Berry Cos. continue to grow in size – and family members

The Berry Cos. are growing, and so are the number of family members involved in the third-generation family business.

This month Adam Berry, son of company president Walter Berry, will join the construction and industrial equipment distribution business.

Adam Berry, who has been working as a financial analyst for American Airlines in Dallas, will become the third, third-generation family member to join the business. He will start work in the parts department of the company’s Bobcat store in Lewisville, Texas.

He will join his older brother, Jon, who is general manager of Berry Tractor and Equipment Co., his brother-in-law Wes Lewis, and uncle Dan Scheer, who along with Walter are majority owners of the company. Scheer is also president of Berry Tractor.

Adam Berry is joining the company at a time when business is strong, having rebounded from the last recession, particularly its Bobcat dealerships.

“Overall the construction business is very good and Bobcat is the best it’s ever been,” Walter Berry said.

And as heartening as that is to Walter Berry, he’s thinking a lot these days about the business going forward, including what its leadership looks like when he’s ready to step back and have someone else step in.

“I admit it will get more complicated,” he said.

Berry Cos. was started by Paul and Fred Berry, now chairman emeritus of the 550-employee company, in 1957.

Fred Berry, who had worked for his father’s St. Louis-based wholesaler of Massey-Ferguson farm equipment until it was sold, wanted to start his own company selling construction equipment. So he wrote letters to a number of construction equipment manufacturers searching for a franchise in St. Louis or the Midwest.

International Harvester responded to Berry’s letter, and suggested he take a look at its IH franchise in Wichita. Its Wichita franchisee, Sam Denny, had died and had no successors who wanted to take over the business. Fred and Paul – who later would leave Berry Cos. – bought the franchise with their father’s financial assistance.

“Dad was willing to back us as long as he had retirement income,” Fred Berry said. “He had more confidence in us than we did.”

That was when Berry Tractor and Equipment Co. – the same name of their father’s wholesale company – was established in Wichita.

Since 1957, the company has grown beyond Berry Tractor, a heavy construction equipment dealership whose flagship brand is Komatsu, to include multiple Bobcat skid-steer dealerships, a firm that manufactures construction brooms called SB Manufacturing, and Berry Material Handling, which this year is marking its 40th year in business. Berry Material Handling is a dealer for Yale forklifts and other material handling equipment.

In all, the businesses that Berry Cos. comprises operate 30 locations in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming.

This spring, it plans to open a 31st location in Cedar Hill, south of Dallas, which will sell Bobcats.

The company’s annual revenue is a little more than $300 million, Walter Berry said.

The family business

When Fred Berry officially turned over the company to Walter Berry several years ago, he said he had no hesitation about his son taking leadership of Berry Cos.

“I wanted to keep it in the family, and I thought he certainly had the capabilities,” Fred Berry said.

He said Walter’s bachelor’s of business and economics degree from Vanderbilt University and a master’s degree in finance from the University of Indiana prepared him for his leadership role, as did his first job with the company, in the parts department of one of the Colorado Bobcat stores.

That job meant Walter Berry talked with his customers – day in and day out. The face-to-face interaction with customers is one reason that the company keeps a Cessna Citation Mustang business jet that Walter pilots. It allows him and other senior managers to personally interact with Berry Companies customers hundreds of miles away.

Fred Berry said what Walter brought to the company was a “very analytical” mind.

In fact, in the days before Excel spreadsheet software, Fred said Walter would frequently push the capabilities of Lotus spreadsheet software, wanting to do things like put together data sets that would calculate moving 12-month averages.

“The truth is, our business has grown to the point it needs somebody to understand the financials, cost structure,” Fred Berry said.

Picking Walter Berry’s successor might be a little more complicated.

With two sons and a son-in-law on board now, and a third son, David, a senior at Wichita State, Berry said doesn’t feel he has to figure out a “pecking order” of future leadership for the company yet.

Those decisions, he said, will be based on the skills and abilities of each family member working in the company, and consideration also will be given to non-family employees who show promising leadership abilities.

“Someday we will have to sort that out,” the 56-year-old Berry said. “But for the meantime, I like what I’m doing.”

Berry said to help himself and other family members, Berry Cos. is an active participant in Wichita State University’s Kansas Family Business Forum and retains the services of Legasus Group, a Wichita-based firm that provides consulting and strategic planning services to privately held and family owned businesses.

Walter Berry said he never pushed his children to join the family business.

He said the family employment policy at Berry Cos. is: “We don’t want you to feel like you have to work here. But we don’t want you to feel entitled.”

Indeed, Walter’s daughter Katherine Lewis, had an opportunity to join the company, but she opted instead to get her master’s degree in marriage and family therapy from Friends University and worked as a therapist at HopeNet, a nonprofit agency.

Eldest son Jon, 31, had an interest in real estate and pursued work as a commercial real estate appraiser for Martens Appraisal after he graduated from Wichita State University with a bachelor’s degree in marketing in December 2004.

“It was never a given … that we would have any kind of guaranteed role in the company,” he said.

But the combination of recession and its effect on the real estate industry, as well as an opening in equipment management at Berry Tractor, prompted Jon Berry to try working in the family business.

“I really did enjoy my first career, but I’m very fulfilled in this career for different reasons,” he said.

Looking ahead

Walter Berry said business for the Berry Cos. picked up more quickly than he expected after the last recession.

“(Business) went down steeper than I thought, but we came back faster than I thought we would,” Walter Berry said.

In the last recession, Berry Cos. had to lay off hundreds of workers – going from employment of 505 people to 350.

“That was the most painful downturn we had since the mid-’80s,” Walter Berry said.

He said while business prospects look good for this year, he’s not sure about next year.

“We’re a little cautious going forward,” Walter Berry said.

That’s because right now the company is in its sixth year of what he calls an up-cycle, a period in which Berry Cos. are growing through demand for their products and services. Walter Berry said historically, the company’s up-cycles have lasted about seven years.

“We’ve just got to be aware of what’s going on in the marketplace,” he said.

This story was originally published February 4, 2015 at 5:16 PM with the headline "Berry Cos. continue to grow in size – and family members."