Member Profile
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 Weber—one was retiring after 51 years at the time of our visit—were the ones who 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,” says Jim III. Zambon Bergvall recalls the day in 2013 when Doherty Jr. passed away. “I had just started my senior year at Villanova when I had heard that my grandfather had passed away,” she recalls. “My dad and I went to the plant to be with everyone as the news was being shared. I appreciated the love and stories that everyone shared at that time. My grandfather had close relationships with employees across the company.” This familylike atmosphere pervades everything 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 because some of them have the same story themselves.” Commenting on the longevity of some of Weber’s current customers, he adds, “If you’re aligned with the right people, then their growth becomes your growth. We’re partnered with some good customers that have been very loyal to us.” Resilience in the Face of Challenges Commenting on current challenges in the industry and the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone on the Weber team agrees that the company’s long-maintained employee, customer, and vendor relationships have insulated them from the most damaging market
38
BOXSCORE March/April 2022
conditions, namely extended lead times and scarce labor. Says Jim Zambon: “I think [the pandemic] has fortified relationships—vendor and professional relationships, customer relationships, equipment relationships, employee relationships. And I think that’s probably the key thing that most successful independents do very well: They establish those key relationships with vendors who are going to do whatever it takes to get us the raw material the same way that customers rely on us to get them their boxes.” Ryan Zambon adds, “If you’d gone back five years and said, ‘You’re going to lose dozens 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 really good tenacity, and our resilience is certainly strengthened and improved by the challenge. You get harder steel through fire.” 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 ownership. “The competitive landscape is very different,” says 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 opportunities for us.” Adds Jim 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 being nimble. We’ve never been one to follow the herd instinct.” He says he thinks independents are best suited to the changes ahead: “You have to see what the new world is going to bring and adapt to it in many ways. I think that’s what independents have done so well over their history.”
The company credits its AICC relationships in their success story as well. Bob Doherty tells a story of a major account early on in their business that needed a three-color box, which Weber did not have the capability to print. Weber approached Schiffenhaus Packaging, another AICC member, to look at converting the box to preprinted linerboard. “I called Anton Schiffenhaus, and he treated me like a son,“ Doherty recalls. “I went back to the customer and said I think I have a solution. That whole thing with Schiffenhaus got us that customer’s business for another seven or eight years. That’s what AICC was all about.” Kevin Doherty adds, “I’m the only sales manager here. You go to AICC meetings, and you talk to four or five others. It’s very helpful to find other people you’re in sync with.” Jim III, for his part, contributed his time and expertise to AICC’s growth, serving six years on the AICC board of directors, from 1994 through 2000, first as a regional vice president for the Mid-Atlantic states and then as a director at large. In a video presentation marking Weber’s 125th Anniversary, shown at AICC’s 2018 Spring Meeting in Phoenix, Jim III closes with the words, “The future looks very bright for Weber Display & Packaging.” The company’s operating philosophy, its long-term, loyal relationships with employees, customers, and vendors, and its Doherty and Zambon family heritage will prove his words true for many years to come. Steve Young is AICC’s ambassador-at-large. He can be reached at 202-297-0583 or syoung@ aiccbox.org.
