B.W. Rogers Company

Type: Private Company
Address: 380 Water Street, Akron, Ohio, 44308-1045, U.S.A.
Telephone: (330) 762-0251
Fax: (330) 762-5505
Web: http://www.bwrogers.com
Employees: 95
Sales: $30 million (1995 est.)
Incorporated: 1929
NAIC: 423840 Industrial Supplies Merchant Wholesalers; 423610 Electrical Apparatus and Equipment, Wiring Supplies, and Related Equipment Merchant Wholesalers
SIC: 5085 Industrial Supplies; 5063 Electrical Apparatus & Equipment

The subsidiaries and affiliates of Akron, Ohio-based B.W. Rogers Company supply fluid connectors, motion control, and process equipment for a wide variety of industries, including automotive, biomedical, construction machinery, conveyors, food products machinery, glass, fabricated metals, life sciences, metalworking machinery, packaging, rubber and plastic, special machinery, and steel. Rogers operates in more than 20 locations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana, and Kentucky, doing business under the B.W. Rogers name as well as those of its sister units.

The Indianapolis-based HydraAir division serves Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, specializing in hoses and fittings. Kentucky Pneumatics Inc. is a Louisville, Kentucky-based distributor of fluid power valves, cylinders, power tools, accessories, and automated controls. Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Exonic Systems focuses on electromechanical automation products, including motion control, process control, sensors, and pneumatic and vacuum products, as well as repair, engineering services, and training. Pennsylvania Hose & Fittings is a Monroeville, Pennsylvania, distributor of fluid connector parts and other hydraulics, pneumatics, and filtration products to makers of fluid connectors and to other small and medium users.

Another Louisville-based unit, Fluid Power Products, supplies industrial customers with automation, connector, hydraulic, pneumatic, process equipment, and industrial power tools products. Based in Wheeling, West Virginia, Scott Fluid Power supplies industrial customers with hoses and fittings. Finally, Machine Drive Company maintains operations in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Wapakoneta, Ohio, providing variable speed, motion control, motor control, and industrial automotive products and design, repair, and project management services. B.W. Rogers is a private company owned by the Rogers family and headed by a third-generation chief executive officer, Richard "Rick" Rogers.

Company Founded

The man behind the establishment of B.W. Rogers was Bruce W. Rogers, Sr. A trained engineer, Rogers was employed by the Akron rubber company, B.F. Goodrich, when he decided to go into business for himself in 1928. He started out as an independent sales representative for makers of power transmission and process equipment, pitching his wares to industrial customers in northeast Ohio. A year later he established a distributorship in Akron under the name B.W. Rogers Company.

The year 1929 was not a particularly good time to start a business of any kind. In October the stock market crashed, leading to a financial crisis and the Great Depression that encompassed all of the 1930s. Tough times would not be fully overcome until defense spending from the United States' entry into World War II spurred an economic boom. B.W. Rogers managed to scrape by during the early years of the Depression until he was able to establish regular customers among Akron's rubber and tire companies and machine builders.

Postwar Expansion

In the postwar era Rogers expanded his slate of products beyond power transmission and process equipment by becoming the initial distributor of the hydraulic tube fittings produced by the Parker Appliance Company, which would later be known as the Parker Hannifin Corporation. Parker Appliance had been founded in Cleveland in 1918 by Arthur L. Parker, who developed a pneumatic brake system for trucks and buses. He later developed pneumatic seals used in aircraft, including the plane Charles Lindbergh used to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The business was converted to produce war materials during World War II but soon after the war ended in 1945 Parker died from a heart attack.

A brief recession that followed the war crippled Parker Appliance, which was at the edge of bankruptcy. Parker's widow invested the $1 million she received from his life insurance policy to rebuild the business. A new management team was installed to expand the company's fluid components products. The relationship with B.W. Rogers as distributor played a large role in revitalizing Parker's business. Both companies prospered from a mutually beneficial relationship that would endure.

A Second Generation Joins the Company

Soon after the affiliation with Parker, B.W. Rogers was poised to expand beyond northeast Ohio into other parts of the state. Business was strong enough in Cleveland that Rogers opened a second office in the city to better serve its customers there. The Rogers company remained a two-city operation through the 1950s. During this period a second generation of the Rogers family became involved with the business. In 1956 Bruce W. Rogers, Jr., joined the company after graduating from the University of Akron with a degree in engineering. The younger Rogers started out as a salesman, a position for which he was not particularly suited, yet he heeded the advice his father had to offer, words that he would offer others later in life: "Work harder than you're expected to work. Work harder than you're paid to work, and work harder than the guy sitting next to you."

B.W. Rogers continued to expand in the 1960s. It extended its footprint southward to the central Ohio markets, opening an office in Columbus in 1960. By the end of the decade B.W. Rogers was doing well enough in northern and central Ohio to venture into the southwest corner of the state, to serve southern Ohio as well as stake a claim in northern Kentucky by adding an office in Cincinnati in 1969.

Death of Founder Slows Company Growth

In 1971 Bruce W. Rogers died unexpectedly, leaving the company in a state of uncertainty. While he may have offered advice to his son about the value of hard work, he was less generous about providing management training or sharing information about the company's finances. "My grandfather kept the cards close to his chest," Rick Rogers told trade newsletter Modern Distribution Management many years later. "He left no information regarding his desires for the company or the financial condition of the business."

Thus, Bruce Rogers, Jr., who was a trained salesman, found himself thrust into the role of chief executive with little training. As a result, he spent a good bit of time adjusting to the job instead of growing the business as effectively as he might. Nevertheless, in 1973 he opened an office in Dayton, Ohio, filling in the gap between the Columbus and Cincinnati markets.

