The ‘Way’ to singular business success Price Industries CEO, owner Gerry Price to receive IDEA honours at U of M gala By: Martin Cash Posted: 5:16 PM CDT Wednesday, May. 29, 2024

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This article was published 29/05/2024 (785 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Gerry Price, owner and CEO of Price Industries, surprised everyone who knew him when he went into business in the late 1980s, eventually acquiring the business his father had started but had long since retired from.

A brilliant student who went on to get a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Manitoba and then a PhD from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, he had long envisioned a career in academia.

However, his love for solving complex problems, comfort with uncertainty and a late-in-life discovery that he loves sales, coupled with the fact he’s “not very good with people telling me what to do,” helped turn Price into a successful business person.

There are lots of brilliant, driven corporate titans. Price’s singularity comes from fusing those traits with an almost bull-headed commitment to decency and integrity.

He will be honoured Thursday night at a gala dinner by the Associates of the Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba, where he will receive the 40th anniversary International Distinguished Entrepreneur Award.

Price Industries is now a dominant North American player in the non-residential air distribution industry.

It’s maybe not the sexiest business in the world, but the company is the industry expert. Every year, thousands of people from across North America visit the company’s Winnipeg research centre, the industry’s best-equipped research and development lab.

Price Industries didn’t invent the idea of mass customization, but that’s what it does, distinguishing itself with attention to every detail along the way.

Its Winnipeg headquarters is in the same East Kildonan location where Price’s father started out in 1949 as a manufacturer’s rep, and then in the early 1960s as the manufacturing licensee for a brand out of Iowa. It built production plants in the U.S. (first in Atlanta in the mid-1990s and a few years later in Phoenix).

It has 26 manufacturing facilities — including eight in Australia and New Zealand after an acquisition in 2021 — and has become the go-to supplier of HVAC technologies for some of the most sophisticated non-residential buildings in North America. Among them, Apple Inc.’s $5-billion headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.

Price brought his scientific training to bear on the company from his earliest engagements. In the 1970s, he automated its order-entry system while still at grad school. (He wrote his master’s and PhD thesis on meteorology, a subject he’d never taken a single course in.)

When his father’s successor hired Price away from his first post-doc job as a scientist with the Defence Research Establishment in Alberta, he led a division that had to wind down. Rather than allow it to declare bankruptcy, he painstakingly assisted staff, creditors and suppliers throughout the process.

Price, 75, would never be accused of being ostentatious. He says his greatest success in life was marrying his wife, Barb. He shies away from attention for himself and had to be convinced to accept the IDEA honour.

Price Industries president Joe Cyr said Price only agreed to attend when it was pointed out “young people could learn something and benefit from what he’s got to say.”

His peers would likely be more than happy to crow about growing a business from about $30 million in annual sales in the late 1980s, when Price bought it, to about $1.2 billion today (perhaps $1.4 billion in 2024).

A famously unpretentious guy, a few years ago, Price scoffed at the suggestion he needed a new car. “I loved that old Infinity,” he said.

One day, he went to his office to discover Barb had thrown out his favourite desk chair, after exposed staples were ripping his suit jackets. He also used to tape an old briefcase together.

“I hate shopping,” Price said. “I don’t know what to buy.”

However, he’s passionate about the importance of, and his support of, education. He’s gifted $20 million to the U of M, $10 million to RRC Polytech and millions more in bursaries and scholarships, including the Travis Price Spirit Awards to high school hockey players (in memory of his son, who died tragically at age 16).

He’s also passionate about the methodology that has helped the company succeed; it’s called “the Price Way.”

Every company now seems obliged to have something like a corporate vision statement. Many are little more than vacuous niceties. At Price Industries, the Way is so much more.

Rooted in the most fundamental tenets of community-mindedness, like “team and humility,” “distributed leadership,” “service” and the “Golden Rule” (treat others as you would like to be treated yourself), it’s created a workplace environment at Price Industries shared by virtually all 4,500 of its employees.

“The only reason we can grow like this is because of the people.”–Gerry Price

“The only reason we can grow like this is because of the people,” Price said in an interview. “They’re one’s who fuel that growth; young, principled leaders running the business the right way.”

One staffer said the message is deeply rooted and emphasizes exceptional customer service, continuous improvement and innovation.

“We are all encouraged to adopt a long-term perspective, investing in both personal growth and the company’s future,” the staffer said. “Collaboration and teamwork are highly valued.”

For Price, the sign of character is how you treat a person of the least authority in the company.

“If you treat that person like you treat the person who has the most authority in the business, then you are following the Price Way,” he said. “The front-line workers in every department are what makes the business. It’s not me, it’s them.”

The vast majority of the senior executive team and general managers of the company’s 26 manufacturing facilities are longtime Price employees, many of whom were hired right out of university. Because of that, there is virtually no churn at all.

(Cyr allowed there have been some rare misses but only when recruiting specialized talent from outside the company.)

Price himself insists he’s no more valuable to the operations than any of the talented leaders who run the sprawling enterprise.

“Our obligation is not to ourselves, it is to them (the staff),” he said. “We serve them. We have so many qualified and capable leaders in their early and late 30s and 40s that we are in good shape for 40 years.”

Notwithstanding his legendary stamina — even he says “it’s embarrassing how many hours I work” — he’s in the process of devising a “complex” succession plan that, among other things, will ensure the company is never sold.

Price owns 85 per cent the company, with about 100 staffers owning the rest. There are no outside investors.

The bulk of the Price family stake will go to charity, where most of the couple’s wealth already has been invested.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca