• Owners: Brothers Greg and Steve Adams
• Location: Florida (Naples, Bonita Springs and Fort Myers)
• Number of Locations: 3
• How Lighting First Got Started: Greg and Steve’s grandfather manufactured portable lamps, so it was only natural that their parents, Vince and Barb, would open a lighting business. The initial Lighting First store opened in 1984 as Factory Firsts. Both Steve and Greg worked in the warehouse as teenagers, eventually joining the business on a larger scale in 2005. Today, their parents have retired and the brothers operate Lighting First’s three stores together.
• Top-selling Fanimation Fans: Spitfire (Its interchangeable motors and blades make it a top-seller!), Levon and Odyn
• Favorite Fanimation Fan: Torto (In Greg’s home!)
• What You Like About Fanimation: “We’ve partnered with Fanimation for about 15 years and it’s been a great fit for both of us,” shares Greg. “Fanimation delivers great products that are backed by equally great service. It’s the same thing we try to do here.”

What We Should Know about Lighting First: “We are your one-stop shop for lighting and fans,” Greg says. “We have a wide range of choices and, from start to finish—selection to service—we’ve got everything you need.“

Mario was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala, to a middle-class family.  He had a good upbringing and eventually graduated college with a degree in business administration.

Realizing that his dreams were stunted in Guatemala, he eventually moved from his native country with his wife to Chicago, Illinois in 1982.  Mario could not write or speak English when he moved here.  He found work as a dishwasher and began taking English courses at night – as Mario said, “I was willing to do anything.”

A few years later, Mario moved to Los Angeles, California, and began working for the K-Mart Corporation.  Around this time, Mario and his wife had their first son.  Mario moved up in the ranks at K-Mart and was promoted to a supervisory position.  He even lived in Hawaii for two years to help start new stores there.

In 1994, Mario moved to Iowa to begin new employment.  In 1997, Mario traveled from Iowa to Indianapolis for a week to visit an old friend from L.A.  His friend was the first Fanimation employee – who moved with Fanimation and the Frampton’s from Pasadena, CA, to their new headquarters in Indianapolis that same year. Mario’s friend asked him if he wanted to work at Fanimation during his weeklong visit and he agreed.  On Friday afternoon, Tom asked Mario if he wanted to move his family to Indianapolis and begin working at Fanimation full-time starting that Monday.  As they say, the rest is history.  Mario said that he is forever grateful for this opportunity – it changed the course of his life.

Mario has worked in almost every facet of the business, but he specializes in assembling custom fans such as the Americana, Palmetto, Punkah, and Bourbon Street.

He remembers assembling Islanders by hand, “the team would assemble roughly fifty fans a week – now look at what we do.”

Mario takes pride in the fact that Fanimation has a very low return rate on their custom fans and credits himself for this achievement.  He said, “My ultimate concern is the quality of my work.”

Eighteen years later and Mario is retiring.  He plans on traveling to Guatemala City where he owns a home and staying there for about six months.  He also plans on fixing up cars for himself and his neighbors.

Without hesitation, Mario remarked that the secret to Fanimation’s success is the management.  He stated, “The managers always know what is going on and have their pulse on the company – I can tell that they genuinely care about me as an individual.”  Above all else, Mario is proud of the growth the company has experienced and his involvement through the years.

I guess it was destiny that I would end up a trouble maker.  At first, I would just do small stick ups here and there, you know, so I could get by and feed my family.  A few years ago I started robbing banks.  I was great at it!  I went coast to coast wearing different disguises. I thought they were working, but my face ended up on the FBI Most Wanted list.

On my last job I felt like something was up; apparently the feds were on my tail the whole time. I got involved in a shoot-out—luckily no one got seriously hurt.  I took a hit to the arm, but it actually turned out to be a pretty cool scar.  The feds got me and I’m finally set to be released in late May or June.  They keep saying that they know about my offshore accounts that I set up with the money I stole—I swear I spent it all on my damn attorney.