B.W. Rogers added no new offices from the mid-1960s through the 1980s. The company did, however, attempt to improve its operations to better serve customers. In 1983 a new software system was installed to improve the handling of inventory and distribution. By the end of the decade the company's lines included about 8,000 products. This required not only required a new warehouse in Cleveland but a more efficient way to shelve and pick the items.

When a new warehouse building was added in 1990, B.W. Rogers eschewed regular shelving in favor of eight-foot-high carousels, a system that kept the size of the addition to a minimum while reducing the picking time per item from three or four minutes to about 30 seconds. As a result of this time savings, the company was able to drastically improve its same-day shipping statistics. When the company expanded the facility again in 1995, adding a conference room, extra space for the engineering department, and more office space, it was able to increase warehousing capabilities without increasing square footage by simply stacking three six-foot horizontal carousels on top of the other carousels.

Improving its warehousing capabilities was not the only challenge facing the company in the early 1990s. B.W. Rogers also had to contend with competition from larger companies. "Being a small, local distributor, we weren't sure we would make the cut," Bruce Rogers, Jr., explained to the Akron Beacon Journal. "We had to look at ways to improve our efficiencies." The company developed a plan that called for the development of new products, to be accomplished in part through mergers and acquisitions, in order to drive higher sales.

Planning for a New Generation of Leadership

At the same time the company was gearing up for strategic change, Bruce Rogers, Jr., was grooming his son, Richard (Rick), to succeed him, making an effort to correct the oversights of his own father. In his mid-30s at the start of the 1990s, Rick Rogers had already held a number of positions in the company. He began working closely with his father to prepare for taking over the business, and in 1995 was named president.

By this stage in the company's history, annual revenues were in the $30 million range. Three years later Rick Rogers became chief executive officer. His father remained chairman of the company but the torch had been passed to the next generation. Moreover, the company took steps to retain talented managers and perhaps groom a replacement for Richard Rogers from the ranks of the company by offering stock plans to key personnel to keep them invested in the future of B.W. Rogers.

During this transitional phase in the 1990s, B.W. Rogers was still able to expand the business in order to fend off larger competition. An office was opened in the northeast corner of Ohio near the Pennsylvania border in Youngstown in 1992. The decade also saw B.W. Rogers expanding through what it called partnerships, bringing other companies into the fold to increase product offerings and expand market share. In 1996 the business of HydraAir, Inc., was added. The Indianapolis-based company had been founded 20 years earlier by William C. Myrvold and William A. Newton, a former territory manager for Parker Hannifin. In 1998 Kentucky Pneumatics Inc. of Louisville was brought into the fold.

Growth Through Acquisitions and Partnerships

The expansion program continued in the new century. A major step came in July 2002 when B.W. Rogers and Exonic Systems, Inc., merged. The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Exonic had been founded in 1978 by Jay Jones and Robert Burig. The addition of Exonic gave B.W. Rogers entry into the field of electromechanical motion control systems, thus providing customers with a wider range of automation solutions. As a result, B.W. Rogers could offer solutions without customers worrying that the company had an incentive to favor one technology over the other. Exonic also maintained an office in Philadelphia. Another Pennsylvania company, Monroeville-based Pennsylvania Hose & Fittings, provider of hydraulics, pneumatics, and filtration components, was also added in the early 2000s.

Further growth to the B.W. Rogers family of companies came in 2005 when Scott Fluid Power joined the group. In business since 1946, Scott was based in Wheeling, West Virginia. It supplied industrial customers with pneumatics, hydraulics, and hose assemblies.

In July 2006 B.W. Rogers acquired Fluid Power Products Inc. of Louisville, supplying industrial customers with pneumatic, hydraulic, connector, and systems solutions. Fluid Power was established in 1965 by engineer Bill Thompson, who used his experience in the pneumatic fluid power manufacturing field to start a business from his Paris, Kentucky, home, where he converted his garage into a warehouse. As the business grew he put up a structure behind his house to serve as a warehouse, and in time expanded his reach throughout Louisville and beyond, ultimately spreading to West Virginia and Indiana.

B.W. Rogers grew further in 2007 when it acquired Machine Drive Company. The Cincinnati-based company was founded in 1947, serving automakers and specialty machine builders, especially the waste water and pumping market, with a broad range of value-added machine control products and services, including design, building, and project management. Well entrenched in five states, the B.W. Rogers family of companies was positioned to maintain its growth in the years ahead.

Principal Subsidiaries

HydraAir; Exonic Systems; Pennsylvania Hose & Fittings; Fluid Power Products; Scott Fluid Power; Machine Drive Company; Kentucky Pneumatics Inc.

Principal Competitors

Applied Industrial Technologies; Babson Fluid Power Inc.; Scott Industrial Systems; SunSource Technology Services Inc.

Further Reading

Evans, Diane, "Family's Values Applauded by Group; B.W. Rogers Co. Proves Community Service Matters," Akron Beacon Journal, May 14, 2000, p. G1.

"Horizontal Carousels Provide Needed Storage Without Expansion," Material Handling Engineering, September 1996, p. 73.

McEnaney, Laura, "Award Honors Hard Worker; Warehousing Company Also Noted for Growth into Multifaceted Corporation," Akron Beacon Journal, May 11, 1995, p. B1.

Young, Lindsay, "Make Transition to Next Generation as Seamless as Possible," Modern Distribution Management, September 10, 2006.

— Ed Dinger