Member Profile

of Southern Carton’s customers almost maternally. “It’s nice to be able to take care of customers. We know a lot of them; we’ve been doing business with most of them for lots of years,” she says. “We exchange grandkid photos. We talk about who’s getting married. It’s a lot of fun.”

Assisting Sharp is Angela Newman, whose 23 years at Southern Carton have been devoted entirely to serving customers. Yet, she says, she is still motivated by the diverse nature of the business and the creativity in meeting customers’ needs.

“What I find rewarding is being able to take care of the customers,” she says. “When I started, I thought a box was a box. I didn’t realize there were thousands of different styles of boxes and partitions. So, for me, it’s always a learning experience because I’m still learning, and I’ve been here 22, 23 years. Every day, there’s something different that goes on.”

Eugene Peek is supervisor of Southern Carton’s Fuji X3 digital press, a position he’s held for the past five years. But his experience in the company goes back 26 years beyond that, predominantly in plant supervision. “He’s the jack of all trades,” says David.

Peek has been steeped in Southern Carton’s history of growth, and he recognizes that history as a key part of the company’s success today. “I started when I was 18 so I’ve seen all of [the Kennedy] family grow up together,” says Peek. “I’ve seen it from a letter press, and I’ve been here since the first flexo we got. So yeah, I’ve seen every machine coming in as we grew over the years.”

Plant manager Angie Norman, like her coworkers, is devoted to the company and to the service of its customers. Even before she was employed there, she understood the company’s promise of reliability working in the shipping department for Sanford, then one of Southern Carton’s customers. “I was working part time at Sanford and unloading a truck from Southern,” she recalls. “Rick [Kennedy] asked me, ‘Are you happy here? Do you want a full-time job? Why don’t you come over to Southern Carton and work for us?’”

Norman worked 21 of her 24 years at Southern Carton in shipping. “I was in shipping for 21 years, and the other plant manager retired,” she says. “So, they asked me to take the job. They trusted me. They had more trust in me than I had in myself to run it.” Norman credits her co-workers for much of her success, saying, “I keep smart people around me because I don’t know all the answers.”

Like her colleagues at Southern Carton, Norman has an unflinching commitment to serving the customer, no matter how big or small. “Yeah, everybody knows who our top five customers are, but we don’t treat them any differently than our lowest one,” she says. “If they call and say, ‘Hey, I’m out of boxes! I gotta have boxes,’ we’ll do whatever we can to get them.”

Looking Toward the Future

Southern Carton has had its share of challenges as have many other independent manufacturers, particularly in finding people. “I believe the major challenge facing our industry is labor— competent labor,” David says. “We have not faced the shortages many of my colleagues have experienced, but we have felt the pinch.”

Yet, the Kennedy family has positioned the company to take advantage of expected growth in the coming years. A third generation is now smoothly in place with Connor, the market is growing, and the family is actively reinvesting to take advantage of future opportunities. “My goal is to leave the plant in the best condition possible before I fade off into the sunset,” David says. “I didn’t want to leave Connor in a position where he’s having to replace equipment so I think he’s in really good shape for the next eight to 10 years.”

For his part, Connor credits his successful transition into the company to the family culture his father and grandfather established early on. “AICC has a lot of family businesses, and a lot of them have more family members involved than we have here. And you know, there’s some conflict in some of them,” he says. Pointing to David, he adds, “He and I talk every day, and yeah, we disagree on stuff all the time. But I thoroughly enjoy working with him and looking to grow what his life’s work has been—and his father’s life’s work. This is our livelihood, this is family, and now I look at all our employees that way, too.”

David’s optimism in his own company’s prospects extends to the corrugated industry at large. A member of AICC since 1985, Kennedy is now in his ninth year as part of a CEO Advisory Group, a group he calls his “corrugated brothers.” He sees a new era of opportunity for independent entrepreneurs in the box business. In his opinion, as companies further consolidate—even among independents—there will naturally be those customers whose mix just doesn’t fit into a bigger company’s higher-speed, higher-volume runs. He maintains a unique point of view that sees a renaissance of sorts in independent sheet plant startups. “I think there’s going to be a few more mergers and acquisitions, and then we’ll see a 1970s-style resurgence of independents starting again,” he predicts. “The more the industry consolidates, the more gaps there will be in the industry to fill, and independents will resurface always and fill that void. They will be box plant guys selling or producing for another, and they’ll want to start their own little sheet plant.”

Just like Jim Kennedy did in 1977.

Steve Young is AICC’s ambassador-at-large. He can be reached at 202-297-0583 or syoung@AICCbox.org

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