The 100-year-old Start-up

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A few months later, Joel flew to New York City to see Jerry Kearns, that year's president of the National Housewares Manufacturers Association. A major supplier to M. Jacob & Sons, Kearns's company, APL Inc., also sold products to retailers directly, and Joel wanted to tap into Kearn's experience. He brought along an introductory offer he had just printed up: 13 spray bottles for the price of 12. Kearns, with 35 years in business, studied the price sheet and shook his head. "He said it looked cheap," Joel recalls. "He said, 'Throw away those sheets and just give them 8% off their opening orders and one reorder at the same price.' How was I supposed to know? I had never done it before." Kearns coached Joel on the fundamentals of packaging and displaying. He gave him ideas for setting up a national sales organization, passing along the names of some of the better representatives he had worked with. And he spoke about basic values -- not burning bridges, playing it straight, shipping on time. On the plane home, Joel's head was spinning with new ideas.

In August 1984, he ran an ad in Hardware Retailing ("100-year-old company seeks experienced representatives for new product line of plant and garden sprayers") and spent $15,000 putting together a booth for the National Hardware & Lawn & Garden Show in Chicago. After four days, more than 90 rep firms had stopped by booth 9042. "It was exhausting -- I lost my voice," Joel says. "I didn't stop talking for the whole show." He took the resumes back to Detroit, and within 10 days, Sprayco had a network of sales representatives across the country, including Alaska and Hawaii.

Two months later, he was back in Chicago at another National Housewares show. Although exhibit space had been filled for weeks, Joel asked Jerry Kearns to help him out, and he ended up with a tiny, 10-foot basement booth in a back alley of the McCormick Place annex. By the third day, he was exhausted, but he was in the booth at eight in the morning, giving a pep talk to his new reps over coffee and doughnuts. Already, they had orders for spray bottles from more than 40 retailers, and Joel showed them his new line of travel containers -- plastic toothbrush holders, soap dishes, and little bottles for corrying lotions and shampoo. All day, he refused to sit down ("you can't afford to look tired, because it turns people off"). And when he did take breaks, he would slip his red exhibitor's badge into his jacket pocket ("if anyone knows you're an exhibitor, they're not going to spend their time with you") and wander the aisles in search of still more new ideas.

Today, Joel Jacob works out of a small, windowless office neatly lined with enlarged photographs of generations of Jacob men and their delivery vehicles. All but one wall, that is, which is plastered with pages ripped from trade magazines -- lists of the top 100 discounters, the top 50 drug chains, even the top 30 "deep discounters," with names like Rock Bottom and Get It For Less. This year, Joel says, Sprayco will ship several million units of product to about 150 customers. Retailers are buying both the spray bottles and the new lines of travel accessories, which are offered in clear plastic bags with printed bar codes, ready for display at checkout counters coast-to-coast. More than 70% of the orders are coming from the sales reps, who can call Sprayco directly on a special toll-free number.

All of this has transpired in less than three years -- and just two new people have been added to the company payroll, which now totals 24. "Every day," Joel says, "we're shipping all the new orders with the same people, the same warehouse, the same accounting department."

Sprayco still contributes no more than 10% of overall sales to M. Jacob & Sons, but it may soon be the tail wagging the company dog. "A lot of 100-year-old companies really look like they're 100 years old," Joel says. "But my goal is to build on all our experience. I want to become an important source of a lot of quality products, not just bottles. I'd like to dominate a whole category, like a Rubbermaid."

"A few years ago," says David Levine, M. Jacob & Sons' controller for the past 20 years, "you used to have a pretty clear sense of what was coming up around here. Things were on such an even keel. . . . Accounts either got bigger or they got smaller." But Joel's arrival changed many of the company's old rhythms. "Almost every day," notes sales service administrator Lila Starck, "the comes into the office with new samples or new cardboard displays. He'll lay them out and tell everybody what's going on and what he's think about. It's been like watching the birth of a nation."

Marty's hands-off approach to Joel's training has clearly paid off. The son's brainchild has become the business within the business that the father was searching for; and once again, M. Jacobs & Sons is being reborn. But the changes have come so quickly that the older man sometimes feels he hs lost control. He speaks of Joel's energy with a voice full of pride -- and just a tinge of regret.

"I'd look at what he was doing and I wouldn't understand it," Marty says. "He'd talk about how we were gonna do this and then we were gonna do that. I used to tell him he couldn't buy groceries with his 'we're gonnas.' . . . It's one of those cases of the son teaching the father -- for the good of the company.

"People say, 'Wow, you've got your son in the business. You can sit back and take it easy.' Well, I used to think the same thing -- how nice it would be to get together for breakfast. But, you know, we don't do that much anymore. I get so drained from all that enthusiasm, I feel like I need a shower and a change of clothes."

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