Steve Chadwick of Industrial Tool Specialist in Springfield shakes hands with David Young of Rahway, New Jersey-based A&M Industrial Inc. which has just expanded its operations with the acquisition of ITS.
www.areadevelopment.com
About Industrial Tool Specialist:
www.industrialtoolspecialist.com
A&M Expands with Industrial Tool Specialist in Springfield, Vermont Area Development News Desk 02/06/2018
Rahway, New Jersey-based A&M Industrial Inc., expanded its operations with the acquisition of Industrial Tool Specialist, an industrial distributor headquartered in Springfield, Vermont.
According to A&M officials, the team in Vermont will operate as ITS, a division of A&M Industrial, and will continue to service customers from their offices in Springfield.
ITS has built their 45 year reputation in the metalworking industry as a leader in providing application support and technical assistance to manufacturing companies throughout New England.
David Young, President of A&M Industrial said, “ITS’ affiliation with A&M broadens its product line and enables ITS to offer its customers access to a host of leading global manufacturers of quality tooling and abrasives. ITS, like A&M, has distinguished itself as an organization with an unwavering commitment to the success of their customers.”
A&M Industrial Inc., headquartered in Rahway, is a full line industrial supplier and operates a 160,000-square foot distribution center in Cranbury, New Jersey, and sales offices throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.
Okay, so if this is standard procedure, we can expect some layoffs and a reduction in the amount of locally-generated income recirculating in town before it leaves, unless A&M Industrial moves up here from Rahway.
ReplyDeleteIs this a case of whether we should have had in place a system to protect our capital base? We can't afford to have Wall Street cherry-pick our most profitable businesses. When they did that with Precision Valley, we had to boost our property taxes 243% to keep the town running.
Chuck- a system in place? It is your liberal over-regulation and government handouts that has pushed these employers out. Please wake up.
DeleteAs usual Chuck, you haven't a clue. The business model of Mr. Haney, the local, manufacturing goods vendors is obsolete. Now impossible for a small firm working as a distributor to have the inventory and resources to compete with internet sales. Only by partnering with highly, technically fluent, shared skills can they hope to survive.
ReplyDeleteYou really ought to try running a small business, with your own money. May find a reality that talk is cheap and having something of competitive value to offer is necessary for success.
Thank Anonymous 10:00 am Chuck as usual hasn't a clue and has never ran a small business (from reading his past post) small businesses especially, but any business pays it's employees based on our profit margin and what we can afford.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'd say you're both right, and both wrong. Labeling any non-local business as "Wall Street" is an overly simplistic, knee-jerk liberal response. But, property taxes DID go up as a result of local businesses selling out. Which brings me to my second point; THE LOCAL BUSINESSES SOLD OUT! Conservatives say it's "just good business, but it's not very good for Springfield, IS IT? And don't give me that line about "unions, taxes and regulations," either! Most of these businesses relocate to blue states that have ALL OF THE ABOVE! What makes the companies sell? MONEY!!!! What makes the new owners move? CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE AND A NON-EXISTENT LABOR POOL!!! These problems CAN BE FIXED, but there will be pain on both sides. Conservatives will have to live with higher taxes for awhile. Liberals will have to abandon some of their pet social projects, like low-income housing for welfare dependents. Overall, this town will have to clean up it's act, which is the responsibility of EVERYONE! That means mowing our yards, painting our houses, and clearing out the junk, starting RIGHT NOW!
ReplyDeleteGoldman Financial from Massachusetts (A BLUE state) purchased Bryant Grinder and Fellows with one thing in mind. Fleece the Pension money and liquidate the companies. Bryant was kept in town by VMT. Fellows went to Illinois another BLUE state. Wither or not the owners of the companies are red or blue I do not know.
ReplyDelete^ As someone with more than an insight into the demise of Bryant, Fellows and J&L your observation is not accurate. All three of these firms were on the ropes with debt, suicidal union contracts and obsolete infrastructure. Labor rates and scrap loss were staggering. Competitors had out paced them in new development. The brightest and most ambitious had read the writing on the wall and jumped ship. Had Goldman not tried to gain financing and reorganize, they would have liquidated years before. But with the combination of a greedy union and hideously incompetent mgmt due to attrition, their names alone were not enough to carry them through. Machine tool manufacturing remains alive and well in the United States. Just not in Vermont, for good reason.
Delete12:13 is right. Every statement by 1:29 is wrong, at least as applied to Bryant Grinder. When Goldman came, Bryant was the world leader in their field. Their business was successful. The building was sound, their control systems were functioning well. The union contract was reasonable and the workforce on the whole was productive. There wasn't any big scrap problem. Goldman proceeded to systematically cripple the business and the company, cashing in as they did. I was there.
Delete11:29 again; 1:29, you're absolutely right! You are also the first person I've heard offer a true analysis of the causes, and not the usual knee-jerk political response. I lived in Rockford, IL when Fellows moved there. Now living here, it's easy to see why they left. There, they built a new plant, next to a major airport, a major rail line, and the interstate! There are tens of thousands of experienced machinists to draw from (I was one of them) and because of that, the Unions there are generally more reasonable. Bad management is everywhere; (even in IL) several of the companies I worked for were either liquified by corporate raiders, or bled dry by crooked CEO'S and sold. It all really sucks, but Springfield isn't alone; it's been happening all over America for decades. Time for some fresh ideas; "The Precision Valley" isn't coming back.
ReplyDeleteBourn and Koch acquired Fellows machinery.
ReplyDeleteSpringfield (and every other town in America) would benefit hugely from protection against Wall Street. It was not Textron or GIG that raped (literally, "carried off") Precision Valley. They would have been foolish to risk their own money.
ReplyDeleteWhat they did was go to Wall Street, to outfits like KKR and Bain, to raise capital, which they then used to buy the shops. When they screwed up, like GIG did, the investors, not GIG, took the bath.
Meanwhile, other investors, possible ones who (unlike GIG) knew what the business was about and would have succeeded, were blocked out because they were not on a level playing field. Thus, the body of investors who scraped up $324 million to buy Ben & Jerry's were outbid by Unilever, which that year had $1.7 billion to commit to "acquisitions."
It would be to Springfield's benefit to have in place market rules which say: 1) There will be a purchaser's tax based on the net worth of all bidders for a business. The higher the net worth of the winning bidder, the higher the tax (which would have meant Unilever paying tens of millions and the small group paying nothing, depending on the formula). 2) The tax will be used to cover transition costs for the purchaser, based again on that same ratio (which would have meant Unilever would have gotten nothing back, while some mid-range bidder would have gotten almost all of it back).
So, when Wall Street comes to town expecting to do a Bain Capital number on an ITS, its investors had better know what the true costs of their investment is, and they'll be much less likely to engage in another corporate rape.
Of course, Anonymous thinks this is a stupid idea. The shop town mentality dies hard.