Cleanroom 'statesman' remembered as customer advocate
08/01/2001
Hal Sharpe, chairman of the cleanroom supplies and equipment firm, Hal Sharpe Associates Inc. (Chico, CA), died June 23 after a brief illness. He was 80.
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Born Dec. 1, 1920, in Boulder, CO, he was a Navy veteran, serving in World War II, and later embarked on a career in sales, a job his wife, Marlene, says he "thoroughly enjoyed and in which he fulfilled his desire to help people find solutions to their problems."
Early in his career, Sharpe focused on the field of industrial supplies and served as sales manager for a number of industrial product manufacturers.
In 1970, he founded Hal Sharpe Associates Inc., operating as a manufacturers' representative, selling various products to the semiconductor and electronics industries. In 1984, Sharpe incorporated the company and changed the business to a cleanroom supplies and equipment distributor.
Thirteen years later, in 1997, the company added safety supplies to its line of products when it acquired a small safety supply distributor. Soon after, in 1999, Hal Sharpe Associates purchased the consumables products division of Dryden Engineering. In that same year, partner Jim Stanton was brought on to help run the firm as president, while Sharpe assumed the chairmanship to do what he enjoyed most—work with customers.
Marlene Sharpe wrote that her husband "will be remembered as the individual who worked in the background. He made certain that his customers never faced a crisis because of lack of supplies for their cleanrooms."
Dick Lee, president of World Class, a Roseville, CA-based manufacturer of cleanroom documentation materials, distributed products through Sharpe for more than 15 years.
"He was closer to me than a father," Lee says, a 35-year veteran of the contamination control industry. "To Hal, the customer was paramount. He was one of the few people in this industry that I would classify as a statesman. His word was his bond. He would do whatever was required to satisfy the needs of his customers, no matter if they were large or small. He did not discriminate. That was the key to his success."—Mark A. DeSorbo