We have discussed the roll up going on in our industry many times in this Newsletter. People who started businesses in our industry, when barcoding first started to go beyond the grocery store in the late 1980’s, have a lot of grey hair by now. Many have sold their companies in the last few years.
And the Private Equity folks have more than taken notice, acquiring and consolidating many of our competitors in this space. There are several active PE players in our space right now, we receive phone calls, and emails from them every week, wanting to talk about the future of our company.
There are a couple of angles to this story, first the benefits to our employees transitioning to an Employee Owned business, but an equally important point is to talk about the benefits to you, our customers.
First, the employees. Even if we were to consider an inside sale of the business to some of the key people here at the EMP Tech Group, that would only reward a few of the many people who have decided to spend their careers here and have remained dedicated to the company. The only way to reward the entire group was to form an ESOP.
But that is only part of the story. The benefits of being employee owned for our customers are just as great. You see, an outside investor is at best, a short term situation. They want to come in, pump growth and cut cost, at all cost for a few years, and then sell the company for a profit. They don’t have any interest in making long term investments in the business. Keeping staffing at a level where people are not overworked, and our response times can continue to be excellent, is not their priority.
Outside investors are not going to want the long training curves needed with our employees, so that when you work with our group, they have the expertise needed to be super effective in their jobs. Outside investors will want to raise prices and figure out how to cut costs. How to cut head count to best impact the bottom line.
As an employee owned business, we can continue to invest in the culture of the company and reward our people for excellent service. We also can attract the best of the best when we hire, since everyone wants to be a part of the employee ownership.