Robert J. Wisniewski,
President/CEO
Robert O. Geissler,
Publisher
If staying power is one measure of greatness, then Sanitary Maintenance, on its 60th birthday, has earned the right to crow a bit. If longevity in and of itself isn’t enough to merit a special place in the parthenon of the cleaning industry, how about six decades of being recognized as the leading information source for sanitary supply distributors and manufacturers?

Some of us on the SM team have worked on the publication for half of its lifetime, while others are less intimate with the SM legacy. Regardless, the current staff of editors, sales professionals, graphic designers, marketing and circulation experts and administrative support personnel consider ourselves caretakers of what founder Harry Apple started and what his son, Bob, nurtured — through good times, and bad. The Apples, in their day, never took their eyes off of what was most important to them: the business viability of the sanitary supply industry. Good publications are blessed with talented people. Great publications are blessed with a vision and a passion, and no matter how many editorial accolades pour in over the years, they never lose sight of that humbling mission.

Some 700-plus issues into what Harry and Bob started, all of us still get jazzed up about the industry’s prospects, and still push the envelope with our editorial coverage. And we’d like to think we get it, just like our predecessors did: the reader and the industry come first.

So, happy birthday SM. But we’re really using our 60th anniversary issue as an opportunity to acknowledge the visionaries, the entrepreneurs and the inventors, not to mention their noble mission of elevating the country’s standard of cleanliness and hygiene.

Walk down memory lane with us and sample the origins and milestones of something special.




POSTED ON: 5/1/2003