David Ness has been promoted to vice president of sales and marketing of the all the Hawthorne divisions.

Ness recently celebrated his 10-year anniversary with Hawthorne. He worked early in his career helping Hawthorne with the successful implementation of 6 Sigma throughout the organization before beginning his management career at Hawthorne Power Systems in San Diego. Under his leadership, the power division hit record profitability targets even through the most difficult of economic times over the last few years. Additionally, Ness has been responsible for the successful development and implementation of Hawthorne’s corporate strategy plan, which began in 2008. In the last year, he also has assumed responsibility for business development and corporate marketing groups, growing and developing the marketing team into a valuable part of Hawthorne’s sales efforts.

In his new role, Ness will move to the corporate office located in Rancho Bernardo and have management responsibility for all general sales, rental, marketing and power systems sales managers.

Additionally, Hawthorne Power Systems has hired Kirk Fowkes as the new general manager to replace Ness. Fowkes will have overall management responsibility for the power divisions in San Diego, Hawaii and the Pacific Region. Fowkes has extensive experience in leading high performance teams in the engine distribution and energy business with which he has been involved for more than 25 years. He held senior management positions at Shepherd Machinery over a 15 year period prior to Quinn’s acquisition of that dealership. After five years as general manager of Cummins West covering California and Hawaii, Kirk left to help start Elite Energy Systems.

For information, visit www.hawthornecat.com.