Keeping It All in the Family

It seems a week doesn’t pass that we hear about another independent finishing shop getting purchased by an investment group and then merged with others around the company.

This is not to say that is a bad thing at all; in fact, hats off to those shop owners who toiled for decades in their facility, often working 50 hours a week to makes ends meet with slim margins, and now get the chance to retire to the good life that was promised them here in the good old U.S. of A.

But it does get a little heartfelt hearing that another independent shop — probably family-owned and operated — has now been sold to a larger group who is working to combine resources with various other entities around the country to scale up in the electrocoating or powder coating industry.

I say that only in the fact that in hundreds of shops I’ve been in and the many shop owners whom I’ve sat down with, there is something to be said about a family-owned operation as being the lifeblood of what this country is all about. It’s seeing sons and daughters now running companies that their father and grandfather started and ran.

It’s seen the owner’s kids fresh out of college hanging racks and making sales calls because that was the only way to learn the business. Nothing in four years of the best college in the U.S. would prepare anyone for how to run a finishing operation.

We will probably see many more shops be bought and sold over the upcoming months and years; this is a sign of the time, and it just isn’t the owners of these shops who are looking to cash out and hit the Florida beach, although I have to admit that I haven’t met that many former shop owners who retire at 65 and head off into the sunset.

One of the biggest reasons for many of these sales is that the OEMs want to consolidate the number of suppliers they are dealing with, and they encourage these mergers and acquisitions to occur. I’ve heard from many shop owners how their customers tell them to either open a facility out West or in the South, or they will find another supplier. It is not mean or boorish; it is just the way the industry is setting itself up.

Again, we do not begrudge any shop that sells a business they have grown and spent blood, sweat, and tears building. Hats off to them. But there is always a tear that is shed when businesses change hands, and people we all knew are no longer active in the industry.

Look, I would be the first guy who would line up to sell if someone offered me money to retire on. I might take a moment to see that my employees and customers will be taken care of, but this business is not a hobby, and profits need to be earned, or there will be no business.

Change is hard, but it is eventual. We all grow old, we all grow too big sometimes for our britches, and we sometimes have to find a partner to help us along. Congrats to those who have reaped their reward for hard work, and welcome to the new people in the industry. We hope you stick around.