Centuries Old but Not Old-Fashioned
Longevity has its advantages. For an individual, a long life can mean greater experience, more knowledge and the ability to tap into a deepening knowledge base as new challenges are faced.
Those advantages also hold true for a company.
"In New Jersey and elsewhere, many manufacturers have come on the scene, operated briefly and then disappeared," says Ronald Kaplan, president of operations at Joseph Oat Corp. in Camden. "Our company was founded in 1788 [in Philadelphia], and we plan to be around for a long time."
Companies that span the centuries, like Joseph Oat, and Caswell-Massey Co. Ltd., an Edison cosmetics business that was started by a Rhode Island doctor in 1752, are distinguished by their ability to adapt to the market's changing needs.
For Caswell-Massey, that means anticipating and responding to customer requests, developing creams and fragrances that fit its customers' lifestyles.
At Joseph Oat, it's a matter of evolution, beginning with copper goods, including kettles and utensils, and moving on to stills, steam engine boilers and other products. Today the firm produces pressure vessels, heat exchanges and other critical components of the nuclear power and chemical industries.
The Oat family no longer owns the company named after them, but the firm is still a family-owned business, says Kaplan, whose father, Martin, and Maurice Holtz bought the company in 1966. The elder Kaplan, 85, still plays an active role as chairman of Oat while Holtz's son, Michael, is president of engineering. Ronald Kaplan's son, Justin, is the company's purchasing agent.
Long-lived companies may take different paths to survival, but they all maintain a focus on quality. The Nassau Inn was established in Princeton in 1756, and played host to historic figures such as Thomas Paine and Paul revere. As Princeton grew more populous and more visitors streamed in, the inn added new wings and floors. It continues to evoke a colonial feeling while offering modern amenities that include high-speed Internet connectivity, a fitness center and conference rooms.
Publisher John Wiley & Sons, which relocated from New York City to Hoboken in 2002, began life in 1807 as a shop that printed law books. Succeeding generations of the Wiley family steered the company into new fields of publishing, including architecture, construction and electrical, civil and mechanical engineering.
Wiley went public in 1956 and by the late 1900s had made a series of multimillion-dollar acquisitions domestically and abroad. In 2001, the company acquired Hungry Minds Inc., adding the "For Dummies" series, Webster's New World dictionaries and the "CliffsNotes" study guides. Earlier this year Wiley paid $1.1 billion for Great Britain's Blackwell Publishing, a leading publisher of academic and professional books and journals.
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