(gentle music) - I am Norm Silverstein.

Glad you're with us.

We're in good company today with Jim Brush.

Jim is President, CEO, and with his brother Douglas, owner of Sentry Group based here in Rochester.

You've probably bid on a Sentry Safe in the WXXI auction, or maybe you've bought one in any number of retail stores.

The company manufactures its safes here in Rochester and in Indiana.

Sentry Safe is well known for its family history, its innovation and its company culture.

Jim, we're gonna talk about all of those things today, but especially about your involvement here in the company and your commitment to the Rochester community.

And part of that commitment is the company is still headquartered after these many years in East Rochester.

- Yes, it is.

- What keeps you here?

- Well, Norm, lots of things.

Some big, some small, and this would be one of the small but important things.

You and your team have done such a great job with this jewel, which has become WXXI, and it's one of the things that makes lots of people, including me in our community, proud of this community.

So congratulations to you.

- Well, thanks.

- What keeps us here?

And this is the third generation family business started by my grandfather.

So there's lots and lots of heritage.

We have people at our company who are second and even third generation employees of the company.

Certainly that's important to my brother and I and our family.

The supply base here is great.

We've had manufacturing plants in China in the past, and it's really important that you have a base of suppliers you can rely upon for raw materials and talent.

And this is where we grew up.

This is my home, my brother's home, and lots of my family, they called this home and really love it.

- Well, there's no doubt that the Brush name is synonymous with the Sentry group, but when you graduated from college, you didn't go right into the family business.

You worked for IBM out of town for some years.

What brought you back?

- Well, the first thing is I knew what I didn't wanna do when I got outta college.

I had worked in the plant for years with my brother doing all kinds of jobs, and I knew I didn't wanna do that.

So I did work for IBM and loved Chicago, loved the company.

And in the intervening years, my dad made a number of spurious jobs offers to me of what jobs that were clearly sort of made up positions.

But one time he called and said they were ready to sell the company and they had a position in the sales and marketing area that was vacant.

And it made a perfect opportunity for me to come back and practice the craft that I had come to know at IBM and employ it here.

So in '86 I came back and my brother and I began a process of buying the company from my dad and uncle.

- Well, let's go back and look at the beginning of the company because the beginning goes back to your grandfather, John D Brush, who you mentioned.

But he began his career as a clergyman.

So I think I'd be a little bit curious with our viewers as to how do you get from the clergy to manufacturing safes?

- Well, you have to ask him.

That's a really good question.

This is back in 1930, he was a Unitarian minister and he had a brother-in-law, who was a locksmith.

And his brother-in-law had this idea that they could take a page out of Henry Ford's book, who was then making cars out of steel stamp technology.

And he said, "Johnny, I bet that we could use the same technology to make safes less expensive."

So no one could accuse my grandfather of being a great businessman at the time.

He started this company, invested all of his wife's money in what we now know is the beginning of the depression, and literally spent years, he'd buy some raw material, he'd make some safes, he'd sell them, he'd collect the money, and he'd go back and buy some raw material.

So it was a long slow start, but he had a passion for it.

He was a very active vigorous guy, and it gave him an outlet for his passions.

And he finally did make it work and survived the depression and went on to some success.

- But for many years it was touch and go, wasn't it?

- It was.

It was just he and one other guy.

Literally two people in that plant for a number of years.

And he actually wrote a memoir about it that I only read after he died.

I wish I had read it before, but it was a very, very colorful memoir.

He was quite a good writer and a real character.

- There was some interesting history about your landlord back then, I guess, for your grandfather, (indistinct) company, and they kind of turned a blind eye to the fact that it was tough to pay rent during the depression.

- Yeah, and my grandfather never forgot that.

That was one of the things he really wrote up prominently in his memoirs.

That here's a company that the landlord could have thrown him out because apparently he was very late in his payments and they didn't, and he never forgot that.

And he paid them in full and remembered them throughout his life for what they had done.

Because if it wasn't for them, he would've been outta business.

- Do you think that influenced the company culture, the way he treated people and customers and vendors?

- I suspect so, but he was a Unitarian minister.

I think he had it in his blood to be thoughtful and generous of people, but certainly that fostered that attitude.

- Now, when your father took over, and that would be John Jr. - Right.

- He was more of an entrepreneur, I understand that he decided to start doing things a little differently, making safes in different sizes.

How much risk was there in the changes that he made?

Or was there more risk in not making change?

- Well, at the time, I think anytime you make a change, there was risk.

But I think probably back in that time there would've been more risk in not doing it because literally what they made was one safe, one size, one color.

That was it.

