Waltz Business Solutions has been around for a century and a quarter, so you know it must be doing something right. Frank Waltz founded the business back in 1892 selling primitive adding machines and typewriters, until James Jehn bought the business from Mr. Waltz’s daughters in 1961. Today it is primarily a Kyocera dealer with $7 million in yearly revenue, servicing the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky regions.
Family businesses, especially those that have been around for so long, can acquire a stigma of not being the most progressive or modern, but nothing could be further from the truth. With 36 employees, a state of the art facility and 10 percent year over year growth for the past two fiscal years, business is looking up, even as the company undergoes internal restructuring.
Front L to R: John Jehn, Senior Service Technician; Jeff Jehn, President; Jerry Jehn, Vice President
Rear L to R: Matt Jehn, Senior Account Manager, Josh Jehn, CFO/controller
Besides the obvious scenario of longevity, Waltz Business Solutions prides itself on legendary relationships, with both its clients and employees. In fact, it still has one employee that’s been on the payroll since 1939. He was the lead typewriter technician and service manager of the company at one point, but as the company moved into different products, his role diminished and he officially retired in 1999. Since it was the only job he’d ever known, the company kept him on as a courier as long as he wanted to come in. He’s 94 years old now, and even though he cannot come into the office any longer, a paycheck from the company keeps him connected.
We spoke at length with Jeff Jehn, president of Waltz Business Solutions, about what it’s like working with family, the pressures of running a company that’s been in business for nearly 125 years, and his plans for the future.
How is business this year? Where do you see your greatest opportunities for growth?
Jehn: Business is very good this year. We have achieved 10 percent year over year growth for the past two years. Some of our greatest opportunities are not only in our traditional imaging side, but also our document management side. We say document management encompasses our ability to cover our client’s document needs from document creation to document destruction. In the last year to year and a half, we not only enhanced our document management software offerings but we also include document scanning, document storage, and document destruction.
How was the transition from the traditional imaging side of your business to document management?
Jehn: We are budgeting 100 percent growth in that segment for this coming year. We hired someone to champion the program for us last year and we’ve hired a second employee this year. We even purchased an extra delivery truck to pick up the destruction bins. We started modest and were happy with what we did, and we’re going to double that growth this year.
How do you view the industry changing in the future and what are you doing to adapt?
Jehn: Well, today, my assessment is that 85 percent of our business is output related and only 15 percent of it is services. In the next five to ten years, I expect that to flip flop, with services becoming the major portion of our revenue and the hardware side becoming a smaller percentage. That doesn’t mean it’s going to go down, per se, it just means we’re going to continue to grow the software-as-a-service side of things. I predict that long after I’m gone, a significant portion of our revenue may not come from hardware.
What was your dealership’s most significant accomplishment this year?
Jehn: One of our goals was to get our inventory and finances in order. We set a goal to be debt free and mortgage free, and this past March we achieved that goal. I don’t know if that’s something the typical reader wants to hear, but I can remember many years ago when our business was much smaller, it was tough to manage the finances, pay the bills, meet payroll, and keep the vendors happy. Today we’re dealing from strength in that we have no long-term debt. We don’t owe anything on our building, and we don’t owe any money to any banks.
What was one of the biggest challenges of this year?
Jehn: We’ve added 25 percent to our revenue bottom line and we’ve added 20 percent more employees in the last two years, and quite frankly we’re bursting at the seams in our current building. We built the building in 1998 and it was a state-of-the-art facility—15,000 square feet—and we’re running out of room.
What was one of your biggest wins this year?
Jehn: We had one that stands out to me. It was a large pharmaceutical company that has its headquarters here in the Cincinnati area. We bid on their business six years ago and were not successful. Three years ago we bid again, with persistence, and won a small percentage of that business, knowing there was a bigger chunk of business, both here in Cincinnati and other parts of the country. This past year, we scored a complete hit with them, and not only renewed their program, but also added other cities for a significant win that was around a quarter of a million dollars. For us that was a big deal. We also found out the customer loved the products from Kyocera so well, they are planning to implement them in their European operations. So from a satisfaction standpoint, that was a big win. We were talking to a European account rep from Kyocera who was very pleased. No check from them yet, though.
Who do you see as your biggest competition, and how do you differentiate your company from the rest?
Jehn: We’re probably not unlike most dealerships in mid-sized to large metropolitan areas. We have several large, high profile dealers in our back yard. We compete fairly well with them. We’re not as big as they are, but our client base knows we take good care of our clients and that we have longevity. We differentiate ourselves because we’re smaller, so we’re nimble, and we can respond quicker than some of the larger dealers, and certainly the larger branch manufacturers.
