Even after 50 years of business, buying his company’s first fax machines is one of the memories that sticks with David D. Carr the most.
“I had to buy four,” he says, explaining they cost $2,500 apiece at the time. “I thought long and hard about that.”
Founded in 1960, Brennan Industries began by manufacturing standard tube fittings. Under Carr’s leadership as CEO, the Solon company has grown to specialize in hydraulic and pneumatic fittings with more than 25,000 styles and sizes and six North American distribution centers.
New technologies have changed the business mightily since its beginning, starting with that $10,000 fax machine expenditure and continuing through today’s online orders that have helped the business grow faster than anyone could have imagined at its inception.
1. How has technology negatively affected your business?
People buying things based on a number and not understanding what they’re buying, who’s supplying it, whether it’s a quality product. … It used to be that the buyer was an engineer who understood what he was buying and how it fit into the products that they were building.
2. What advice would you give to a younger you?
Everybody would like to be in business, but if you talk to someone who has been in it a while, it is not easy. It’s a lot of work, a lot of sacrifice, a lot of weekends, a lot of seven days a week. That is how you build a business.
3. What’s the best advice you were ever given?
Don’t give up. It took me two years to get my first major account, so you don’t give up, and you keep coming back until they tell you don’t come in anymore.