- Kind of like the Model T. - [Jim] Right, yes.

- But he didn't fall into the same trap that Henry Ford did.

- No, no, that's right.

And so his idea was to essentially make them deeper.

So it wasn't much of a change, it was just cutting steel to a different thickness.

Nothing changed about the door or the back, but it made a deeper product and he could sell different price points.

- Well, let's fast forward to today.

How different is Sentry Group from the Sentry or John D Brush Company as it was known back then back in the thirties?

- Well, I think it's vastly different in terms of size and scope and product line.

I think there aren't many products we have that we sell that are more than 10 years old.

So everything that was sold back then is completely changed.

But I think some things have remained the same.

The culture has remained the same.

I think my dad and uncle and my brother and I have tried to run it with some of the same principles, like for example, have the best product, make sure it delivers on its promise, does the job, respect the people that you work with and the dignity of a day's work and share your profits as you go along and have a set of values that you live by.

And we do.

We post them around the building and we live by those values.

So in that sense, I think we've changed very little.

- [Norm] So do you have profit sharing with your employees?

- Yeah, we do.

Profit sharing is a very important piece of people's compensation, and there have been years where we've had no profit sharing, where we've had difficult years, but we've had many, many more years that we have had it, and some are really successful.

So it just makes sense to my brother and I to continue that tradition because the people that work in the company are the ones that make it possible to have profits, and it's just appropriate to share 'em.

- Well, you've often said that your employees are your most important resource.

What do you mean by that?

- Oh, I think it really is true.

I think if our plant burned down, we could replace the tooling, we could replace our position in the marketplace.

What you can't replace is the knowledge that people have of how to make this product, take it to market, and the commitment and the energy they have and the support of our values.

You just can't replace that kind of thing.

- You mentioned something about the safes and about how you help preserve people's memories and their valuables.

And I understand there's a picture in lobby of a family with a safe that survived Hurricane Sandy.

- [Jim] That's right.

- [Norm] And they thought everything was lost.

- That's right.

This was one of our employees, has a daughter who works in the media industry in New York, and she called him one day right after Hurricane Sandy and said, "Dad, there's a website called Buzzfeed, and they have the most iconic pictures of the year."

And this one picture was number 17 of a hundred.

And right in the center of it was our burned out product, which she recognized.

So we contacted AP, got in touch with the couple, and we sent a film crew down.

So we not only had that still photograph, but we did a video of their whole experience of Sandy approaching the devastation of the fire and what it meant to them for their mom, find what turned out to be their family genealogy intact.

- [Norm] That's a great story.

I understand people leave stories like that on your website.

- Yeah, often.

If people ever do suffer a fire or a flood, we replace the product for free.

We send it to them.

And as a result we get a lot of testimonial letters from people that say, "Hey, I need a replacement, but here's my story."

And I bet we get a couple hundred a year and we try to read a number of them every year at our Christmas party, which is often a raucous, kind of a fun time.

But the whole room quiets down at that time.

And it gives everyone a real sense of purpose that we don't just work here for a paycheck.

The stuff we do really makes a difference in people's lives.

- What are some of your favorite stories that you've heard from customers?

- Oh, well, I think the Hurricane Sandy one is a really good one there.

The place burned right to the ground, the whole place was leveled.

All they had was what was in a hole that was the foundation.

And this woman's mother had been collecting the family genealogy for a long time, and she'd had it in the safe.

It was in the second floor.

It fell to the basement, survived that.

And when they opened it up, it was completely intact.

And it really was one of the only things that they had left, but one of the most important things to her mother in her life.

- How'd that make you feel?

- It makes me feel great.

It's really nice.

It's nice to be a manufacturer to make a product that does a real thing.

More and more these days, a lot of people are involved in service industries, it's not a tangible thing.

Ours is not only tangible, but we touch people's lives like that and it makes me feel great.

- Well, so many businesses, especially in manufacturing have been affected by technology, robotics.

How have things changed in the way you make your safes?

- Well, there's quite a bit of automation, particularly jobs that could be dangerous or very repetitive and can create health hazards.

Those we've tried to to automate.

But, the key insights come from people, insights into how consumers use the product, how you translate that into a product that meets a consumer need, and then how you take that to market so that it makes money for our retail partners and for us.

- At one time you did some manufacturing in China, but you decided to bring that business back.

Why would you take something back from China?

- Well, it had to do with economics.

Part of that business, we just exited a chunk of business.

But we were making products over there that we make in the US as well.

And we knew from our costs that if it's sold here in North America, the way we've automated and with the skill the people we have here in Rochester, it was actually cheaper for us to make it here in Rochester than to make it in Shanghai.