What is the smartest thing your company’s ever done?
Jehn: Absolutely, unequivocally, hands-down the best thing our company has ever done is joining the Select Dealer Group (SDG). I can’t put a value on the things that I’ve learned and getting to rub elbows with very successful dealers has been immeasurable. It’s just a natural extension of what BTA has been about, where I served as a national BTA president in 1994 for one year. I’ve met many good people and learned so many things from our participation in that group.
What is one exemplary business marketing innovation of your company?
Jehn: To get down to the nitty-gritty, about 20 years ago, we started to have an open house, where we invited customers to a hotel to see some of the newest equipment. That’s evolved into what we call BTE, Business Technology Expos, held annually in the spring. We pick up our customers in limos and bring them to our facility. We have food, door prizes, and usually four to five stations we move them around in an hour. Our goal is to have 75 percent of the attendees to be net new clients, and 25 percent of the attendees to either be customers who we want to thank, or customers we want to introduce to new facets of our offerings. We average about 35 to 40 clients in a seven-hour BTE event.
Is there a product or solution that you are looking to provide in the future?
Jehn: Our goal is to expand our document management program to include scanning as service. We have a manager of our scanning group, and she has a couple of contract employees that she’ll call upon when a scanning job comes up. Believe it or not we had a local client with a facility in Mississippi, who asked us if we could do the same thing for them down there, so our team picked up all their stuff and drove to Mississippi and spent a week doing a fairly large on-site scanning job. We do it all in house; we don’t contract anything out.
What do you look for in your employees? How do you recruit and retain good ones?
Jehn: A couple of years ago, we embarked on a management program to improve the direction, communication, and management of our company. Out of that program came five core values that our company operates on, which are leadership, honor, accountability, reputation, and family. We look for employees that exemplify those five core values, and we hire, evaluate, and ultimately separate from our employees based on nothing but those five core values.
With leadership, we say we bring excellence to our employees, customers and our community. With honor, we treat our clients and co-workers with respect, integrity, and a positive attitude. With accountability, we listen and we do the right thing. Reputation is huge for me. We say that we are recognized for our character and our morals. Finally, family: we work together as family, and we treat our clients as such.
What keeps you motivated and excited about the work that you do?
Jehn: I personally enjoy being involved in our community. We have several non-profits that we help. One of them that are near and dear to my heart is the local pregnancy care center. I was at one of their dinners and I heard that a portion of them was getting kicked out of one of their locations. At the time I had a couple of vacant sales offices so we donated the use of those offices for two and a half years until they could find another location for their people to work.
There’s also a local non-profit that does healthcare for inner city and homeless people. One of the coolest things is they have a Hope Box Derby every year. The last one was just two weeks ago, where they run a soapbox style race derby and get 30 to 40 companies to race in that, including us, and that’s just a blast. We sponsor that event, and it’s great for our business, and for us too.
What is your least favorite thing about your job?
Jehn: My least favorite thing is to see someone go. We treat our employees as family, and once in a while you have to separate from an employee for one reason or another. With every single employee we hire, we assume they’re going to be with us for life and when that doesn’t work out, it’s disappointing.
Outside of work, what do you do for fun?
Jehn: Family is big to me. I grew up with nine children in my family and we still vacation together every year. My wife tells me the ideal vacation spot is: House, Pool, Beach. The last seven or eight years we’ve gone somewhere warm and where there’s a house, a pool, and a beach. Gulf shores, Alabama near the Florida panhandle, the outer banks of North Carolina…Personally, I enjoy a good round of golf from time to time as well.
What are you looking forward to the most for the rest of the year and beyond?
Jehn: I’m retiring next June 30, 2017, at 2PM. I’m going to go home early that day. I have a brother, Jerry Jehn, who is currently serving as the VP and integrator/manager, who’s perfect for the job, who will take over my role as the visionary and leader of this company. I have another brother, Josh, who’s our CFO and very capable, and my son, Matt, has been in the business 16 years with me, and he’s doing extremely well in sales. They are all vested here and the company will be in very good hands with them.
We have now hired a new director of sales to prepare my brother to take over the reigns of this company. So for the rest of this fiscal year, my primary job, besides overseeing company culture, company communication, company vision, growth and acquisitions, is planning a big 125-year celebration. Really big. I mean, going to the city, blocking off the street, and having a big block party and inviting clients, friends, family, dignitaries, vendors…everybody. Can’t wait.
730 Centre View Boulevard
Crestview Hills, KY 41017-5434
Tel: (859) 814-2162
www.waltzbusiness.com
