Ramsey Yoder and Thomas Doak have a laid-back, down-to-earth approach to business. It’s a good thing, since their raison d’être is to keep Barberton-based Yoder Bros. Inc. grounded in the fundamental Mennonite principles upon which it was founded.
That’s not an easy task for Yoder, company chairman, or Doak, president and CEO. Through the years, the horticultural company’s expansions and facility relocations to warmer climates — to produce a better-quality product — have yanked at its roots. For a company such as Yoder, global growth causes concern that its fundamental founding values will wither.
The company has become North America’s leading breeder and propagator of all types of chrysanthemums. It is also the world’s largest privately owned starter-plant producer, including azaleas, hibiscus, poinsettias, impatiens, pot roses, dahlias and asters.
Yoder employs about 1,600 people and has sales forces in the U.S. and Canada that help supply more than 10,000 customers, primarily in North and South America. Add to that Yoder’s strategic alliance with the agricultural/biological division of Kirin Brewery Co. Ltd. in Japan, which represents Yoder products in Europe, Africa and Asia. Yoder, in turn, represents Kirin’s chrysanthemums in North and South America.
In addition, Yoder serves as a broker for more than 60 other horticultural producers.
The company owns and manages more than 11 million square feet of growing structures in California, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ontario, Canada, and produces more than 1,200 products, 70 percent of which it sells directly to growers through its own sales force.
Despite its international dealings, Yoder’s center of operations remains in Barberton, where 90 corporate employees help run the global enterprise. That might seem peculiar, since the company no longer has production facilities in Ohio. (Its last remaining greenhouse in Barberton was closed in 1978.)
But keeping the command center where it all began, Doak says, helps foster its founding principles.
From a farm to global alliances
Established as a partnership in 1920 by Mennonite farming brothers Ira and Menno Yoder — who previously managed the vast greenhouses on O.C. Barber’s farm and purchased them after his death — the business initially raised vegetables, mushrooms and flowers for Northeastern Ohio sales.
Ultimately, a sage business decision narrowed the company niche to chrysanthemums. And because of the family’s abstention from materialistic gain, 80 percent of the profits were plowed back into the business.
“There aren’t any yachts or Mercedes Benz convertibles hidden away,” Doak drawls in a Southern accent.
Those traditional mores spurred even greater growth. In 1946, Yoder became a corporation, presided over by Harold Yoder (Menno’s son) and later, Ramsey (Harold’s son). More farms, greenhouses, research and production facilities sprouted nationwide. International companies were acquired and global alliances established. Along the way, the business blossomed into a complex company.
“A banker once told me this was the most complex business she’s ever seen,” Doak says.
Regardless of the growth, the company has retained old-fashioned ideals noteworthy for a business of its magnitude, “values such as integrity, honesty, respect and concern for people in the company, and a commitment to customers,” says Doak.
The task to cultivate such a crop of international commerce from what some might consider an unworldly location doesn’t seem to daunt Doak, who formerly managed the company’s Florida outfit and succeeded Ramsey as CEO in 1992. Today, Doak oversees day-to-day operations of the entire company.
“Yoder is a company that shows its care and commitment to the people who foster its growth. In turn, the company still receives a very strong commitment from its employees,” Doak says. “And that’s what it takes to make our company work.”
Linda Boston, executive secretary to Ramsey, Doak and two other corporate managers, has been with the company for 25 years. She says the company’s world headquarters is right where it should be, since so many corporate employees are native to this area.
“The family creed Yoder was built on calls for keeping a core family unit. And we’re all just one tight family here,” Boston says. “We’re basically farmers and we have family values that make us want to settle here. Yoder realized it had all these great employees here. So, this is where we’ve stayed.”
After spending $2 million during a two-year renovation project, the company moved into its new worldwide corporate headquarters in 1985. The site is a former dairy barn that was previously owned by the Barber estate, and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The painstaking design of the 28,000-square-foot construction deters an atmosphere typical of corporate culture. The barn’s old water storage tank serves as the building’s entrance and sets a tone free from pretense. Former silos are softly lit circular conference rooms and offices. Simplicity is manifest in the sturdy wood staircases and lofty ceilings with massive, exposed beams.