- Do you think there are other companies that ought to be taking a look at that, bringing business back, manufacturing back?

- Oh, sure.

And I know there are.

I'm a member of a group of non-competitive manufacturers.

There's 15 CEOs and more than half of them have manufacturing in China.

And I can tell you almost every single one of them is looking right now to bring products back either to North America, to Mexico, or to the US.

- It's interesting.

Now, you were honored a few years ago along with your brother Doug, with the Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award from RIT- - [Jim] RIT.

- [Norm] Right.

And that's of course for business achievement, but there's a lot more to Sentry as you've noted.

And of course it must be interesting running a business with your brother.

So if you feel you can tell us, how's that work?

- Well, I think it works in general very, very well.

I can tell you lots of horror stories of family businesses where it doesn't work well.

But I think Doug and I, we're way more alike than we are different.

And we share the same values, we have the same interests.

We're not afraid to work hard.

I think to the extent we're different, it's our personality.

If you look at a Myers-Briggs personality profile, we've done this as it was an interesting exercise.

He was in one corner and I was in the other.

So you really couldn't find two more different people in terms of how we make decisions and style and personality.

But when it comes to what counts values, how do you judge investment alternatives, commitment to a family business, we are right on top of each other.

- I heard a story that you and Doug used to give out turkeys personally.

Do you still do?

Do you still do that?

- Yeah, we still do.

My dad and uncle did it too.

Yeah, we back up a truck outside of the office and we have about 500 frozen turkeys on it.

And we have a schedule for all the management to be out in that truck when the shift changes occur.

And we invite back all the retirees and every employee and we ask them to bring some goods, some canned goods to give to local charities.

And they do.

And in return they get a turkey.

And it's really one of the most fun days of the year, weather permitting.

We've had some really bad days to do this on.

But it is such a kick to see all the old retirees come back and people come out to that truck with a big smile on their face.

It's not about work, it's about Thanksgiving.

And it's something Doug and I really enjoy.

- The first time I visited the plant, your Uncle Dick Brush gave me a tour.

He pointed out you have a swimming pool.

Now I know you were a champion college swimmer, but I understand that's actually part of a recreational area, a workout area.

Fitness that you have.

- [Jim] That's right.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, we call it "Fit n Fun".

And when we, I wasn't at the company at the time, but we were expanding and our location is right at the edge of where Irondequoit Creek comes through Penfield.

So it's a big drop off in the geography.

And they had to dig down a certain level to get a good foundation.

So they had three levels of the plant there and they decided instead of, once they built down that far, to finish it off, there's a couple of racketball courts down there that are used for aerobics classes.

We teach swimming to employees' kids.

It's used for employees' birthday parties.

There's also a weight room and an aerobics facility.

And it gets quite a bit of use.

So surprising the number of employees are down there.

It opens at 6:00 AM closes at 6:00 PM and there's people down there all the time.

- [Norm] That's a great story.

You and your family are well known for giving back to the community.

Then in full disclosure, I don't know how much of WXXI there'd be today.

Your mother was a board member, worked for WXXI, your family, I don't think we could run an auction without the Sentry Safes.

And of course, your uncle Dick Brush is the honorary trustee and a long time friend and supporter.

What is so important about giving back to the community?

Because I know we're far from the only organization that you support.

- Yeah, sure.

Well, first of all, my mom and and Dick still have a huge affinity for WXXI.

And it's from them that I hear a lot about what a great organization this is.

I think it just comes back to the fact that my brother and I, my whole family has always felt very lucky and blessed to have what we have.

A great little company makes a product that does good things in the world and we recognize that we don't do this ourselves and certainly, we value our employees, but it's the whole community that fosters an environment that makes us successful.

And so we've always had the attitude that to the extent we can give back, that that's a good thing to do.

And we try to be quite thoughtful about where we focus those charitable dollars to have the biggest positive impact in the community.

- Well, I know you're very involved with United Way and shared a campaign.

Now that must take a lot of time and effort and resources.

- [Jim] But, Norm, it was very fun 'cause it put me in front of businesses throughout this area, this community, and it brought me up close and personal with the philanthropy of this community.

And I'll take the example of United Way.

Our United Way raises more money in our annual drive than Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany combined.

And, during that time I really got a chance to meet the business leaders that make that possible.

And I was just blown away by their attitude towards philanthropy and commitment to the Rochester community.

- I know you were very interested personally in early childhood issues and that you've done some interesting work with The Children's Agenda.

I don't think too many people know about particularly prenatal care.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

- Yeah, sure.

