Weber Display & Packaging (CONT’D FROM PAGE 30)
being shared. I appreciated the love and stories that ev- eryone shared at that time,” she said. “My grandfather had close relationships with employees across the company.” This family-relationship atmosphere pervades every- thing the company does. It is useful in the marketplace too. “Customers like that we’re family-owned,” says Kevin Doherty. They like the story, they like the banter between our families; they get a kick out of it. They root for us be- cause some of them have the same story themselves.” Commenting on the longevity of some of Weber’s current customers, he added, “If you’re aligned with the right peo- ple, then their growth becomes your growth. We’re part- nered with some good customers that have been very loyal to us.” Resilience In The Face Of Challenge Commenting on current challenges in the industry and the after-effects of the pandemic, everyone on the Weber team agreed that the company’s long-maintained employ-
lieves relationships are key to success. As noted earlier, the company’s founders had two principal goals in acquir- ing Chesapeake’s Philadelphia plant: ensure jobs for the current employees and make sure its current customers were taken care of. The long-tenured employees of We- ber – one was retiring after 51 years at the time of our visit – were the ones that stuck with the change of ownership and remained loyal. “We have a group of individuals here who understood at the beginning, saw the challenge we were facing and saw the growth of the company,” said Jim Doherty III. Keira Zambon Bergvall recalls the day in 2013 when company founder Jim Doherty Jr. passed away. “I had just started my senior year at Villanova when I had heard that my grandfather had passed away,” she recalled. “My Dad and I went to the plant to be with everyone as the news was
ee, customer and vendor relationships have insulated them from the most damaging mar- ket conditions, namely extended lead-times and scarce labor. Says Jim Zambon: “I think [the pandemic] has fortified relationships – vendor and professional relationships, cus- tomer relationships, equipment relationships, employee relationships. And I think that’s probably the key thing that most successful in- dependents do very well: they establish those key relationships with vendors who are going to do whatever it takes to get us the raw mate- rial the same way that customers rely on us to get them their boxes.” Ryan Zambon added, “If you’d gone back five years and said, ‘you’re going to lose doz- ens of people all at once across your whole company,’ I’m not so sure we would have been so prepared to work through it. I think the pandemic has taught us that we have real- ly good tenacity, and our resilience is certainly strengthened and improved by the challenge. You get harder steel through fire.” Future Outlook Weber is a member of a distinct class of independents that has shrunk with industry consolidation: independent corrugator plants without mill affiliation or sheet feeder owner- ship. “The competitive landscape is very dif- ferent,” said Kevin Doherty. “In the past five years our biggest competitors have been swallowed up or sold. And as soon as they sell, they’re different. That has created oppor- tunities for us.” Adds Jim Doherty III: “We’ve had our fair share of offers to take out the corrugator and become part of a sheet operation, but there is nothing like having your own corrugator and
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