Marketing Masters is 2012 Innovator of the Year


The Issaquah chamber of Commerce business leaders, has elected Marketing Masters as their 2012 Innovator of the year. Located in Issaquah Washington, Marketing Masters is a designer and manufacturer of fasteners, where they injection mold a composite resin called Torlon into clip nuts and inserts.

These composite fasteners are quickly replacing the titanium and steel fasteners, previously used throughout the airlines and general manufacturing.

The VP of Product Development, Jacques Gauron, said that "In a side by side comparison, these composite fasteners are stronger, lighter, corrosion resistant and less expensive than the old-style metal fasteners. Marketing Masters carries a full line of composite clip nuts and inserts, which come in a full range of colors, shapes and sizes.

Marketing Masters' signature product is their Clip Nut. Boeing and Airbus designers made the Clip Nut a standard component in aircraft over 10 years ago now. Since then, their client list has expanded to include aircraft and aerospace Companies, like business jet maker Gulfstream Aerospace, Learjet manufacturer Bombardier and aerospace company Embraer.

Marketing Masters composite clip nuts and inserts can be found on both the behemoth Airbus A380 - the largest passenger jetliner in service - and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the next-generation plane assembled mostly from composite materials. Their coin-sized fasteners can be found both out of sight, secured beneath the carpeting in jetliner cabins, and visible in the overhead luggage compartments.

Gauron said" A lot of fasteners are used in the manufacturing of Commercial Aircraft. For instance, the building of just 1 Airbus A380, uses about 60,000 fasteners and inserts." He went on to say that as he looks up into the ski as an airplane flies by, that he takes great pride in knowing that Marketing Masters has their Composite fasteners on the plane, "thousands of fasteners..."

These superior fasteners are not limited to just aircraft. They are also found in satellites, trains, motor homes, construction, electronics and more.

Marketing Masters has evolved quite a bit since Jacques' father, Richard Gauron, founded the company in the 1970s. Richard first stumbled across the resin Torlon, when he was promoting it for a chemical company. The salesman, who had also dabbled in manufacturing clips and fasteners, bought an injection molding machine in 1984 and started experimenting with Torlon. Seeing enormous potential, he pulled his sons Jacques and Andre in on the project.

"We bought a molding machine and literally he threw the book on the table and said figure out how to mold this stuff," said Jacques, noting it took years of learning on the job to get the processing just right. "We were very early to the world of composites, and being there early, we were really ready for when preparation met opportunity," Gauron said that. "It really paid off."

With customers located throughout the world, Marketing Masters is proud of the fact, that all their fasteners are "Made in the USA". Built here in the Pacific Northwest, the fasteners are also Environmentally friendly. Their composite clip nuts and inserts are chromium and chromate free, and meet all future EPA and European Union's Airline Manufacturing Regulations. Chromium is a dangerous chemical used as a rust inhibitor in paints and coatings. The current "old-Style" steel and titanium fasteners using chromium, will no longer be allowed in the building of aircraft starting in 2014, providing Marketing Masters further opportunities to continue to expand throughout the Airlines and General Manufacturing.

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