Thankful

With every business in the equipment sales arena, it’s about what you sell. With Universal Press and Machinery LLC’s business development vice president, Parker Patrona, it’s also about why you sell.

Universal Press and Machinery — UPM to its many customers and friends — has been in business in the Detroit area for more than half a century and a member of the MDNA since 1994. Parker represents the third generation of his family at UPM, part of a three-person team with his father, Phillip, and his uncle, Tristan Patrona. They deal primarily with presses and machine tools for metal stamping and fabrication uses and serve a market throughout North America. The office and warehouse is in the Motor City suburb of Ferndale, Mich., and UPM has equipment stored all across the country.

“I’ve been kind of around it my whole life, always was business-minded, and went to college for business,” Parker said in a recent interview. “I couldn’t think about doing anything else, and I always wanted to help people. In the beginning, I thought to myself, ‘We’re just selling machinery. You can’t really help people doing that.’ Then my dad and my uncle taught me that you’re helping people more than you think in this line of work. Some of the equipment
we sell goes to the medical field and to military, aviation and the like. These things help people because it helps them make what people need or want to buy.”

Parker sees connecting businesses with used equipment as a great way to help entrepreneurs make the best of a good idea.

“A lot of projects out there are not possible with new equipment because of the cost barrier,” he said. “The number one thing that used equipment provides is the opportunity for someone who’s not a giant a chance to show their stuff and gradually progress to a higher production level. We also work with some new manufacturers for those who don’t want to go into a used piece of equipment.”

UPM began in 1988 as a sister company to Seminole Machinery Company. Parker’s grandfather, Danny Patrona, started Seminole in the 1960s, selling tool room and production grinding equipment. UPM was launched to meet the high demand for used presses and coil feed equipment, with James Patrona as owner. In 2017 Phillip and Tristan took over Universal Press and Machinery. Parker joined them in 2019, working in sales and marketing for the company.

Tristan Patrona is also an active member of the MDNA’s companion organization, the Association of Machinery and Equipment Appraisers (AMEA), and presented a program on pricing used presses at a recent AMEA convention.

Parker sees a promising future for UPM. He and his wife, Kinsey, are expecting their first child very soon, and that might just herald the next generation of Patrona proprietors. Whoever is involved, Parker says UPM is happy to be able to help tomorrow’s manufacturers prosper.

“Where it’s really cool is a we get a lot of calls from people buying their first piece of equipment, and we’re able to help them understand and learn processes,” he reflected. “For them to be able to convert that into something that’s helping somebody is just a great feeling.”