The Children's Agenda is an organization I work closely with.

Jeff Kaczorowski, who was the director as an example, came to me about, boy, it must be six or seven years ago now, with a study that was done on a regimen called "Nurse Family Partnership".

And Harriet Kitzman was a researcher at the U of R. And she had done this work and had fact-based evidence that if you can identify moms or moms to be early enough that fit a certain profile, typically low income, first time moms, and you send someone in to train them how to get ready for the birth of your first child, how to take care of that child, how to get and retain a job as you have a child, it has tremendously positive outcomes on birth weights, avoidance of other births that are perhaps unwanted and it has an evidence-based return.

That's a very, very significant return on the investment.

So anyway, Jeff brought that to me.

We subsidized that.

He and I went out and raised money and talked to Maggie Brooks about it, and she was very, very supportive.

And in fact has now got to the point where with some of Maggie's help, we have public money from Medicare that finances a lot of that.

So it's no longer private dollars, it's supported by public dollars and it's a great use of those public dollars that avoids problems that otherwise would be spent later in life remediating huge problems after lives have already been ruined.

- Well, you know something about raising kids, five children, all together.

- Yes, I do, that's right.

Yep.

- Anyone expressed an interest in being the next generation of Brushes to- - No, not yet.

Although I didn't either until I was 30.

No, my oldest is a doctor and the youngest is a freshman at Vassar.

And so my brother and I have always had the attitude that you should just try to discover your passion and then apply yourself to it and do it to your best ability.

If that turns out to be making safes, hey, that's great.

We'd love to have you join us.

If not though, follow your passion where it takes you.

And so far it's taken them other directions.

So we haven't given up hope yet, but so far I don't see anyone on the horizon.

- I understand that you have a very strong family connection with St. Lawrence University.

A lot of the Brushes have gone there.

They're involved in helping to raise funds for the university, of course that's up in the north country.

It begs the question, how'd you get involved with St. Lawrence?

- Well, my grandfather went there and he attributes his success in life to the fact that he got to go to college and that he went to St. Lawrence in particular.

He went to seminary school there.

So my dad and both my uncles actually went to St. Lawrence.

My grandfather met my grandmother, my dad met my mother, and then my sister and I and one of my sons have all gone to St. Lawrence along with a number of nieces and nephews.

- And I understand there's an art gallery there, I think named for your family.

- Yeah, well my uncle Dick has been a frustrated artist all his life, and luckily he lives in a small home in Fairport, and so the factory in the office has become his adjunct art gallery.

So we enjoy his passion for art collecting every day.

And yeah, he made a donation to St. Lawrence a number of years ago, and they named the art gallery in his name.

- Well, that's right about the art at Sentry.

When people visit, are they surprised to see sculptures and paintings?

Not what you necessarily expect in a manufacturing plant.

- No, it's not.

And it does get people's attention.

I mean, you can't miss it.

If you drive in, there's a huge sculpture, several of them in fact, right on the lawn.

And then inside the office is a very, very eclectic collection, not just in the public spaces, but in all the offices.

Dick has someone come in from time to time and move them around the offices, so they're always changing.

And it does create a really unique and much more fun and sort of casual environment.

- The business has been around, as we noted, for almost 85 years.

- Right.

- And we've only talked about safes.

You've actually expanded into other products, different kinds of gun lockers, things like that.

What is the product range today?

- Well, it spans anything from a cash box that you might acquire at one of our customers.

Walmart, for example, for 9.99, $9, up through commercial filing cabinets and actually commercial bank vault doors that might retail for $5,000.

So it's quite a broad product line, but it's focused on fire safe security storage for home and light commercial business.

And we do a lot of market research.

We try to really understand who our consumer is.

We call them the protector.

And it's not defined by a demographic, it's a psychographic profile of the people that have this need to be organized to protect the things that are important to them.

Happily over 80% of the population in North America, and we think worldwide, it's a human characteristic, share that attitude.

So we think there's a lot of room to grow.

- I'll never forget back during the banking crisis, I was in an airport, picked up a magazine and it was about safes and it featured Sentry.

And it said that people were buying safes because they were scared to put money in the bank.

What kind of things drive sales, the ups and downs that you see?

- Well, certainly when there's unexpected, like things like that does happen.

In fact, I was just looking today, our sales at some of our big retailers, we get through our information system very granular up-to-date information, we know in San Diego County, sales are up triple digits 'cause of fires.

So certainly fires, floods, tornadoes these days, social, political, economic risks.

It raises the awareness of what's at risk and what we sell is peace of mind.

And peace of mind is at a premium today.