And yet, the site is spectacular, plush with legacy. Halls and lounges boast handcrafted benches; walls and rafters are festooned with kaleidoscopic Amish-crafted quilts (55 of them); work areas are open and airy (in one section, an antique hay baler remains suspended from the rafters).
Doak says the building reflects the company’s commitment to being the best, and blends brawny tradition with comfortable informality.
“The roof even leaks in a couple of places, so that keeps us humble,” he jokes. “Seriously, though, this is a very comfortable place to work and it’s a building we’re all proud of. It’s light years from where we were before, which was an old converted packing house down the street that had seen its better days.”
All in the family, sort of
Keeping the company a privately held enterprise also helps protect and propagate the standards upon which it was built. All the company stock belongs to Yoder descendants, with the exception of a small portion. Ramsey is the principal shareholder.
Who is the nonfamily owner of Yoder stock? Doak, of course. “But it’s a very small piece,” he clarifies.
One might say he’s earned it, having devoted 32 years to the company, which he says has flourished because the family was willing to trust and share the management of the business with people outside the family.
One of the first “outsiders” instrumental in that success was Cloy Miller, who entered the picture in the 1930s when Yoder needed to find a new crop to level seasonal dips in the vegetable business. At that time, industry research discovered a way to “trick” chrysanthemums into flowering at any time, by increasing hours of darkness and using artificial lighting.
Miller and Harold Yoder shared a vision to make the chrysanthemum the most preferred flower in the country. That called for hiring a team of top scientists. The amalgamation of family sagacity and outside talent led to Yoder’s specialization of creating new floral varieties and technical services to assist growers.
Other companies Yoder has since acquired and formed enabled it to capitalize on North America’s favorite pastime: gardening. Those include companies include Green Leaf Enterprises Inc., one of North America’s leading perennial growers; Yoder Canada Ltd. in Leamington, Ontario, acquired to sell plants to supermarkets, retailers and wholesalers; and Blooms of Bressingham North America, to introduce exclusive perennials from England to North America.
Bucking the times
W
ith such an empire, communication is key, Doak says. But it was only last year that Yoder networked all company locations with a real-time wide area network and integrated software to share operating information instantaneously. Before that, corporate had to wait a week, or even a month, to receive data uploaded from international locations. A tape-based management system was used for almost two decades.
“I would review the financial data we received from those locations, and if I had questions about it, I would just call them up and they would give me an answer,” Doak says, referring to reports received from managers in other parts of the country.
“We have a detailed annual plan we measure our progress against and our managers determine how they keep their staff attuned to what we want to do. Even though there are many entities and subsidiaries within the company, we’ve always had the philosophy that there is only one Yoder Brothers and everybody works for the success of the company.
“That is a fact significant in our company’s culture. Most people who work here are entrepreneurial in the sense they want to help the company to grow, develop and be successful.”
It was also only early this year that Yoder launched a Web site and an e-mail link to the Barberton headquarters. But the company still doesn’t have an inter-company e-mail system. Doak confides that he avoids e-mail altogether, rationalizing that it has its advantages and disadvantages. He says his company considers personal contact a top priority.
“I don’t have an e-mail address and I don’t even know how to use it. But I don’t worry about it, because when I want to talk to someone, there’s nothing wrong with the phone — it still works,” he laughs, noting that he answers his own phone, as do most of the management personnel. And everyone is on a first name basis.
“That’s just our style, to maintain the company’s culture in terms of people identifying with each other.”
Doak acknowledges that Yoder will eventually give in to e-mail, just as it finally acquired a voice mail system last year.
“We’ll evolve as the times change, but this will remain a down-to-earth business. It’s the people who work here that make this company what it is, and I think they will maintain that because they see value in the kind of culture this company has.” How to reach: Yoder Bros. Inc., (330) 745-2143 or (800) 321-9573; Web site www.yoder.com
