Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM APRIL 2024 48 T he United Appliance Service Association's Board of Directors has voted Glade Ross as this year's Lifetime Achievement Recipient. Glade was born in Salt Lake City as the fourth of six children and moved with his family to Bellevue, WA when he was still a baby. In Bellevue his dad started an appliance repair business that morphed into a dealership selling and servicing appliances, TVs, stereos, and furniture. Glade started working in the business at age 13, doing deliveries and installations alongside his brothers. Following a two-year Mormon mission, Glade began his studies at BYU. To fund his education, he began his own highly successful appliance service business while attending university and law school full-time! After graduating from law school, Glade practiced antitrust litigation in downtown Los Angeles, having left the Provo business to his younger brother. Glade loved the antitrust work, but it consumed too much of his life, so he did what all successful lawyers do, he quit the law firm, and started an appliance repair business, in San Juan Capistrano, CA. The new company grew rapidly. One of his technicians, Vic, introduced Glade to one of their service customers, Ms. Hunt, believing she would be a good match. Vic claimed he didn't have the part to fix Ms. Hunt's refrigerator, which forced Glade to return with the part to complete the repair. Vic's instincts were borne out when six months later Ms. Laura Hunt became Mrs. Laura Ross. The couple were married on a sailboat anchored in the cove of a small island in the Caribbean. They now have three adult children, Mallorey, Alex, and Jason. Always eager to find ways to run his business more efficiently, Glade began creating software. The new software worked so well that his single office employee, Brenda, was able to answer phones, dispatch six techs, and manage all the back-end work including accounting, parts management, and re-scheduling and more. In fact, the software worked so well that he was often able to work partial days and spend time with his growing family. Because the software system had proved so effective in his service business, Glade thought he could make money selling the systems to other service companies, and so Rossware Computing was born. Rossware's success allowed Glade to sell his service business after a few years. He enjoyed the creative challenges of creating improved systems, but soon found himself working 80 hours/ week, compared to the 25-30 hours he'd averaged running the service business. Though Glade often felt overwhelmed trying to meet the needs of a growing client base, he persevered, adding wonderful co-workers like Josh Smith, Karie Spaet (now Sevigny), Matt Parker, Aaron Pinero, Kenton Mattos, and Stephen Abrahamson who all made unique contributions to the product. The quality staff finally allowed Glade to reduce his hours. S E R V I C E D E P A R T M E N T UASA HONORS GLADE ROSS WITH LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

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