- You're still a private company, but can you share with us about how big are your annual sales?

- Well, we usually keep that confidential, but we do share employment.

We have over 400 employees here in Rochester.

We've grown steadily.

Doug and I, the company's about 10 times larger now than it was when we bought the controlling interest in 1986.

- [Norm] 10 times.

- 10 times.

Right.

So it's a bigger, more successful company.

We have plans to grow at about that same compound growth rate, high single, low double digit rates for the next five years.

It takes some investment, it takes some thoughtful expansion of the product line, but we're pretty confident that we can do that.

- Do you like keeping the company private so you don't have to answer to shareholders or quarterly earnings?

- Well, it is great to be private.

However, Doug and I, many years ago decided to put in place an outside board of directors, and these are people, there's two presidents of Emerson electric companies.

So these are individuals that run, so are CEOs or presidents of either public or private companies.

And they are my boss.

I'm the CEO, I report to the board, Doug's chairman of the board.

We have quarterly meetings and we run it like a board.

And their job is to hire and fire the CEO and look out for the interest of the shareholders.

And they certainly do that.

So while it is great to be private, and I do think there are things that we've been able to do that public companies couldn't have done to make some big investments, take some fairly big risks.

We do it in partnership with some guys that really help us and bring some skill that Doug and I really value.

- Jim, you grew up in the Rochester area in the sixties, I presume.

- [Jim] Yep.

- How have things changed and for the better and for the worse?

- Oh, wow.

Well, I lived outside my first 10 years out of college, I lived in Chicago.

And I guess in Chicago, I consider Chicago a very beautiful city.

It's a Midwestern value city.

I really enjoyed it.

And so moving back here, it was easy for me to contrast that this is a much smaller city, and yet it's got a lot of the things that only bigger cities have.

You've got a Philharmonic, you've got some sports teams, you've got some art, you've got things like WXXI, some really deep and rich cultural traditions that you wouldn't expect to find in a small city.

So I think that was true back when I came back here and when I grew up.

I think it's even more true though today.

I think that cultural foundation has strengthened, if anything.

- And those are the kinds of things your family has supported over the years.

- Yeah, sure.

It's one of the reasons we love living in Rochester, like you.

- I like to ask my guests the same three questions to hear how people react.

And I'd like to do that with you.

And this one might be a little different.

If you could change one thing about this community, what would it be?

- I guess if I could wave a magic wand, I'd make better use of our waterfront.

Look at the river here in Rochester, you look at the lakefront.

The city of Chicago, for example, did a wonderful job doing some planning and has really beautiful public spaces, recreational facilities, and really capitalizes in that waterfront.

And I think some of the things we're doing these days are going the right direction, but if I could have gone back a hundred years, I would've done land use a little bit differently.

I think we would've all enjoyed a whole different feeling of a waterfront community, more so than we do today.

- What do you love most about Rochester today?

- Well, I think it's just the culture of this little community.

I gave you the example of the United Way and the fact that we are a very philanthropic, very generous community and that permeates a lot of things.

People care about Rochester.

Well, we brought a number of employees to Rochester to help us run Sentry.

And they come from all over the country and sometimes it's hard to attract them because what they see is the weather, but once they get here, they love it and they've typically stayed.

So I think that's the thing that stands out for me that makes Rochester really unique.

- What about Rochester's best kept secret?

- Well, I think the fact that it has the world's largest and most significant safe manufacturer is the most significant thing to me.

Very few people know that here in town.

We don't sell dramatically here in town.

We sell at our retailers, but they're scattered throughout the country.

So I think that's a pretty well kept secret itself.

- What do you see for the future of Sentry?

- Oh, I see a lot of good things.

I think we have lots of opportunities to grow.

A peace of mind is a scarce commodity.

Luckily we got some really smart people.

We do a lot of consumer research.

We see very clear paths to expand what we call our served market and also to expand into what we call the unserved market.

And frankly, take advantage of the technological change and the shift from paper to digital that might, on the outside look like a threat to our business.

We see a lot more opportunities than we see threats, so I predict that we're gonna continue to grow, we're gonna continue to invest in our product line, and we'll continue to be a good employer here in Rochester.

- Well, Jim, I think you've done a pretty good job of unveiling Rochester's best kept secret.

I hope that we've helped let more people know about Sentry, which I think is one of the most interesting companies in the area and probably should get a little more attention.

So thanks for joining me today.

- All right, Norm.

Well thank you very much.

I've enjoyed it.

- I have too.

And thank you for watching.

You can share this program or watch it online at wxxxi.org and we'll see you next time on "Norm & Company".

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