INTERVIEW | JEFF BRAZWELL
tripod cranes. Later, as the business grew, Spanco jib cranes and workstation bridge cranes were added to the portfolio.
In 1992, the company invested in a 95,000ft2 manufacturing facility on the edge of
Pennsylvania’s Amish country in Morgantown, where the company’s headquarters and its core manufacturing facility are still located. The product offering continued to expand with workstation cranes that in those days used imported track from Helm in Germany. In 2005, the expansion continued with the
introduction of rigid track fall protection systems under a new Rigid Lifelines division, and the company’s engineers soon developed a line of Spanco Tractor Drives for I-beam and enclosed track systems, as well as retrofit drives for jib cranes. Three years later came another big investment, this time in a major manufacturing facility in Las Vegas, Nevada, which served not only a key marker of the company’s growth, but also a key hub for serving customers on the West Coast. Five years later, that facility would double
in size in order to keep pace with growing demand. The following year, Brazwell joined as vice president of sales, playing a crucial role in setting up an extensive dealer network in Latin America over the following two years, during which time the company added several new regional sales managers in the US and Canadian markets. In 2020, the Spanco Zip-Ship Freight Estimator, Fast-Track Program and Rigid Lifelines Online Configurator were launched, marking the culmination of a period of intense innovation. Throughout this time, Brazwell and other senior
executives had sensed an opportunity opened to fill a gap in the leadership team and take more direct control of the company’s strategic direction. “The absentee owner was spending most of his time in Florida and he wanted to pass the business on to his son but that did not work out so well,” he remarks. “So, he stepped back from the business and we saw our opportunity. We approached him about taking over but the process was slow. It was slowed down by Covid but the real issue was that it was hard for him to let go of a long-held family business.”
Nevertheless, in 2021, the management buyout by Brazwell and two business partners was finalised, and all assets of Spanco, Lug-All and Rigid Lifelines were transferred to their holding company Promise to Perform Industries, Inc. The move represented a bold new start for the business, but like many of the best ventures it did not set sail on calm seas.
“In our first year of ownership we faced many headwinds – the pandemic, supply chain shortages, inflation, employee turnover from the Great Resignation and many scheduled retirements, and many other challenges. Nevertheless, we came out stronger because it forced us to make a lot of tough decisions faster than we would have otherwise done,” says Brazwell.
Jeff Brazwell, president and CEO of Spanco.
“The predecessor company under the previous owner was on auto-pilot in many ways and we had to invigorate it. It had ‘good bones’ in terms of its products, but many other aspects of the business needed shoring up. Now, almost five years later, it is like a brand-new company – growing, vibrant and very profitable.” Today, Spanco is one of the industry’s leading manufacturers and is recognised for designing and building high-quality, customisable overhead material handling cranes and lifting solutions. Its durable jib cranes, gantry cranes and workstation bridge cranes are used in a wide array of industrial sectors that require lifting systems that are both ergonomic and efficient. “The opportunity to buy the company came along when it did and we didn’t have much choice but to go ahead with it during the pandemic,” he explains. “It was a challenging time for us as new owners, and it was my first time being the president and co-owner of a company. I knew we had good people and good advisers around us, but all of the challenges that
businesses must deal with were all compacted into the first year of our owning it.” Adversity kills you or makes you stronger, and in Brazwell’s case it was certainly the latter. Supply change shortages meant that many components were very hard to get, but Spanco never ran out of anything vital. The closest it came to a shortage of inventory was when it had enough paint for only one or two days. “We always found a way to make it,” he says.
“We didn’t rely on one vendor. For anything critical, we always have multiple vendors, and this helps with negotiating prices down and ensuring supply. Inflation was a problem – and still is to some extent – though some of the inflation of employee wages and benefits was our choice because we wanted to create employee loyalty and attract a better calibre of people. “That is important to us but it does hit the
bottom line. It has improved employee turnover – to the point where we have almost none now – but we had a lot of people of retirement age who hung up their boots when the pandemic came.
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