Office
Ford Montgomery Jr.
President
Ford came to understand the importance of customer satisfaction at a young age. Growing up, his father worked for Hilton Hotels and was the first General Manager for the Portland Hilton. As a boy, Ford watched his father give an incredible level of personal attention to customers. For the last 35-years, Ford has followed his father’s example as the model for customer service in every facet of Chelsea Audio Video.
Ford’s love affair with music started the way it began with so many kids of his generation: with the Beatles. “I was into music and hi-fi equipment at a very young age, but when I saw the Beatles at Memorial Coliseum in 1965, it affected my life.” After college at the U of O, plus stints in the army and waiting tables, Ford landed at a TV/hi-fi store in Albany. Eventually Ford became a manager and ran the company’s Eugene and Portland stores. Shortly there after, he went into business for himself.
“From the beginning, our operation has been customer driven,” Ford says. Even as technologies have changed, the Chelsea work ethic and customer commitment hasn’t. As Ford puts it, “We’re still trying to further that ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ that occurs when you are totally immersed in a film or song. The new challenge is how to harness all the sophisticated equipment and components while making it simple for the end user. Our hands-on experience helps us do just that.”
Brenda Hand
Purchasing & Project Management
Since joining Chelsea in 1989 Brenda has become our jack of all trades, handling purchasing, inventory management, accounts receivable and payable, scheduling installers and project management. Thank goodness she has a laser-like eye for detail, or we’d be in trouble.
“I like my job because I’m not doing the same thing all day,” says Brenda. “I cover the warehouse guys when they’re gone, I get to deal with customers and vendors, and I get to be involved in deciding what kind of product mix we’re going to carry. I never have a chance to get bored.” That sounds like quite an understatement considering all the duties listed above. It just goes to show: the right man for the job is often a woman.
Molly Montgomery
Accounting
The youngest of the Montgomery kids Molly also spent her youth surrounded by audio/video equipment. After graduating from the UofO, with honors, she got a job that didn’t hold her interest and ended up filling a vacancy at Chelsea.
Sales
Kyle Grimm
Kyle started in our warehouse over 10 years ago and bugged us so much hanging around
playing with the equipment on the floor we finally turned him into a salesman. Like all
our sales people, Kyle is an enthusiast who goes home every night and reads about and plays with the equipment he sells all day. We call it being a pusher AND a user.
Ford Montgomery III
As the son of Chelsea owner Ford Jr., Ford III recalls: “Growing up, my father always had a great music setup – of course we weren’t allowed to use it. I was hooked from then on.” Of course now he gets paid to play with those systems. In high school Ford was a three-sport athlete (basketball, soccer and golf) and continued in college on the University of Oregon golf team.
He joined Chelsea after graduating from U of O in 2002, starting in the warehouse and learning the business from the ground up. “A lot of our business comes from people who are fed up with the big box stores and being given bad information” says Ford III. “Today’s systems give you a lot more, but they’re also a lot more complicated. I enjoy designing systems where the customer doesn’t see that complexity, it just works.”
Adam Watanabe
Tigard native Adam Watanabe wanted to be in the home entertainment business ever since he was a youngster. As an avid reader of magazines such as Popular Science and possessing the acuity to configure just about any electronics system, he is such a techie that his friends refer to him as “the IT guy.” Combine this with the fact that he’s a huge music and movie buff, and you have the perfect Chelsea employee.
Another University of Oregon grad, Adam joined Chelsea because he believes in the power that music and motion pictures can have over people. “When done right, the experience can be completely immersive. I love how nostalgic music is for everyone. Using music to rekindle old memories and create new ones is what it’s all about for me.”
Custom Installation
Peder Moluf
Electrical Engineer
Back in the 1970s, Midwesterner Peder Moluf packed up his bell-bottoms and came west to study electrical engineering at Oregon State University. His tenure at Chelsea began in 1977 as a service support person, and over the years he’s been instrumental in the expansion of Chelsea’s capabilities – in fact, he helped develop the whole custom installation department. Today, as our in-house technology guru, every proposal the company does is subject to Peder’s watchful eye before it goes out the door, because we want to make sure all the technical specifications are done right the first time.
“It’s all about taming the technology so the customer experience can be more enjoyable,” says Peder. “These days just about every piece in a system is essentially a mini-computer, and making them all interface properly is an exciting challenge. One of the reasons I like working at Chelsea is that we all have a heartfelt desire to make everything work perfectly for our clients.” Spoken like a true guru.
Jeff Kinnaman
Head of Custom Installation
Jeff is our Installation Manager and leads a skilled team who install your new gear
perfectly and leave your house as clean as it was when they got there. I tell people he’s
like the tooth fairy…he installs your system perfectly, leaves, and you can barely tell he’s
been there.
Travis Peck
Custom Installation & Programming
Uh, oh… another U of O graduate! A theme is emerging here. Travis was at the U of O when some of our other employees were there. When we added an in-field customer service position, Travis came aboard. He was good in customer’s homes, so we got him training on programming remotes and in time it became his primary job. Now control systems, simple to complex, are part of most of our systems.