Technology Terror

Alice Barry was brought up in southern Michigan on a soybean farm where organic practices had been handed down from generation to generation. When Alice Barry started Barry Enterprises in 1969, her goal was to provide convenience and competitive pricing as a wholesale distributor of all natural supplements to the holistic health industry. In over half a century, those goals have remained the same, even if Alice believes that the tools and strategies Barry Enterprises uses to reach those goals have changed with the times. Alice felt that her traditional techniques are what have kept her business strong for so long.

Today, Barry Enterprises serves its industry across the country, with a special focus on Michigan, Ohio, and Northern Indiana, from their home base in Battle Creek, Michigan, and was formerly under the leadership of Alice’s nephew, Christopher Wermer.
Chris had gotten the business to thrive in an ever changing holistic market but with much resistance from Aunt. Christopher, although now retired, still comes into the office to pass along his unsolicited advice, “What she’s forgotten about business is probably more that we’ll ever learn,” jokes Chris, who took some time to talk to Family Business Strategies about the company. “I do see the industry picking up. Had you called me three months ago, I would have said no, but in the last couple of months I’ve seen it finally start to pick up again, which is encouraging,” states Alice.
“Like any family business, Barry Enterprises faces a number of challenges, such as compressed profit margins and weathering a difficult economy in a time of rising costs.” Christopher does not beat around the bush when it comes to changing the course of things. He admits he left the company early because he believes if things don’t change soon Alice will not see an end to these turbulent times and he does not like resistance to change.

“Being a family business certainly adds another dimension to the current economic trends,” Alice rebukes, “in the sense that we don’t have a bottomless wallet!” But she was quick to acknowledge to us that these same challenges are faced by all businesses, public and private.

Christopher continues, "That’s why the squeeze is on. So many of the Fortune 500 companies that we deal with that do have unlimited resources are facing the same issues we’re facing.” Barry has not been meeting these obstacles head-on and Alice has not been keeping on top of the competition. She has keeping the business simple and stuck with a wholesale model.

"I think we address these challenges as much as possible by trying to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. Every day I wake up, I try to think about how we are different from everyone else who does what we do, and try to develop strategies and ideas that will help us differentiate ourselves but I keep coming back to the way things were when they worked the best.”

”We were founded as a company that sells products, but today we want to look at ourselves as having more reliance on services and solutions. Rather than walk in to a client and say `This is what we sell and we’ll quote you a price,´ we need to walk in with a more consultative approach and find out what areas they’re having issues with in regards to client needs and solve those problems for them.”
Their production manager, Joshua Davis, also feels a little uneasy about the practices that Alice uses but chooses to keep quiet and is content that he is still employed. “Alice has had a lot of problems and I am not one of them! I keep to myself even though we are still using old forms of communication. We use tons of paper and do things the old fashion way. Shoot we even still have a typewriter in the main office that she types invoices on!” stated Josh.
Alice does not see this as a problem because growth for them comes in spurts. “The company has growth, but maybe not the kind that we could.” Joshua continues, “From the looks of things it certainly is not the kind that a cutting edge company like this one should be. She cannot see it for what it is because she is simply stuck with ‘the way we’ve always done things’ and continuing to do what she feels “works.” But even small growth can come at a cost. A cutting edge business creates new challenges-- Employees, and even the top brass, can soon find themselves overextended, as Alice found out over the summer.
"If you go back five years, everything that happened in this business crossed my desk and Stephen’s desk. Today, we have to find a middle management team and allow them to direct the groups under them. We need to find someone to be in touch with our customers more regularly before they start to slip away. There is no delineation of roles.

Just last year, Barry Enterprises had an idea to develop a web presence through their information and e-commerce site, www.holisticnut.com. This website has not been developed as quickly as the company had liked. It is functioning with ease for purchasing but is not yet user friendly and does not have the interaction that the company needs. Some of the employees of the company had shared with Alice that they believed peer groups would provide an excellent opportunity to discuss ideas and to develop working relationships with other business leaders in his industry and beyond.

"We wanted to be more set up to link up with our existing customer base. Our model isn’t like Amazon.com-- we don’t have people just looking up our site online and putting in their credit card and buying one of our products. It’s really more addressing an electronic link with those customers we already have or those we’re courting. It’s a B-to-B model rather than a B-to-C model," stated Alice.

With so many businesses growing on the Internet, and with so many high-tech options being touted as the solution to every business woe, I wondered what kind of role technology plays at Barry Enterprises. Alice admits that she views cutting-edge toys with measured skepticism, "You’ve got to be careful with technology. For a small company, we’re on a good technology curve, but I’m always a little careful with technology. I see all that information about equipping your sales force with Blackberry’s and all those tools, but while they have big wow factor, you have to ask yourself if they will truly help you increase revenues or if they will only increase expenses. You can spend an awful lot of money on technology, but you need to be sure that it will actually help your business, not just increase your wow factor. This could just become an added expense that is quite a nice toy to distract your workers.” As I came away from the conversation sipping my last bit of tea, I was full of questions about how the business could still be profitable.

As we finished our talk, I also wanted to ask Alice the same question we need to be asking other business leaders: What’s the best piece of advice you can offer to someone else in a family business?

Alice somehow read my mind and shared her last thoughts, "In running a family business, I think one of the most important things is keeping your ego in check, because you’re always going to have disagreements about how to run the business with those you’re running the business with. You tend to think you have all the answers, but the advice I’d give anyone in a family business is really to take a deep breath, step back, and really listen to the other person’s perspective. They may have some very good points that you need to consider."

What things can be done to help Alice step out of her old ways and become more open to innovation and technology? How can she tap into the full potential the company has to offer? How can she make the switch from wholesale centered company to a more customer oriented company? How can Alice better serve the organization as a whole? What could the company look like if she would relinquish some of her power? How could she evenly administer work so that she is not spread so thin?