Thomas Jones

From a young age, Thomas was groomed to be a businessman by parents who were successful businesspeople.  He got his work ethic from a father who was a dairy farmer, a mother who was the bookkeeper for a multimillion-dollar company, a stepfather who owned and operated that multimillion-dollar company, and a stepmother who was a registered nurse.   

Until the age of twelve, Thomas was tasked with various chores around the homes he lived in, in order to earn an allowance.  At twelve years of age, Thomas was given the opportunity to begin working at one of his stepfather’s businesses during summer and winter breaks from school.  He was tasked with custodial work during this time, such as sweeping and mopping, washing windows, and cleaning restrooms.  This laid the groundwork for his understanding of valuing earning a wage for hard work. 

The next summer, Thomas was given a new opportunity to work on the sales floor at Weeks Supply, a retail supply store owned by his stepfather.  He immediately began helping to reorganize the stock shelves to not only make finding items easier, but also make stocking more efficient.  For the next three summers, he continued to help cut down on waste and make improvements that made work easier and more efficient.  He had a cut table constructed for rolling out and cutting the carpet and linoleum that was sold there to get the workers off the floor.  He also helped to clean out damaged inventory and make the appearance more presentable to customers. 

Thomas was presented with the honor of being nominated as the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership scholar his freshman year of high school and attended their leader education seminar in Atlanta, GA.  That summer he began working at another of his stepfather’s companies, Horton Homes.  As was his stepfather’s way, he began working in the manufacturing plant in the floor department, and he worked his way down the line in order to understand completely how the product was assembled.  As he worked his way through the various departments, he helped to improve efficiency and cut down on waste while learning the “zero defects” mentality of how the manufacturing facility was managed.   

During the summer of his sophomore year of high school, Thomas began working at Horton Components, another of the companies owned by his stepfather.   He began by making molding for housed.  Later he moved to making sheetrock.  Finally, he began assembling picture frames and mirrors.  Also, during this time, he worked with managers to improve the efficiency of their processes and to continue to cut down on waste.   

During the summers of his junior and senior years of high school, Thomas began working for Wholesale Distributors, a warehousing and distribution company owned by his stepfather.  He began working in the warehouse taking inventory of the various building materials and housing components that were stored there.  Thomas again began helping to reorganize the warehouse to make finding the items more efficient.  He was also certified as a forklift operator, and he began supplying materials to Horton Homes. 

In addition to his experience working in these various companies, Thomas also was a student athlete during his school years.  During his time playing football and baseball, Thomas learned the concept of being a team player.  He also learned discipline and how to be led.  Thomas won various awards during his playing career such as most improved (football), three time all region (football), all state honorable mention (football), rookie of the year (baseball), four time offensive player of the year (baseball), four time all region (baseball), all state honorable mention (baseball), and three time all state (baseball).    

While in college at Georgia Southern University, Thomas looked at various fields of study, but he finally followed his destiny and chose business management with an emphasis in operations management as his major.  He chose this emphasis so that he could get a set of skills that were designed for manufacturing.  He studied many different manufacturing theories during this time.  Also, during his time in college, Thomas joined Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.  During his time in the fraternity, he held various leadership positions including social chairman, recruitment chairman, vice president, and president.  As the social chairman, Thomas oversaw scheduling and planning events, as well as booking entertainment acts.  As the recruitment chairman, he helped the fraternity increase its recruitment by 45%.  While Thomas was the vice president of the fraternity, he had the task of rewriting the fraternity’s constitution and bylaws.  During his term as president of the fraternity, Thomas helped to balance the budget and bring the fraternity out of debt.  Thomas graduated from Georgia Southern University in May of 2003 with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree.   

Thomas began his career as a car sales consultant at Horton Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, GMC in January of 2003.  Before joining the sales team on the floor, Thomas participated in a month-long sales training course.  Once on the floor as an active sales consultant, he set a dealership record for most sales in a salesperson’s first month.  During his time as a salesman, Thomas realized his love for sales, and he honed his skills as a salesman.   By September, the general manager and general sales manager decided to send Thomas to Houston, TX to American Financial & Automotive Services, Inc’s F&I University.  After he returned from finance school, Thomas became an F & I Manager for the dealership.  Thomas learned many new skills through his experience of being an F&I manager.  Some of his duties were to negotiate interest rates and financing with banks, interpret credit history, coordinate dealer trades of inventory with other dealerships, sell GAP insurance, and to help customers set up their car insurance with insurance companies.  Thomas continued to work for the dealership until his stepfather put the dealership up for sale in March of 2005. 

In March of 2005, Thomas transferred to Horton Vans, Inc., his stepfather’s cargo trailer manufacturing company.  As was company policy for all managers, Thomas started working in the manufacturing plant as a regular laborer, in order to learn not only the product but also the employees who would be working for him.  During his time on the production floor, Thomas was able to change parts of the manufacturing process making it more efficient.  After he had worked in all the departments in the production facility, Thomas was moved into the sales office as a sales assistant.  In 2006, Thomas was given his own sales territory.  From 2006 to the end of 2007, Thomas was top salesman, with sales of over $1.5 million in sales per month with his territory alone.  During this time, Thomas also designed a new model of enclosed trailers to extend the product offering and continue with the trend of people looking for more affordable solutions.  Thomas was named sales manager in 2008.  He oversaw all the salesmen, as well as keeping the company profitable.  After the economy began crumbling in 2008, Thomas was left instantly in charge when he was named general manager after the vice president suddenly resigned.  The next several years were difficult with the economy failing.  Thomas began to scale the company back and cut down overhead.  At the time, the company was building three different enclosed cargo haulers.  Thomas phased the middle price level model out to cut out excess raw inventory.  In 2009, Thomas also took on the title of fleet manager for the Putnam Group LLC, the trucking and logistics company his stepfather owned.  A freak hailstorm in 2011 damaged over six hundred units in inventory.  Thomas quickly decided after making the insurance claim to not only reorder all the damaged inventory, but also, offer the damaged units at a considerable discount.  He was able to sell all the damaged units instead of scrapping them.  Going off the momentum of these additional sales, Thomas was able to generate a 1600 order backlog.  Thomas continued to oversee the company until his parents decided to restructure the company in 2018. 

In 2015, Thomas and his brother, Robert Horton, began to plan for a new company together.  Their focus was to be on research and development as well as manufacturing.  Their plan was taking the company into the 21st century and beyond.  They began laying the groundwork for this new venture, and in 2017 they founded S.T.A.R.K. Laboratories LLC.  The first breakthrough for the company was Stru-Composite, a new building material never before conceived. This material is still being developed at this time. 

In 2019, the brothers once again expanded their business model to found the People’s Power Company.  TPPC is now designing grow containers, houses, hotels, casinos, and other structures and components using composite materials.