Who Owns Vapor Honing Technologies
Vapor Honing Technologies has grown into a company with many faces representing it. The sales group has expanded consistently, along with the production crew, marketing team, and other personnel necessary to a growing company. I say all of this to address the original question: Who Owns Vapor Honing Technologies?
The Start of The Service
In 2011, our founder Johnathan Wise began offering a wet blasting service out of his garage. The machine that he was using was his own creation, and truthfully, a horrid thing. Jonathan had recently quit his stable job, as he was told he was too young for sales, and was now relying on the service business to get by. The conditions were far from perfect, though. In a brief excerpt from John’s 10 Years Of VHT video, he recalls working “in a building with no doors, no insulation, no heat” saying that “you can imagine, when winter time came it would be 18 to 20 degrees in the mornings.” “We were soaking wet, and we were dirty. We didn’t have a machine that worked well. It leaked everywhere, it leaked all over us, but you know, moving on through that journey, we continue to develop the process and the equipment”.
The Eureka Moment
The long hours and hard work were all realized one day around midnight, when John, as he calls it, had “the eureka moment” when he figured out this equipment. John was known for working into the early hours of the morning, typically bothering no one, but this night was different. When John finally figured out the machine, he ran inside and woke his wife. Though he was sure she was unhappy with him at first, after explaining how excited he was, and what he planned to do with the business, she was supportive. John’s words on his wife were “she’s been very behind it and very supportive,” and she is one large reason VHT is here today.
The two videos to the right of this section are the original and most recent videos on the Vapor Honing Technologies YouTube channel. I would say the original has aged nicely.
The Idea To Build Machines
The service business continued to grow, with John taking on most of the eastern United States, though something was becoming apparent. John noticed that “people continued to ask where they could purchase this equipment.” Fatefully, it was realized it was “time to start focusing on building the equipment.” This would not be run-of-the-mill equipment. These would be well-built machines that worked flawlessly, with a warranty and upgrade option to back them up. This began the wet blasting machine production Vapor Honing Technologies is synonymous with today.
A Budding Company
This portion of the company’s beginnings was an uphill battle. It is known that a budding company requires a lot of time and input. VHT started in a small portion of an old mill in Connelly Springs, NC. At this time, the services side of the company was booming, and machine production was climbing strongly. Wearing around 20 hats at this point, John remembers this period as one of growth. The company had three to four employees and was fulfilling orders daily. At the rate VHT was selling the service and machines, the small building could no longer suffice.
An Expanding Company
An employee at the time informed John of a large industrial property for sale in Lincolnton, N.C. This being his hometown, John gave the property a look. The property was far from perfect, with multiple repairs necessary before it could even be utilized. Taking it all into consideration, the benefits of such a property that could allow the business to expand outweighed the work it would require. The business transferred to the usable portions of the new property, eager and ready to grow.
Difficult Times
Difficult is how John remembers this section of time in the company’s history. The business was still fulfilling the same amount of service work, while constructing more machines than before. Adding on repairs plus all the additional difficulties an expanding business presents was consuming John. Work days 24 hours long were more ordinary for him than not, yet he and the business pushed on.
Business Matters Over Personal
John’s disregard for his personal wellbeing, to rather better the companies, eventually caught up. Around the new years in 2017, John came down with a severe case of pneumonia, saying “I came down with pneumonia and got super sick that new year’s, couldn’t barely move, couldn’t barely breathe. The doctor looked at me in the room and she said, Jonathan, do you want to live another day or do you want to kill yourself working? And I said, well I prefer to live, obviously! I think that, you know, right now there’s a lot of stuff to be done, and it wouldn’t be a good position to leave my wife in.
So she said, well you need to slow down, like you have to stop, she said. I don’t care if it’s just a couple weeks, you have to let your body recover. She said, you have drawn your body down so low that your immune system is so compromised and so weak. She said you are deathly sick, like you have a very serious case of pneumonia. You are not well, you cannot continue to go or you will not make it. And I said, well okay, I will rest for a couple days, then I’ll get back to work.”
Why VHT Exists
The last sentence is the reason that Vapor Honing Technologies is such a successful company. In John’s eyes, hard work is the only way to accomplish something great. Even when he himself was at the point of failure, pushing the business forward was at the front of his mind.
Why did John believe in the business so much?
The process was proven. The success of the services side of the business was proof that wet blasting worked. Wet blasting as a technology has existed since the 1950s, and was always an expensive industrial process. In the “10 Years of VHT” video, John explains “twenty-four thousand dollars was about as low as [he] was going to get to purchase a professional piece of equipment.” John’s belief in VHT was due to people’s need for affordable wet blasting equipment that performs, with support and a warranty to validate it.
Vapor Honing Technologies Today
VHT is still providing the same affordable wet blasting equipment, with the same lifetime warranty, but at even lower costs. John is still at the helm, and makes certain that the customer is the basis of our decisions, as he was our first. The same passion for R&D that helped this company grow is ever-present, and we strive to create the best products possible. So who is the owner of Vapor Honing Technologies? He is a wet blast enthusiast and the original VHT customer: John Wise.
Check out John’s appearance on Cycle Stop USA’s Garage Built Podcast , where he and Jason Hallman talk more about business structures, struggles, and successes.