Anyway, I’m going to come out a changed man so I can be there for my family.  Here is a list of who I’ve become:

• Brushed nickel with brushed nickel blades,
• Six forward and reverse speeds (been hitting the weights),
• 18 watt LED bulb: Lumens: 1,300, color temp: 3,000, and CRI 80,
• 63” blades, and
• I come damp rated.

Stay tuned as I’m going to make even more changes when I come out in a few months.  This feels like a new start; I can’t wait to show all of my old friends and family how much I’ve changed.  Dad, if you’re reading this, I’m going to make you proud!

As a society, we’ve grown dependent on air conditioners.  We use them in our cars and rely on them at home. That’s not to say air conditioners should never be used. However, we should educate consumers about the energy and cost saving benefits of using fans in conjunction with central air. The purpose of NCFD is to bring national attention to escalating energy costs and consumption and propose the use of ceiling fans as a way to decrease our reliance on central heating and cooling devices. If every American participated in NCFD by turning off their air conditioning and using fans for their cooling needs, the United States would save over three trillion kilowatt hours of energy consumption. That is enough energy to power the entire city of New York for months.

Fanimation is hosting an Awareness Party to promote the Day on August 17, 2013.  The party is a free event held at Fanimation’s headquarters and is open to the public. Fanimation has organized fun activities for all ages. There will be live music, prizes, vintage cars and bicycles on display, free food catered by Dashboard Diner, a caricaturist and a Kids Zone with bicycle helmet fittings, energy awareness activities and face painting. Attendees are also welcome to tour Fanimation’s antique fan museum located on site. The party will be held from 11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. at 10983 Bennett Pkwy Zionsville, IN 46077.

One of the first things I did was come up with a company name. I had done some projects for Disneyland, in particular their design department which is called Disney Imagineering the combination of imagine and engineering. I had always liked the way they had done that so I came up with Fanimation a combination of fan and animation. I printed out the name in a very large font on a card about 2” high and 8″ wide. I kept it in the pencil drawer of desk so every time I opened my desk drawer I was reminded of my goal.

We started out as Fanimation Design and Manufacturing, Inc. That was a lot of name to say and to put on forms and such so several years ago I shortened it to Fanimation, Inc., you can thank me later.

That’s whole truth and nothing but…

Tom Frampton
Founder & CEO

T5 fluorescent lights are more environmentally friendly than metal halide lights because they use significantly less energy to operate.  A comparison done by the Performance Consulting Group, LLC showed that a single-lamp metal halide fixture drew 455 watts to operate while a four-lamp T5 fixture drew only 235 watts to operate.  (Metal Halide vs. T5 Fluorescent Fixture Comparison; http://www.rapidpower.net/userfiles/file/T5vsMH.pdf.)

The T5 fluorescent lights come with numerous energy and cost saving benefits, such as instant start, low profile, extended light output, better quality and more evenly distributed lighting and cost savings.  We estimate that our  decision to install T5 lighting will result in a 55-60% energy reduction in our warehouse over the course of the next year.

Although our team at Fanimation has always been on the cutting edge of environmentally safe technology, as evidenced by our numerous Energy Star rated fans, we are also committed to making our corporate headquarters as environmentally friendly as possible.  The use of energy saving lights in our warehouse is just one more example of our tireless efforts to reduce our carbon footprint.

As Fanimation explores the needs of this new economy, we are learning that you desire broader communication and interaction with us in a variety of new ways; Facebook and Twitter are only the beginning.  One of the best methods of delivering a variety of messages in a quick manner is a blog.

In this blog Fanimation will bring you tips on saving energy, information on  new and existing products, installation advice, fun stories from our various travels across the globe, and various items we learn as we grow in a rapidly evolving and changing business climate. You will get a chance to meet the wonderful team behind Fanimation, get a glimpse into who they are, what they do and  how much fun we have working at a company that  went from the garage of my father’s house to a company with an international presence. I am sure this blog will take us to uncharted waters and exciting places. Thank you for joining us on this journey!

Please send any comments, suggestions or ideas to me at nathan@fanimation.com.