International Equipment Company (IEC) has done business in Chattanooga for 60 years, but its never sold a piece of heavy equipment.
It has sold millions of dollars in security systems, fire systems and time clocks to commercial customers. After 59 years, the clock said it was time to stop getting calls from people trying to buy a bulldozer.
IEC became IEC Fire Security Time in August 2018.
“We were always getting calls about heavy equipment,” says Gaines Campbell, who joined the ownership group as managing owner at IEC in the fall of 2015. “Most people in Chattanooga knew how to identify us, but we needed our name to say what we did.”
The rebranding of the company is the latest change at IEC since Campbell arrived. The Pineville Road company, with 24 employees, started in 1959 when two former IBM employees, Walter Valentine and Stan Born, founded IEC on Frazier Avenue after IBM sold its time clock division. The company remained in the hands of the founders’ families until 2004 when it was bought by a group of local businessmen.