CHAPTER 6Scooting Ahead
Tim Juntgen (r), Carolina Fun Machines
The Carolina Fun Machines showroom, located in Matthews, North Carolina, looks like a sparkling toy store with rows of tangerine, cherry-red, and purple scooters lined up.
Shop owner Tim Juntgen, 66, is slowly rolling one of those shiny two-wheelers out the front door and into the parking lot for a potential customer to take a test spin (carolinafunmachines.com/store-pictures).
His smile and low-key banter say it all. This guy loves his job. “I have never met anyone who has walked in that door that I can’t make friends with,” Juntgen says. “I take good care of my customers, and I build friendships with them.”
Once a salesman, always a salesman. Back in 1973, Juntgen snapped up his first sales job working for IBM in Chicago. And for 35 years, he rode the fast-changing computer climate, ultimately peddling business products ranging from minicomputers to PCs to software.
Today, the one-time sales executive still relishes a sale, but he has redeployed his pitch. He’s pushing Chinese-made scooters, ranging in price from $1,000 to $5,000, along with go-karts, dirt bikes, and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). And he sells hundreds of them each year.
In 2008, Juntgen started Carolina Fun Machines (carolinafunmachines.com) as an antidote to the boredom he was battling after retiring from his $150,000-a-year software sales position. ...
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